Sexual Harrassment
Sexual Harassment in the Workplace
Sexual Harassment is a form of sex discrimination that violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The legal definition of sexual harassment is unwelcome verbal, visual, or physical conduct of a sexual nature that is severe or pervasive and affects working conditions or creates a hostile work environment. Conduct is not sexual harassment if it is welcome. For this reason, it is important to communicate either verbally, in writing, or by one’s own actions to the harasser that the conduct makes you uncomfortable and that you want it to stop. Sexual harassment can be many different kinds of conduct; unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature constitute sexual harassment when this conduct explicitly or implicitly affects an individual’s employment, unreasonably interferes with an individual’s work performance, or creates an intimidating, hostile, or offensive work environment. Non-sexual conduct may also be sexual harassment if you are harassed because you are a female, rather than a male, or because you are a male, rather than a female. As an employer, they have a responsibility to maintain a workplace that is free of sexual harassment. This is their legal obligation, but it also makes good business sense. If they allow sexual harassment to flourish in the workplace, they will pay a high price in terms of poor employee morale, low productivity, and high dollar lawsuits. The majority of people became aware of the term sexual harassment in 1991 when Anita Hill took her place at the witness table and testified against the Supreme Court Justice nominee, Clarence Thomas. As a matter of fact, that year the number of sexual harassment cases reported in corporate America increased fifty-eight percent and have climbed steadily ever since. (http://articles.techrepublic.com) In the fiscal year 2007, the EEOC received 12,510 charges of sexual...
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