Sexual Harassment in the Workplace

Sexual harassment remains a prevalent plague in the United States in all areas, including the workplace, school, military and in the public. A key issue that prevents sexual harassment from being suppressed is defining what constitutes sexual harassment. Everything from suggestive pictures to forcible rape can be constituted as sexual harassment. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) stated that 7,256 sexual harassment charges were filed in 2013. Even with advancements towards equality such as the Civil Rights of 1964 sexual harassment remains prevalent due to the lack of a clear definition and failure to report harassment due to fear of retaliation.

Examples of sexual harassment spans back centuries in the United States to pre-Civil War era when slaves and domestic servants were vulnerable due to a lack of laws that protected them. Even with women’s right advocates voicing their concern of inequalities, society often (and still does to this day) placed the blame on women for being promiscuous (Reed, 2013). Groups and labor activists fought to protect women from sexual harassment throughout the 19th and 20th century until the 1920s when a shift in societal views occurred. Women were then expected to be tough and deal with sexual harassment on their own. Many companies had policies that included telling women to quit if they could not ward off coworkers who made sexual advances towards them (Reed, 2013). The government took a big step to prevent discrimination in the workplace with the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964. This bill ended segregation and banned workplace discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex or national origin. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act prohibited sex discrimination in the workplace. In 1991 the Civil Rights Act was amended to allow victims a trial by jury when seeking damages or compensation for sexual harassment under Title VII (Reed, 2013). This amendment paved the way for an increase in reports of sexual harassment from about 6,000 in 1991 to about 15,000 by 1996. These changing laws led to a drastic decrease in quid pro quo harassment (when a person in a more powerful position demands sexual favors). Sadly, a hostile work environment (when an employee faces unwanted sexual advances) has continued and only an estimated fifteen percent of these victims take legal action.

The United States military contains one of the highest numbers of reported sexual harassment or assault in a workplace environment and it is estimated that the military also has the highest number of unreported harassment and assault incidents in the United States. The media, and political and military leaders, along with pressure from the American public, have shed a light on this growing issue in the last decade. The Department of Defense (DoD) and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) responded by taking numerous measures in enhancing the prevention, surveillance and reporting procedures of sexual harassment and assault. Some of these measures include increased support for victims through the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response (SAPR) program and processes under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) (Stander & Thomsen, 2016). The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), like the civilian part of the United States tend to place sexual assault and forcible rape under the same broad umbrella of sexual harassment in terms of treatment for victims and punishment for offenders. The military, however, responds to sexual harassment and assault separately, with different charges under the UCMJ. Sexual harassment refers to unwelcome sexual advances, requests, or other sexual behavior that create a hostile work environment or threats or promises of punishments or rewards (quid pro pro). Sexual assault, as defined by the military, is intentional sexual contact, by use of force, threats, abuse of authority, or failure to consent by the victim (Stander & Thomsen, 2016). Sexual assault includes rape, forcible sodomy and unwanted sexual contact. A key factor that puts the military at the top of the list of sexual harassment and assault is the vast military workplace which often overlaps completely with a military member’s life space, like during a deployment. Additionally, when authority is used to pressure a subordinate into sexual contact it constitutes sexual authority and assault, which differs from the civilian legal system. The way in which the VA, DoD and DHS define sexual trauma prevents many victims from coming forward due to the gray area of definitions and fear of retaliation from supervisors and the rest of their Chain of Command. Hypermasculinity, or rigid masculine norms, can be much more prevalent in the military and include calloused attitudes towards women and sex, with aggression being viewed as being manly and danger is praised and exciting. This behavior can increase the number of sexual harassment and assault incidents but decrease the number of cases reported and punished because this behavior can be viewed by the Chain of Command as less severe than the victim believes it is.

The military must take a unique approach to developing effective prevention and response programs because the lifestyle varies from the civilian aspect of life greatly. Currently the DoD and DHS relies in evidence-based civilian programs to inform their prevention efforts, including a bystander intervention model that requires training (Stander & Thomsen, 2016). Service members are taught to recognize warning signs of a potential sexual assault incident and provided with the tools to avoid or respond to an incident. The military places a strong emphasis on group loyalty so the bystander approach can either work or fail completely, depending on the sexual harassment or assault situation. A suggestion to help decrease the amount of sexual harassment and assault incidents in the military would be to reevaluate the definitions of sexual harassment and assault and to pursue punishment identically instead of through separate channels and articles of the UCMJ. These incidents are not only closely related but overlap completely too often to keep them as separate entities. If victims had the same reporting options with a clearly defined procedure they would be less hesitant to report their harassment or assault and would not have fear of being reprimanded by their Chain of Command.

Sexual harassment and assault is a source of workplace stress in both the military and civilian workplace. After the societal shift in the 1950s through the 1980s of women being responsible for fending off unwanted sexual advances, sexual harassment in the workplace is now being taken seriously (Korgen, Korgen, & Giraffe, 2015). The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the courts, and effective managers have worked to define what constitutes sexual harassment and assault and now impose harsh punishment for those found guilty of committing a crime. Workplaces are taking steps for prevention by offering sexual assault training which promotes empathy towards a victim and states the importance of reporting any situation, no matter how small it may seem to a bystander. Statistics show that the number of sexual harassment and assault reports have dropped since 1997. Given the fact that more victims have been encouraged to step forward, we can reasonably conclude that prevention procedures put in place are having a positive impact on the fight against sexual harassment (EEOC, n.d.). Another step that can be taken to understanding why sexual harassment occurs is to understand the interactions of men and women in the workplace and their roles in society. If women have gained greater equality in the workplace why has instances of sexual harassment not diminished?

Women’s presence in the workplace has increased dramatically due to changing family roles and their role in society. This causes men and women to work more closely together in the 21st century than any other time in history. There are now fewer “male only” professions in the workforce than ever before (Sprague, 2015). Sexual harassment is often analyzed from two standpoints: sociocultural and biological/psychological. The sociocultural theories suggest that sexual harassment is a means for a harasser to gain power over his target, while a biological/psychological standpoint states that men are biologically and psychologically predisposed to be sexually aggressive and harassment is an outgrowth of these predispositions. (Sprague, 2015). Sexual harassment in the workplace also stems from the date rape literature that has developed in our society. Token resistance is the belief that when women blatantly discourage sexual attention that in fact they wish for it to continue, or believing that women mean yes even if they say no. Research suggests that men who have a strong belief in token resistance have difficulty determining when the advances they are attempting are actually unwanted (Sprague, 2015). Token resistance also sheds light on why women are more likely to see attention as harmful compared to men. Both aspects regarding the cause of sexual harassment believe that the perception of harassment varies widely and the line between harassment and harmless attention can often be blurred. In order to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace training should be given to all employees in order to get everyone on the same page regarding a company’s policy on sexual harassment, including how it is defined and how reports are handled. To go even further, employers should teach employees to avoid the miscommunications and attitudes that can be construed as harassment. Even with this training, surveys continue to show that one in four women have experienced sexual harassment, one in ten men have as well, and 25% of men say they are worried about being falsely accused of sexual harassment. When a sexual