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Hub AI
Sexual harassment AI simulator
(@Sexual harassment_simulator)
Hub AI
Sexual harassment AI simulator
(@Sexual harassment_simulator)
Sexual harassment
Sexual harassment is a type of harassment based on the sex or gender of a victim. It can involve offensive sexist or sexual behavior, verbal or physical actions, up to bribery, coercion, and assault. Harassment may be explicit or implicit, with some examples including making unwanted sexually colored remarks, actions that insult and degrade by gender, showing pornography, demanding or requesting sexual favors, offensive sexual advances, and any other unwelcome physical, verbal, or non-verbal (sometimes provocative) conduct based on sex. Sexual harassment includes a range of actions from verbal transgressions to sexual abuse or assault. Harassment can occur in many different social settings such as the workplace, the home, school, or religious institutions. Harassers or victims can be of any gender.
In modern legal contexts, sexual harassment is illegal. Laws surrounding sexual harassment generally do not prohibit simple teasing, offhand comments, or minor isolated incidents—that is due to the fact that they do not impose a "general civility code". In the workplace, harassment may be considered illegal when it is frequent or severe, thereby creating a hostile or offensive work environment, or when it results in an adverse employment decision (such as the victim's demotion, firing or quitting). The legal and social understanding of sexual harassment, however, varies by culture.
Sexual harassment by an employer is a form of illegal employment discrimination. For many businesses or organizations, preventing sexual harassment and defending employees from sexual harassment charges have become key goals of legal decision-making.
The term "sexual harassment" was coined in the 1970s, and its meaning and popularity as a concept has grown over time. However, the behaviors it describes are common across cultures and eras, and have also been described by other terms. Although discussion of sexual harassment has frequently been silenced and trivialized over time, reports of workplace sexual harassment have been documented since at least the 1600s.
The framing of sexual harassment as a legal issue also originated in the 1970s. Since the 1990s, many countries have adopted laws targeting sexual harassment, and social movements like #MeToo have raised awareness of the concept and spurred social and legal change.
The first documented use of the term "sexual harassment" was in a 1973 report about discrimination called "Saturn's Rings" by Mary Rowe, Ph.D. At the time, Rowe was the Special Assistant to the President and Chancellor for Women and Work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Due to her efforts at MIT, the university was one of the first large organizations in the U.S. to develop specific policies and procedures aimed at stopping sexual harassment.
Rowe says that harassment of women in the workplace was being discussed in women's groups in Massachusetts in the early 1970s.[citation needed] At Cornell University, instructor Lin Farley discovered that women in a discussion group repeatedly described being fired or quitting a job because they were harassed and intimidated by men. She and colleagues used the term "sexual harassment" to describe the problem and generate interest in a "Speak Out" event in May 1975. She later described sexual harassment at length in 1975 testimony before the New York City Human Rights Commission. In the book In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution (1999), journalist Susan Brownmiller says the women at Cornell became public activists after being asked for help by Carmita Dickerson Wood, a 44-year-old single mother who was being harassed by a faculty member at Cornell's Department of Nuclear Physics.
These activists, Lin Farley, Susan Meyer, and Karen Sauvigne, went on to form Working Women United, which, along with the Alliance Against Sexual Coercion (founded in 1976 by Freada Klein, Lynn Wehrli, and Elizabeth Cohn-Stuntz), was among the pioneer organizations to bring sexual harassment to public attention in the late 1970s. Farley also wrote a book to raise awareness, Sexual Shakedown: The Sexual Harassment of Women on the Job, first published by McGraw-Hill in 1978. Sexual Shakedown inspired the first workplace training video on sexual harassment.
Sexual harassment
Sexual harassment is a type of harassment based on the sex or gender of a victim. It can involve offensive sexist or sexual behavior, verbal or physical actions, up to bribery, coercion, and assault. Harassment may be explicit or implicit, with some examples including making unwanted sexually colored remarks, actions that insult and degrade by gender, showing pornography, demanding or requesting sexual favors, offensive sexual advances, and any other unwelcome physical, verbal, or non-verbal (sometimes provocative) conduct based on sex. Sexual harassment includes a range of actions from verbal transgressions to sexual abuse or assault. Harassment can occur in many different social settings such as the workplace, the home, school, or religious institutions. Harassers or victims can be of any gender.
In modern legal contexts, sexual harassment is illegal. Laws surrounding sexual harassment generally do not prohibit simple teasing, offhand comments, or minor isolated incidents—that is due to the fact that they do not impose a "general civility code". In the workplace, harassment may be considered illegal when it is frequent or severe, thereby creating a hostile or offensive work environment, or when it results in an adverse employment decision (such as the victim's demotion, firing or quitting). The legal and social understanding of sexual harassment, however, varies by culture.
Sexual harassment by an employer is a form of illegal employment discrimination. For many businesses or organizations, preventing sexual harassment and defending employees from sexual harassment charges have become key goals of legal decision-making.
The term "sexual harassment" was coined in the 1970s, and its meaning and popularity as a concept has grown over time. However, the behaviors it describes are common across cultures and eras, and have also been described by other terms. Although discussion of sexual harassment has frequently been silenced and trivialized over time, reports of workplace sexual harassment have been documented since at least the 1600s.
The framing of sexual harassment as a legal issue also originated in the 1970s. Since the 1990s, many countries have adopted laws targeting sexual harassment, and social movements like #MeToo have raised awareness of the concept and spurred social and legal change.
The first documented use of the term "sexual harassment" was in a 1973 report about discrimination called "Saturn's Rings" by Mary Rowe, Ph.D. At the time, Rowe was the Special Assistant to the President and Chancellor for Women and Work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Due to her efforts at MIT, the university was one of the first large organizations in the U.S. to develop specific policies and procedures aimed at stopping sexual harassment.
Rowe says that harassment of women in the workplace was being discussed in women's groups in Massachusetts in the early 1970s.[citation needed] At Cornell University, instructor Lin Farley discovered that women in a discussion group repeatedly described being fired or quitting a job because they were harassed and intimidated by men. She and colleagues used the term "sexual harassment" to describe the problem and generate interest in a "Speak Out" event in May 1975. She later described sexual harassment at length in 1975 testimony before the New York City Human Rights Commission. In the book In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution (1999), journalist Susan Brownmiller says the women at Cornell became public activists after being asked for help by Carmita Dickerson Wood, a 44-year-old single mother who was being harassed by a faculty member at Cornell's Department of Nuclear Physics.
These activists, Lin Farley, Susan Meyer, and Karen Sauvigne, went on to form Working Women United, which, along with the Alliance Against Sexual Coercion (founded in 1976 by Freada Klein, Lynn Wehrli, and Elizabeth Cohn-Stuntz), was among the pioneer organizations to bring sexual harassment to public attention in the late 1970s. Farley also wrote a book to raise awareness, Sexual Shakedown: The Sexual Harassment of Women on the Job, first published by McGraw-Hill in 1978. Sexual Shakedown inspired the first workplace training video on sexual harassment.
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