Sexual harassment in the media
This study explores how the media report sexual harassment in four industrialised countries. It will identify firstly what aspects of sexual harassment cases are considered newsworthy and secondly, the discourses evident in media texts. These discourses are theorised as a mode by which understandings of workplace gender (in)equality shape, and are shaped by, individuals, organisations and the community. The findings will contribute to knowledge of how the issue of sexual harassment is shaped by the media and consequently, understood in the broader community.
Prevention and response in workplace sexual harassment
This study draws on a framework of primary, secondary and tertiary prevention strategies to examine how organisations attempt to prevent and respond to sexual harassment as well as other workplace injustices. It will then integrate these strategies with first-hand accounts from the perspectives of practitioners from diverse professional backgrounds who advocate for either respondents or complainants (or both) in cases of sexual harassment. The aim of this study is to contribute to specific organisational prevention strategies that aim to prevent and better respond to sexual harassment where it occurs.
Bystander approaches to workplace sexual harassment
A promising approach to sexual harassment is to enlist the support of bystanders. In broad terms, bystander approaches focus on the ways in which individuals who are not the targets of the conduct can intervene in violence, harassment or other anti-social behaviour in order to prevent and reduce harm to others. This conceptual study undertaken for the Australian Human Rights Commission addresses the context-specific behavioural, interpersonal and institutional antecedents of sexual harassment and contributes to understandings of the key dimensions of organisational dynamics which maintain or inhibit the problem. While there are significant organisational, legal and socio-political challenges in developing bystander approaches to sexual harassment, the findings of this study suggests that they also offer substantial promise.
Formal complaints of sexual harassment
This study draws on a recently published analysis of formal complaints about workplace sexual harassment lodged with all state territory and federal equal opportunity/anti-discrimination commissions in Australia. Using both quantitative and qualitative data, the study will provide an in-depth analysis of the characteristics associated with the settlement or lack of settlement of formal complaints, including the nature of the sexual harassment alleged, the employment status of the complainant and the legal and other representation of complaints and respondents.
The process of conciliation in sexual harassment complaints
Conciliation is a critical process in the external handling of formal sexual harassment complaints. It is a forum where complainants and respondents present their respective cases and during which compensation or other types of redress may be agreed. The process is likely to have a significant impact on the complainants and individual and organisational respondents. However, conciliation in Equal Opportunity Commissions in state, territory and federal Anti-Discrimination jurisdictions in Australia is conducted in confidence and where settlements are reached their terms are often also confidential. Nor are data about complainants, the types of complaints and the types of workplaces complained about routinely collected. Hence, very little is known about the actual process of conciliation, the impact on respondents and complainants or the role of advocacy. This study explores these issues from the perspectives of those who conduct conciliation conferences and also those who participate as complainants or as advocates for either complainants or respondents.
Australian court and tribunal decisions in sexual harassment cases
There have been surprisingly few decided cases across the state, territory or federal anti-discrimination jurisdictions, less than 10 per annum. This study examines the 23 decided cases between 2010 and 2011. It explores the outcomes of these cases and the characteristics associated with them from legal representation to the context and nature of the sexual harassment alleged and importantly the framing of sexual harassment by the parties and the courts and tribunals.
Sexual harassment at the margins
The range of behaviours which constitute sexual harassment has been the subject of many studies, but the focus in most of this work has typically been on behaviour perpetrated by a male employer or employee towards a female employee of the same or lesser seniority. While the literature points to less typical cases of sexual harassment ‘at the margins’, including same-sex harassment; female to male harassment and sexual harassment perpetrated by clients/customers (as distinct from other employees), there has been relatively little work that explores these types of cases. This study will explore the details of actual cases meeting these boundary definitions and will contribute to knowledge about the nature of these forms of sexual harassment.
Sexual harassment as ‘policing the gender borders’
While sexual harassment is often seen by the community and within organisations as the fault of one aberrant individual, in certain workplace contexts, sexual harassment is used to ‘police the gender borders’, that is to exclude women and men who do not conform to the dominant workplace gender norms. This type of sexual harassment is a collective form of behaviour often perpetrated by co-workers in male-dominated workplaces which is designed to humiliate ‘outsiders’ so they appear incompetent and will be forced to leave the organisation. While much previous research that has focused on this type of sexual harassment has taken place in military and policing settings, our emerging findings from a number of the project’s empirical studies suggest that it is present in a far broader range of workplace contexts. Prevention of this form of sexual harassment is challenging and goes to the heart of organisational culture and work organisation.
Short- and longer-term impacts of workplace sexual harassment on those who experience it
The majority of research focused on the impacts of workplace sexual harassment has focused on psychological outcomes immediately or soon after the conduct has occurred. In contrast, there has been less emphasis on economic and employment outcomes and the effect on targets’ familial or intimate relationships, or impacts in the longer-term. This study draws on interviews with a range of individuals who have experienced workplace sexual harassment and explore their lived experience with a focus on multiple consequences, both immediately following the harassment and years later.
Informal responses to sexual harassment by those who experience it
Many studies of sexual harassment have suggested that target responses to the perpetrators of sexual harassment are passive and non-confrontational. However, increasing evidence suggests that targets may use a range of individual-level and informal or private strategies in attempting to stop the sexual harassment they are experiencing and that these strategies may be at least partially effective. This study explores the range of perceived effectiveness of informal/individual level responses to workplace sexual harassment and seeks to contribute to recommendations for strategies that complement those at organisational and institutional levels.