Sexual Harassment in the Workplace

Sexual harassment in the workplace
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Introduction
Generally, the issue of sexual harassment is against the law in Australia. Hayashi (2012)
described sexual harassment as an aspect that results in the unwelcome behavior which is
expected to make someone feel offended and intimidated within the workplace location. The
aspect of sexual harassment in the workplace can either be verbal, either physical or even
written. Therefore, Australian statistics on the issue of sexual harassment in the workplace shows
that sexual harassment is an immoral behavior. Therefore, for any behavior to be described fully
as sexual harassment behavior, it must comply with certain conditions that is the behavior must
occur at work (Martin & Peña, 2012 p.89).The Australian Human Rights has reported that almost
1 woman in a group of 6 is sexually harassed in the workplace. The net effects of sexual
harassment behavior in the workplace are that sexual harassment can jeopardize the victim's
mental health, emotional health, and physical health.
Theories explaining sexual harassment in the workplace
Feminist theory in sociology
Basically feminist theory advocates for rights and freedom of women and girls in society. The
theory has been in frontline promoting the rights of women over the men. In fact, the theory has
been fighting for inequality, the issue of oppression and also injustice within the society. By
supporting all these sociological aspects, the theory thus helps in achieving the goals of justice
and equality in the society (Pohlman 2018 ,p.90).The theory always condemns the sexual
harassment in the workplace by considering the following;
First the theory checks on the gender difference whereby it checks on how women differ with
the men in the workplace. For instance, the cultural feminism will check on those womanhood

capabilities women are able to perform in workplace locations as compared to the men. The
theory also checks on the roles assigned by the workplace senior to the women to ensure there is
work balance in the working place (Suhaila & Rampal 2012, p.45).
The second process in which the theory controls sexual harassment in the workplace is through
condemning the gender oppression within the workplace. The theory looks on how women are
being oppressed by theme in society. In the workplace, you find that the big number of gender
being sexually harassed is the women working in a specific location. This shows that in men's
dominated society women are seen as the inferior group and that's why men sexually abuse
women in the working area. The theory also describes two concepts which catalyze the
oppression of women in society. According to Tangem (2017) there is an issue of power in the
workplace whereby the senior takes the opportunity of oppressing women for sex in the
workplace. This means that there are radical feminism and psychoanalytic feminism which tend
to undermine the capabilities of women in the workplace. The theory summarizes by showing
that women can defeat men's strength and become recognized as long as clear guidelines and
laws will be made to eradicate sexual harassment behavior in the workplace.
The other concept about the theory is that it describes structural oppression which focuses on
enlightening the society on women's oppression in the workplace. The feminism theory describes
capitalist values and explains how a working class tends to oppress women. Different authors
have indicated that most of the job positions are being controlled by men and that's why most of
them find the opportunity to oppress women in the workplace. The issue is that laws have
ensured all the process associated with sexual harassment should be formulated.
The inequality theory