Sexual Harassment

Sexual Harassment

By

Ron Perez

Employment Law – Professor Mark Rothman

DeVry University

January 18, 2012

In today’s society there is a problem with sexual harassment. This issue has been brought to light with the decision of Herman Cain suspending his presidential campaign due to the allegations of sexual harassment during his presidency of the Washington-based National Restaurant Association. (Greenwald, 2011) It occurs in almost any place we see but it is best known for happening in the workplace. Sexual Harassment is defined as: unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature constitutes sexual harassment when submission to or rejection of this conduct explicitly or implicitly affects an individual's employment, unreasonably interferes with an individual's work performance or creates an intimidating, hostile or offensive work environment. (John Jude Moran, 2008) In this definition the word unwelcome stands out and does not mean that it is involuntary. The male/female victim may consent or agree with the behavior or even participate in the behavior even if it is offensive or unacceptable. It is not considered unwelcome until the victim considers it unwelcome. This paper will discuss the factors of sexual harassment as well as the differences between sexual harassment and gender discrimination.

There are 6 requirements that must be met in order to be considered sexual harassment they are: 1) the victimizing employee alleging sexual harassment must be a member of a protected class, that is, a man or a woman. 2) the complaint must be gender related, for example, a female must assert there would have been no harassment if she were not a woman 3) the employee must not have consented to the sexual advances or participated in the hostile work environment 4) the harassment must be based on sex, 5) the conduct complained of must have had a deleterious effect on the employee’s job...