Sexual harassment comes out of the closet

The National Commission for the Promotion of Equality for Men and Women has just presented the report on its first year of activity to Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi. But in this day and age, is an equality commission necessary? Rosanne Zammit found out what it was up to - one important area being that of sexual harassment.

The National Commission for the Promotion of Equality is to launch a code of practice on sexual harassment at the workplace later this month, during a seminar for human resources managers.

The document will instruct both employers and victims what to do in case of alleged sexual harassment.

The initiative is one of several being taken by the commission, set up in January last year, to ensure that the Equality for Men and Women Act is put into practice.

The commission is led by Commissioner Janet Mifsud, with members Grace Attard, Miriam Camilleri, Mario Mallia, Myriam Spiteri Debono, Fr Vanni Xuereb and Winston J. Zahra. Sina Bugeja is the executive director.

According to the Act, it is unlawful for employers to discriminate, directly or indirectly, against a person when it comes to employment. It is also unlawful for persons to publish or display advertisements or employment vacancies discriminating between job seekers or to request from job seekers information concerning their private life or family plans.

Sexual harassment, too, is against the law. Employers are partly responsible for ensuring that it does not take place and they must take action if it does. A sexual harassment policy, therefore, was seen as imperative by the commission.

Sexual harassment is deemed to take place when a person subjects another to physical intimacy, requests sexual favours or subjects others to acts or conduct with sexual connotations.

It is also unlawful to treat unfavourably a person rejecting any such advances.

Quite a number of complaints received by the commission have dealt with sexual harassment and they were all submitted by women. In an interview, Ms Bugeja said it was interesting that women were becoming more empowered to speak out and take action.

Asked whether a claim about sexual harassment could be taken too far, Ms Bugeja said there was no such thing as too far. If sexual harassment was proven, then there was no other way to look at the situation. In other countries where a sexual harassment policy was adopted a marked decline in the number of cases was noted, she added.

Josephine Attard Sultana, public sector section secretary of the General Workers' Union, said her union believed that a sexual harassment policy was necessary and it had moved proposals on the matter during the discussion period on the Equality Act and other legislation.

The union had looked at what other countries had done and had managed to get the burden of proof shifted from the victim to the aggressor.

Also, the period within which a case has to be reported was extended. This was important, said Ms Attard Sultana, because initially a victim might believe that what he or she was going through was not actually harassment but only their impression that it was.

The GWU also believed that sexual harassment was not suffered just by women but also by men. An employee could also be harassed by a colleague or by a boss. In Ireland, Ms Attard Sultana said, a female boss had harassed a male employee by sending him to buy her condoms and sanitary towels. However, the majority of sufferers were women.

The union believed that cases of sexual harassment in Malta were not isolated. It was a problem which existed in every sector, in some more than others.

The problem was that a victim of sexual harassment reporting an incident still suffered hardship - from colleagues and other men, for example. The person in question might still have to be transferred even though he or she was the victim of the incident.

Often, union personnel were approached about incidents but asked to keep them to themselves, rather than report them.

Asked about another issue - equality at the place of work - Ms Attard Sultana said that although this existed on paper, there were still subtle differences which were difficult to explain.

Irrelevant of their capabilities, many women, for example, opted for careers which would permit them to juggle their job and family life.

Women also started looking at their job differently once they got married, by giving more consideration to working hours, for example. They often opted for reduced hours or part-time jobs and for at least a period in their married life their climb up the career ladder was disrupted.

However, the culture was slowly changing and everyone accepted the fact that having one paying job in a family was impossible. So women were being encouraged to find employment. It was also important for women to be financially independent.

Ms Attard Sultana said that although advances had been made on paper, these were not tangible enough. She called for the development of childcare centres especially after school hours for women to be able to work without having to worry about their children.

The employer's perspective

An interview with the Malta Employers' Association's director general Joseph Farrugia

Do you believe that gender equality at places of work has been achieved?
One cannot say that the full objective of gender equality at the workplace has been achieved, neither in Malta nor in many other countries. However, the process is there and there are positive trends that are improving the situation. The extent of gender equality is much higher today than it was 20 years ago in Malta.

How are jobs divided between men and women? Do women opt for certain jobs and men for others?
There are certainly occupations that have a high concentration of female employees. The reason for this is that some professions and jobs were, and to a certain extent, still are, traditionally perceived as being a "female" job, and also because the working hours of some occupations may be more convenient for married women especially if they are raising children.

This is the case, for example, in the teaching profession. However, the situation is changing because one increasingly comes across women in occupations that were traditionally regarded as being male dominated.

