Sexual harassment guidelines out soon

A document telling employers what to do in case of sexual harassment at the place of work will soon be published by the National Commission for the Promotion of Equality.

Commission executive director Sina Bugeja said the Sexual Harassment Code of Practice will explain what constitutes sexual harassment and inform employers what they should do to tackle it.

The law lays down that employers have a degree of responsibility in ensuring that sexual harassment does not take place and to take action if it does.

"It is imperative to have a sexual harassment policy at the workplace," said Ms Bugeja, adding that this would also help the victim know what to do.

According to law, sexual harassment takes place when a person subjects another to an act of physical intimacy, requests sexual favours or subjects others to acts or conduct which have sexual connotations. It is unlawful to treat unfavourably a person who rejects any such advances.

Ms Bugeja said that since the commission started operating a year ago a number of complaints related to sexual harassment had been received. She would not divulge the number due to confidentiality but said that all of them were by women. However, she was aware of a man having been sexually harassed.

"The reality is that women are more prone to being sexually harassed but this does not mean that men are not affected," she said.

She explained it was imperative to educate people and the commission would soon launch a national awareness campaign dealing with the issue.

"We need to educate the public that sexual harassment is not acceptable," Ms Bugeja said. Education was important because Mediterranean culture meant that the Maltese allowed certain things to happen.

The issue was also highly subjective - a comment could be interpreted as sexual harassment by one person while someone else might take it as a compliment, generally depending on the levels of education, she said.

Apart from educating the victims or potential victims, it was also imperative to educate the perpetrators. Ms Bugeja said that in some cases there was no intention to offend another person and this had to be established when investigating the case.

She said some claims of sexual harassment were exaggerated and it was imperative that the commission investigated cases thoroughly in order to spot such instances.

Over the past year the commission had received about 52 complaints related to discrimination.

It has been working to eliminate adverts that discriminate between the sexes and Ms Bugeja said the feedback from advertising agencies and the media had been very good. "A lot of change has already taken place but we cannot expect everything to change overnight," she said.