Sexual harassment and work place harassment
Sexual Harassment is any unwanted verbal, physical, or nonverbal conduct of a sexual nature that creates a hostile, intimidating, or offensive environment. It can be a one-off incident or a pattern of behaviour that happens in person or online.
Sexual harassment can have a negative impact on people’s lives, including leaving jobs or dropping out of school, and can affect mental health.
Experiencing sexual harassment can affect you in many different ways, both emotionally and physically.
You may feel intimidated, distressed, lacking in self-esteem and self-confidence. You may experience low mood or depression, anxiety, stress, embarrassment, fear, and feeling unsafe. Physical symptoms may include feeling unwell or sleep problems.
Everyone reacts differently to sexual violence, so whatever you’re feeling is normal and valid.
Such behaviours can include:
- Making sexually suggestive comments, jokes or noises (such as cat-calling or wolf-whistling)
- Staring or leering at someone
Sexual innuendos or suggestive comments
- Sexual gestures
- sexual requests or asking for sexual favours
- sexual requests or asking for sexual favours
- Unwanted sexual advances or flirting
- Unwanted touching
- Sending inappropriate texts or emails with sexual context
- Sexual posts or contact on social media
- Displaying sexually explicit pictures in a shared space
- Asking questions about someone’s sex life
- Making sexual comments about someone’s body, clothing, or appearance
- unwanted physical contact of a sexual nature such as brushing up against someone or hugging, kissing or massaging them
- stalking
- taking a photo or video under another person’s clothing – also known as “upskirting”.
Who can experience sexual harassment
Sexual harassment can happen to men, women and people of any sexual orientation. It can be carried out by anyone of the same sex, another sex or anyone of any sexual orientation.
You could also experience sexual harassment from anyone you encounter because of your job, including:
- someone you work with
- a manager, supervisor or someone else in a position of authority
- third parties – for example customers, clients and members of the public.
- What some people might consider as joking, ‘banter’ or part of their workplace culture can still be sexual harassment.
Sexual harassment is usually directed at an individual, but it’s not always the case. Sometimes there can be a culture of behaviour that’s not specifically aimed at one person – such as sharing sexual images. Someone could still make a complaint of sexual harassment in this situation.
The laws on harassment
The laws that protect people against sexual harassment are:
- the Equality Act 2010
- the Worker Protection (Amendment of Equality Act 2010) Act 2023 – this law is about preventing sexual harassment
The Equality Act 2010 also covers other types of harassment. This includes:
- harassment related to certain ‘protected characteristics’ – for example sex, sexual orientation and gender reassignment
- less favourable treatment because of how someone responded to previous sexual harassment
Sexual Harassment at your place of work
Experiencing sexual harassment at work can create a stressful and hostile working environment, particularly if you’re harassed by someone who works closely with you.
If you’re sexually harassed by someone at work, you may feel intimidated or anxious about going to work.
As of October 26, 2024, employers in the UK are legally required to take reasonable steps to prevent sexual harassment in the workplace. This duty is in addition to the existing protections in the Equality Act 2010, which protects workers from discrimination, harassment, and victimization.
If you experience sexual harassment at work, you can report it to your line manager, manager, HR representative or trade union.
It’s a good idea to keep a record of any emails, messages or photos you send or receive regarding the harassment. These may help if you choose to report and may help your employer to investigate.
In case you decide to report it, try to keep a record of your experiences of harassment. This includes dates, times, emails or messages you send or receive and any other details of what happened, if anybody else was present and saw it and their details, and how it made you feel, regarding the harassment.
Preventing Sexual Harassment in the Workplace
Employers should take a proactive approach to identify situations where employees may be at risk of sexual harassment and implement measures to prevent it. Reasonable steps will vary depending on the employer’s size, resources, sector, and other factors. For example, larger employers are expected to take more action. For further information and an employer 8-step guide, please click.