Saturday, February 20, 2010
Sexual Harassment
In Chapter 4 of O’Hair’s textbook sexual harassment is discussed. Sexual harassment is defined by the text as unwelcome sexual advances or overtures and requests for sexual favors. I think sexual harassment is an important topic to be aware of throughout our lives. It is something that is taking place more than statistics actually know because it so often goes unreported, because the victim doesn’t want to face the person sexually harassing them. Often times the reason is that they feel they will loose their job, won’t be taken seriously or they think it is their fault. Women tend to be the majority of the victims of sexual harassment and as the text also points out it’s probably because of the different method of communication men and women have. Men aren’t as expressive when communicating as women are. Women are known to use smiles, eye contact and physical touch when they are communicating more than men are. And this can cause misunderstandings between female and male coworkers. If we better understand the differences between the way males and females communicate it could help lessen the number of sexual harassment cases each year.
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i agree with everything you said about sexual harassment and how although it may sometimes be overlooked, that it is actually very common and occurs often around us. i like how you wrote how sexual harassment is something we need to be more aware of and how it is taking place more frequently than what statistics show us because of the number of victims that do not actually report the crimes to authority in fear of facing their attacker. when this topic is at hand, i realize that i am so lucky and blessed to not have gone through anything similar to sexual harassment and i feel bad for those who have experienced it and are afraid of telling even their bestest of friends. great post! =)
ReplyDeleteI really like how you pointed out this section in the text. I completely agree that it does get overlooked by many people and the frequency of it happening is a lot more than people think. I can just imagine, accusing your boss of sexual harrassment, and then everything is awkward at work and either end up fired or end up leaving because of the awkwardness. I can see that happening completely to someone and so they don't report it. I also agree how sometimes what men do may be misinterpereted. However, men should have extra caution when talking, smiling, touching, or joking with any co-worker because of how some could take it the wrong way. I believe total professionalism in the office is the only way to have good relationships in the workplace.
ReplyDeleteDeeAnn, I think it's weird how the topic of sexual harassment has come up so recently to a new survey released that is about a similar subject.
ReplyDeleteHere's the link if you want to read it.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8515592.stm
It covers a lot of similar ground to what you said about how a lot of sexual harassment (in this case, rape) goes unreported because many of the victims feel ashamed or they just want the incident to go away. What I also found spooky about the article is that apparently, many people still think that it's the victim's fault in some way, and that they did something to "deserve it".