Every workplace should be free from sexual harassment or discrimination of any kind. All workplaces are required by law to ensure that each and every employee is free from these concerns. Nonetheless, they do happen, and often.
Unfortunately, many people fail to understand that sexual harassment comes in a variety of forms, and identifying it is not always easy.
Here are just a few examples of sexual harassment:
- Continued requests for dates
- Unwanted or unwarranted sexual advances
- Requests for sexual favors
- Inappropriate touching or attention
- Conversations about the way you dress or look
- Discussions about your sex life or sexual preferences
- Jokes and/or emails with sexual undertones or sexual innuendos
- Continuous staring at your body
- Indications that fulfilling sexual requests will help you to move up in the company
- Threats or implications that failing to accept sexual advances will hurt your career
If anyone has made you feel uncomfortable, made sexual advances, or intimidated you into inappropriate behavior, especially if it interfered with your ability to get your job done, then you are likely a victim of sexual harassment.
Sexual harassment can happen to anybody. Sexual harassment can come from a supervisor, manager, co-worker, or even non-employees like customers or vendors. Even though the majority of sexual harassment claims consists of women victimized by men, we have seen cases of women imposing themselves on men, men harassing men, and women harassing women. These cases can be gender-neutral.
If you feel that you are experiencing sexual harassment in your workplace, it is important to refer to your company’s sexual harassment policy and report the issue as soon as possible to your human resources department or management. Frequently, this will result in the employer remedying the situation. But some employers may not cause the sexual harassment to stop or even take retaliatory action against the employee making the complaint. Retaliation itself is an additional type of discrimination and sometimes the retaliation will result in a greater recovery than the initial harassment.
If your sexual harassment claim has not been adequately addressed by your employer, then contact an employment attorney immediately. Maduff & Maduff specialize in sexual harassment, discrimination, and other workplace issues. Contact us for help with your employment law issue today.