Hostile Workplace Sexual Harassment

According to Lim Woan Jinq (2015), "Sexual harassment is defined as unwanted sex-related behavior that recipients take to be offensive, such as unwelcome verbal and non-verbal sexual behavior" (p.468). Most women experience sexual harassment for the simple reason that they are women, but it does not mean men don't experience it as well. There are two types of sexual harassment: quid pro quo harassment, which occurs when a person of authority demands that employees allow sexual harassment as a condition of getting or keeping a job or benefits, such as a pay raise. The second type is hostile work environment, which is a workplace that doesn't stop sexual harassment from happening. If conduct is unwelcome, based on sex, and severe enough to make an abusive work environment, then hostile work environment harassment can lead to legal action by the victim (Sexual

Most victims don't report their sexual harassment incidents for many reasons. The most common reason for not reporting them would be "to protect their jobs". A study of workplace sexual harassment in law enforcement was conducted, which consisted of two studies. The first study involved 679 participants from law enforcement agencies and the second study involved 531 female police officers as participants. The study involved passing out Sexual Experience Questionnaires that contained 16 behaviors which would determine the type of sexual harassment they experienced. The results found that on average, 88 percent of participants have encountered at least one of the behaviors in the SEQ. Most participants experienced some sort of non-physical harassment, which include things like dirty jokes. However, there were 89 percent of participants who never filed a formal complaint. The most common reason was that they believed it wasn't serious enough, or wanted to protect their job (Lim Woan Jinq,