About Workplace Sexual Harassment
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) defines workplace sexual harassment as unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature, under any of the following conditions.
- Submission to such conduct is made either explicitly or implicitly a term or condition of an individual's employment
- Submission to or rejection of such conduct by an individual is used as the basis for employment decisions affecting such individual
- Such conduct has the purpose or effect of unreasonably interfering with an individual's work performance or creating an intimidating, hostile or offensive working environment
The key factor that defines a sexual behavior as sexual harassment, is that it is unwanted by the victim. General examples are listed below.
- Unwelcome jokes, gestures or comments of a sexual nature
- Unwelcome displaying of sexually-suggestive objects or pictures
- Unwelcome flirting
- Repeated and unwanted sexual advances
- Touching and other unwanted bodily contact, or impeding or blocking movements
According to the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing, these are the most common types of sexual harassment complaints filed:
- An employee is fired or denied a job or benefit, because he or she refused to grant sexual favors or complained about harassment.
- An employee quits because he or she can no longer tolerate sexual harassment.
- An employee is exposed to an offensive work environment.
