Activity 2

Submitted by:

Kyla Achero

Allen Arestoza

Ianna Yap

Submitted to:

Ms. Athena Jacinto

Sexual Harassment

Sexual harassment is unwelcome sexual behavior that’s offensive, humiliating or intimidating. It

can be written, verbal or physical, and can happen in person or online. Both men and women
can be the victims of sexual harassment. When it happens at work, school or university, it may
amount to sex discrimination. These Sexual harassments can include someone:

 Touching, grabbing or making other physical contact with you without your consent
 Making comments to you that have a sexual meaning
 Asking you for sex or sexual favors
 Leering and staring at you
 Displaying rude and offensive material so that you or others can see it
 Making sexual gestures or suggestive body movements towards you
 Cracking sexual jokes and comments around or to you
 Questioning you about your sex life
 Insulting you with sexual comments
 Committing a criminal offence against you, such as making an obscene phone call,
indecently exposing themselves or sexually assaulting you.

The examples below are articles from people who experienced sexual assaults that are under
the hospitality and tourism industry:

 One employee, we’ll call her Michelle, said she was aware of sexual harassment—up to
and including sexual assault—at the restaurant where she worked. But she felt helpless
to report it because members of management were engaging in the activity—and
bragging about it at work later. Some would routinely ‘hit on” the younger women—
girls, actually. The girls would be invited to after-work parties where the managers
would get them drunk and have sex with them. Michelle said it never happened to her—
but she knew plenty of girls it did happen to.

Another girl, 15-year-old Morgan, said her first week at work was horrifying. They guys
from the kitchen would corner her in the store room or freezer and make comments that
made her uncomfortable and afraid. When she tried to report it to the managers, they’d
say there were no cameras in the area, or they weren’t working—so there was no way
to prove her allegations. At most, she said, the managers told her she should just ignore
them, or they dismissed it as “harmless flirting”.
REFERENCE: https://www.barandrestaurantcoach.com/sexual-harassment-policy-hospitality/
 Analysis of employment data by the Change Group found that while three in five kitchen
and catering assistants are women, only one in four chefs are female. One female head
chef described persistent attempts to undermine her “by talking about my body, my sex
life, what I might be like in bed, how many people I might have slept with, what sexual
positions I like, etc.”

Seven out of 10 waiting staff in the UK is female, but 58% of senior restaurant and
catering staff are men. One waitress said she had been asked if she was “on the menu”
by a customer when she was 17; another recalled having to rescue another waitress who
had been pulled into a toilet cubicle by a customer. “She was banging on the door and
we eventually had to call security, who stepped in. When the customer unlocked the
door he was claiming it to be ‘a laugh’,” she said.

REFERENCE: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/24/sexual-harassment-rampant-hospitality-industry-unite-survey-
finds

 Along with her first ever pay packet, 15-year-old Erin Thompson’s after-school and
weekend job at Hungry Jack’s came with her first experience of sexual harassment. Co-
workers, some also just 15, would corner her in the dry store area or the freezer and
make sexual comments about her body, leaving her scared and uncomfortable. “They
were pressuring me to engage in activity I didn't want and wasn’t interested in at all, let
alone at work,” Thompson, now 24, says.

When she tried to report them, managers would brush off the incidents or tell her that
security cameras weren’t working so there was no evidence of what she alleged. “I
didn’t know who [else] to go to,” she says. “These things were not in the manual or
discussed in training.” Thompson felt helpless to take it further because some of the
managers also liked to hit on the youngest women – still girls, actually – and invite them
to after-work parties. There they would ply them with drinks and have sex with them. It
didn’t happen to her but it did to her friends. They told her – and the managers would
brag about it at work. “I didn’t really understand the gravity of what was happening, for
a 25-year-old man to be having sex with drunk 14 or 15-year-old girls,” Thompson says.

