Harassment and Diversity

Introduction

One in six women have had co-workers look down their blouse, half of the women surveyed experienced comments about their breasts in the workplace and one in eight were forced to leave the workplace due to the harassment. Just from these statistics alone you can see that even though we may not hear about it every day, sexual harassment in the workplace is a very real thing and something that happens more than we may know. With a wide diversity of people in the workplace, many harassment issues are bound to occur, such as unfair cultural biases, sexual harassment and discrimination against gender and age. Differences such as religion, race, sexual orientation, and ability play a major role in the workplace today.

In this research paper, we will analyze how harassment and diversity in the workplace affect people in their professional and personal lives. We will also explore the negative and positive aspects of having a diverse workforce. Through our research, we will examine whether workplace harassment has increased or decreased in the past ten years. We will use a mixture of statistical data and research articles to answer the question “How does harassment and workplace diversity affect the overall workplace environment?”

Harassment in the Workplace

The Different Types of Harassment

In today’s world there are many issues in the workplace that have to do with harassment. Some common harassment types are: sexual, race, gender and age, to name a few. Below we will discuss these harassment types.

Sexual harassment is one of the main types of harassment in the workplace. It is defined as “repeated gestures or remarks made in order to obtain sexual favours from a worker” (Prevent Violence at Work (1)). Victims may get repeated requests for dates; sexual gestures that make them feel uncomfortable or inappropriate phone calls or emails. This happens every day in the workplace and victims have to go to work with the fear that...