Gender Harassment

Employee harassment occurs when a person is being tormented by the actions of another employee or employer on the basis of his or her race, gender, age, or disability, among others. Discrimination based on these may be considered as employee harassment. One of the most common forms of discrimination is gender discrimination, which is directly linked to gender harassment.

Definition

Gender harassment basically occurs when an employee is subjected to comments, jokes, and innuendos based on his or her gender or sexual orientation. Some examples of these are expressing low opinion about a particular person’s intellectual and physical abilities just because of the person’s gender. As a specific example, a woman may not be accepted to work in a factory because the employer deemed that a woman is not capable of doing the brute work. Another form of gender harassment may be the disparaging of one’s work because of the gender of the producer. For example, a sculptor may hastily be judged as a “nymphomaniac” when his or her works generally portrays nude woman when he is a man. The same situations may also be regarded as gender harassment when they are directed upon members of the third sex.

Dealing with gender harassment

The gender of a person is protected by the human rights code. And a person should in no way be discriminated based on the person’s birth sex or sexual orientation. If an employee feels that he or she is being discriminated for his or her gender, superiors or the HR department should be immediately regarding the matter.