REFERENCE: https://www.smh.com.au/interactive/2017/harassment-in-hospitality/

 In April 2016, I was sexually assaulted on an overnight flight. I awoke to a male

passenger grabbing my crotch repeatedly. He hit and blocked me as I yelled
“no,” slapped his hands and scrambled to get away and alert the crew. Despite my
efforts, and to my shock, no action was taken by the airline to identify the attacker or
report the incident to authorities. In the weeks that followed, my shock turned to anger
and then to action as I discovered the gaps in awareness, training and data. 

As a result of my experience, I am in an ongoing lawsuit with the airline. But it isn't

enough to work for justice for myself. We need industry standards to train airline staff
and standardized ways to report and address instances of sexual assault in the skies. I
 can’t provide exact numbers on how often assaults occur at 37,000 feet, and neither can
airlines, the Federal Aviation Administration, the FBI, or anyone else — that's a problem.
The numbers we do have should be more than enough to spur real action, though.
REFERENCE: https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/voices/2019/04/01/sexual-assault-airline-flight-elaine-chao-trump-boeing-
column/3312204002/?fbclid=IwAR34mjoiYpxWPMpKa9Z0xUnJrBWFg-2Tx51zF9h11eek8QjOLM-f5ZHzkJg

Strategies /approaches to manage the workplace discrimination:

 Ianna Yap:

In a workplace, being sexually assaulted or harassed is common, with as simple as

catcalling workmates who you either know or not and if that made them uncomfortable
and uneasy that is already considered harassment. And also, sexual harassment is one of
the most known issues in workplaces whether the workplace has diverse employees or
not. But these kinds of harassment can be lessened or avoided with policies a workplace
could implement. With a good management that is concerned about maintaining a good
and healthy environment for their employees, here are some suggestions I have to
manage having sexual harassment in the workplace:

- Ensure that all employees understand the policy and procedures for dealing with
harassment - new and long-term employees alike - this involves training, information,
and education.

- Whenever instances like this happen, they must be very strict and should act
immediately about what they would do to address the issue.

- Develop an anti-harassment policy together with employees, managers, and union

representatives.

- Make it clear that this is a workplace where harassment will not be tolerated.

- Promptly investigate and deal with all complaints of harassment.

- Monitor and revise the policy and education/information programs regularly to ensure
that it is still effective for your workplace.

 Kyla Achero:

No company is immune to the need to create and maintain a workplace that is free of
harassment and any kind of discrimination, it is unavoidable. Unfortunately, sexual
harassment at work has been an issue for decades despite a simultaneous corporate
focus on providing training and implementing policies about harassment. These
strategies can help to prevent harassment in the workplace: 
 - Make sure that the employees and the management understand what sexual
harassment is. 

- Keep sexual harassment prevention training positive. 

- Take swift and decisive actions as issues arise. 

- Make it a crystal clear that sexual harassment prevention is a company priority. 

* But the most effective way to prevent sexual harassment and discrimination in the
workplace is to empower each self.

 Allen Arestoza

- Make it Crystal Clear that Sexual Harassment Prevention is a Company Priority.

If there’s anything positive to come out of the #MeToo movement and the myriad of
sexual harassment cases that have come to light in recent years, it’s growing awareness
of the need to be even more proactive in taking steps to educate and inform staff about
the types of behaviors that will not be tolerated in the workplace. Organizations should
review their harassment policies regularly. Finally, to truly be effective, these
communications must come from leaders throughout the organization, preferably top
executives, and not just HR. If company leadership regularly and authentically
communicates that sexual harassment prevention training is a high priority and will be
taken seriously, managers and employees will follow suit.

- Lighten Up on the Legalese

Most employees aren’t employment law experts, so using legal language as the
yardstick against which acceptable workplace conduct is measured and case law fact
patterns to guide daily actions can drive behavior standards to the lowest common
denominator. In contrast, a focus on professional, respectful behavior is more likely to
engage and influence employees and managers than a focus on identifying legal
violations.