(NSFW)How can sexual harrassment at work place can be prevented?

Harassment can be very much in they eye of the beholder.

No amount of Law, though I think you mean corporate policy, can help this situation.

Harassment cases should be required to be thoroughly scrutinized by the courts.

Otherwise one’s life can be altered merely on the word of an accuser.

No individual should have that much power over another.

I don’t know that there is a magic potion.

Sexual harassment, as @SecondHandStoke was saying, is terribly ill-defined, and whatever it is, it is done by humans. And each human is different.

Rules and regulations within the companies may have some effect, if accompanied by punishments if the rules are broken.

But the main approach is to hire people whose personalities are such that they will not harass others. The problem, of course, is that there is no foolproof way to identify these sort of people during the hiring process.

Even before that step, however, there needs to be a strict and well-defined line of what constitutes sexual harassment. Because if it means one thing to an employee and another thing to the boss, it has no meaning at all.

There are no absolutes here. The “issue” will never be completely resolved. Such a thing is not possible.

I agree with you @secondhandstoke that laws / execution shouldn’t be such that it destroys life of a person who’s not guilty. But they should act as a strong deterrent to those who are involved in such acts. I don’t think there will be a full proof solution to this problem either but hope that it should be brought down to a minimum level possible.

I think it’s possible for physical sexual-harassment to be completely prevented from corporation-side, the rule of not touching other employees’ erogenous zones inside working places shall suffice along with adequate supervision of cctv for documentation.

As for verbal sexual-harassment… it’s quite tricky. First and foremost, we are endowed with freedom of speech which is stated in civil law (much stronger than corporate law). Second, recipients of verbal ‘sexual-harassment’ have differing opinions as to what constitute as sexual-harassment. Thrid, realistic documentation is needed to prove that sexual-harassment has been comitted. Fourth, external-retaliation can’t be prevented and is not a corporation’s responsibility (the perpetrator can do it outside the corporation as the result barrier inside the corporation). All in all, verbal sexual-harassment can easily be appeased by changing one’s mindset by taking the ‘verbal abuse’ as compliments, or simply by complete ignorance.

It’s also unlikely and unfair for the corporation if they have to bear the burden simply because some employees are over-sensitive with certain issue (unless the majority has similar issue, or the ‘victims’ have some sort of significance toward corporation’s economic stability, realistically speaking).

Parents need to teach their boys especially to respect women. Women need to feel secure enough to tell men who are inappropriate to stop.

Companies need to raise awareness about sexual harassment and the company and legal punishments.

Bottom line, as a culture we need to not tolerate it. The reason it happens less now than 40 years ago (I assume it does) is because there has been a cultural shift. Women have more equality.

@JLeslie – hard to believe that you are dismissing the fact that some (small number) of women in power positions harass men.

@elbanditoroso I thought about writing women do it to blah blah. I’m sure there is gay harassment also. I just didn’t feel like writing it all out, but I just ate and took a shower, so I have more energy now.

My guess men do it to women the majority of the time.

I’ve never had it happen in my career.

Agreed.

As a male that has been subjected to harassment by women I’m less than thrilled with @JLeslie ‘s Chauvinist language and assumptions.

:)