Sexual harassment at work is a subject that occasionally pops up on the local agenda.
When it does, many are shocked. But the reality is that, from the picture painted by data and recent events, the cases that surface in public are just the tip of the iceberg.
One of the most recent studies, dated 2018, showed that three-quarters of female respondents experienced sexual harassment at the workplace. The study was carried out by NGOs Men Against Violence and the Women’s Rights Foundation as part of an EU-funded project.
The next part of the project was meant to help address the issue by offering workshops to businesses. But last week, Times of Malta reported that the NGOs had to return part of the funding for the sexual harassment training because few businesses had responded to an advertisement offering the service.
Could it be the case that, as Aleksandar Dimitrijevic, from Men against Violence, has suggested, sexual harassment has been normalised and accepted as a fact of life?
His comments echoed the findings that emerged in a more recent study, launched in November last year, which showed that a third of university students and staff know someone who experienced sexual harassment on campus. The University of Malta study highlighted a culture of acceptance especially when it came to verbal harassment.
This is where attention needs to be paid. To qualify as sexual harassment, it does not need to be blatant groping.
Sexual harassment is defined as unwelcome sexual conduct and includes subjecting others “to any act or conduct with sexual connotations, including spoken words, gestures or the production, display or circulation of any written words, pictures or other material, where the act, words or conduct is unwelcome”. And to be clear – it’s a crime.
The two studies show this is happening regularly. This year there were three high-profile cases.
In the beginning of the year, a Transport Malta official was charged with committing non-consensual sexual acts on a female co-worker and sexually harassing her and another woman.
More recently a male official at the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra admitted to sexually harassing a female member of the orchestra, who resigned over the “excessive stress” caused by the abuse.
MPO CEO Sigmund Mifsud was charged with attempted tampering with evidence as he allegedly instructed employees to keep quiet about the scandal.
The writing is on the wall. Harassment at work is happening. And, in some cases, it is being ignored or buried.
So the questions arise: are businesses turning a blind eye to evident harassment or even to reports? Or do they fail to recognise it because of the culture of acceptance? Was the low intake to the training workshop due to lack of interest? Or was it because businesses were reluctant to dedicate resources to tackling the issue?
What’s sure is that there is a lot that businesses should know about the subject. For starters, the EU Whistleblower Directive obliges medium-sized businesses, of over 50 employees, to incorporate internal reporting channels for the protection of whistleblowers who report improper practices at the workplace, and that includes harassment. But 80 per cent of Malta’s businesses are small or micro. So is the message getting out to them?
The responsibility of flagging harassment should not have to fall on the victim. It should be tackled before it comes to that, which is why employees and employers need to have a crystal-clear idea of what constitutes sexual harassment.
The first step is to recognise it with the conviction that it is never acceptable.