Four-fifths of the first respondents in an ongoing survey said they have experienced or witnessed sexual harassment at work, with the absolute majority being women.
Meanwhile, around 90 per cent have had no training on how to deal with such abuse and feel there is a need for information on sexual harassment.
The survey, which can be easily accessed online and takes a few minutes to answer, forms part of research by Men Against Violence and the Women’s Rights Foundation as part of a project dealing with sexual harassment at the workplace funded by the Malta Community Chest Fund.
The questions target people of any gender, and the survey is completely anonymous. So far, there have been nearly 400 respondents. The preliminary results may differ from the final data.
The data shows so far that 80.4 per cent of respondents have either experienced or witnessed sexual harassment at work. A total 89 per cent were women.
Reports of abuse resulted in 13 per cent threatened with dismissal and seven per cent offered a promotion if they did not carry the report forward, while 56 per cent were ignored or ostracised by their employer for reporting.
The common forms of sexual harassment include unwanted deliberate touching (62 per cent), unwanted sexual teasing, jokes, remarks or questions (67 per cent), sexual comments (64 per cent), sexual assault or rape (four per cent) and pressure for sexual favours (14 per cent).
Malta is the same for prevalence but lacks in formal prevention and protection policies
The preliminary figures also show that 90 per cent had no training on how to deal with sexual harassment, while 92 per cent think there is a need for more training or information on sexual harassment.
MAV president Aleksandar Dimitrijevic told this newspaper that sexual harassment at the workplace was rooted in discrimination based on the sex, gender or sexual orientation of a person.
While the preliminary results of the survey showed that women were by far more likely to be at the receiving end of sexual harassment, it happened to men, too, though in a different form and context, Mr Dimitrijevic said, adding the survey was open to any person of any gender who has worked in Malta.
“The preliminary data is showing what we more or less expected. It shows that Malta is no different than many other places in terms of prevalence of sexual harassment and employee experiences, but lacks in formal prevention and protection policies instituted by employers,” he said.
As an organisation, MAV is mostly concerned with the prevention of violence through training and education, while the WRF is more geared to dealing with violence using legal tools.
Both organisations feel sexual harassment at the workplace is not uncommon in Malta and, through their expertise and experience, feel joining forces would be the best way to tackle the project.
WRF would create the legal framework based on best practices, and MAV would then use the information and create a set of workshops and training material tailor-made for Malta.
The main aim is to understand whether more prevalent forms of sexual harassment exist in Maltese workplaces and if there are specific employee experiences in local legal and sociocultural settings.
This knowledge would then be incorporated in the training materials and offered to Maltese employers.
Log on to https://tinyurl.com/y6vmghr8 to take part in the survey.
More information can be found on the Facebook pages Men Against Violence and Women’s Rights Foundation.