Would a man inclined towards a job traditionally done by women, or vice-versa, find it difficult to do what they want to do?
There is less scope of stereotyping jobs on the basis of gender in the modern work environment. Younger persons are definitely more open minded in this respect, particularly in high skilled jobs. However, there should be more effort in the education system, even at primary level, to infuse a culture that does not stereotype jobs in this manner.

Is the number of women in senior positions growing?
As the number of qualified females increases, the number of women in senior positions is also becoming more prominent.

It is not perhaps so apparent at senior executive positions because frequently these require a solid combination of qualifications and experience. As the growing number of young, qualified women gain experience, they will certainly become more eligible for senior posts.

Do employees accept "orders" from a woman?
Women have held supervisory and managerial positions since the 1960s. Many manufacturing companies, for example, have female supervisors, many of whom rose from the ranks.

These supervisors frequently have excellent line management skills. A number of schools have headmistresses running them, with male teachers as subordinates. Even banks have appointed numerous female bank managers.

It is important to stress that the incumbents of these posts were given these jobs on the basis of merit, and not gender. It is unfair for women when it is thought that they may have been selected for high-level posts through some form of positive discrimination.

A classic example is Parliament, where both the minister and the shadow minister for social policy and family affairs are female. Both are extremely competent persons, and it would not do justice to them to assume that they have been assigned those posts because they are women.

There may be instances where there may be a tendency towards a macho work culture and employees may find it odd to have a woman in charge - at construction sites, for example. However, the culture is changing and the level and practice of authority depends more and more on personal characteristics, not gender.

Have employers been involved in the drawing up of a sexual harassment policy by the Equality Commission?
The Malta Employers' Association has been working closely with the NCPE and the NCPE was also recently invited to address employers during a seminar on developments in EU employment legislation. Moreover, through our publications, all our members have received templates and information on how to draft and implement a sexual harassment policy at the workplace.

MEA believes that this is a useful tool that can in itself be a preventive measure against sexual harassment and also formalises the procedures to be taken in cases where there are alleged cases of sexual harassment.

How common do you believe this problem to be?
MEA has been approached about some cases of sexual harassment. However, most cases involve harassment between employees and not between employers and employees, as is commonly believed.

The fact that more cases may be coming out in the open does not necessarily mean that the incidence of sexual harassment is on the increase but that victims are more aware of their rights, and the law is empowering them to exercise such rights.

It is in the interest of employers to ensure that they have the set-up that discourages any type of sexual harassment or discrimination. It is to be noted that lax attitudes can also lead to problems in work relationships with negative consequences on productivity.

Will something be done to ensure that this policy will not be abused?
Like any other legislation, the main problems arise with their implementation and, at times interpretation. Employers feel that the law may be putting too much pressure on them in cases where the onus of proof of an alleged sexual harassment case rests on the employer and not on the person that is making the allegations.

One has to bear in mind that the nature of such cases is extremely sensitive, and, on occasion, subjective since there is a fine line as to what may constitute sexual harassment and what does not.

However, the intention of the legislation, and of any sexual harassment policy, in the sense that it seeks to ensure that all persons, irrespective of gender, are treated with dignity at the workplace, has to be seen in a positive light.

Most complaints submitted by women

In its first year, the National Commission for the Promotion of Equality received 52 complaints. Since the beginning of this year, it has received another 12. Most were submitted by women.

The largest number of complaints received concerned offensive advertising in websites, bus wraps, magazines, newspapers, television commercials and billboards.

Most discriminatory adverts were eradicated after the heads of television stations and radios were informed of the provision against them in the law.

The commission's executive director, Sina Bugeja said that an interesting complaint received was that about the Addolorata Act. This act, she said, was discriminatory against men - or women, depending on how one looked at it. For when a grave is inherited from the wife's side, she has to ask for the consent of all the rightful heirs to bury her husband in it.

But her brothers can bury their wives in the same grave without the permission of the other heirs. The commission is requesting the Health Division to rectify the situation and remove the anomaly.

Ms Bugeja said the commission felt that the number of complaints was growing and that this was due to an increase in awareness.

In May last year, for example, the commission had deemed "offensive and discriminatory" the humorous Nestlé's Yorkie chocolate advert that ran the slogan It's Not for Girls. Although many women found the adverts "funny and effective", others had complained to the commission and after its insistence, Nestlé withdrew its advertising campaign on newspapers and radio stations.

Ms Bugeja declined to give other examples of advertisements stopped following the commission's intervention, but said that the majority of companies had tried to ignore the commission's order by insisting that their advert was not discriminatory. The commission, however, held its ground on the discriminatory nature of the adverts and they were removed.