Simply using the word “Sex†in the title will entice some to check out the article, and others to shun it. In most business cases that word is interchangeable with “gender†which seems to be less offensive to some and more boring to others. Nobody doubts that an adult human being’s sex drive is one of the most powerful urges that can influence thoughts and actions. Everyone has heard the often stated statistic that men think about sex about every seven seconds or about 8,000 times per day. The Psychology Today website reports that there is absolutely no scientific data to support this. In the workplace, combining differences of sex and sexual orientation into a team can create two types of problems: discrimination harassment. Leaving the scientific proof of differences up to the scientists, one thing is absolutely clear for human resources professionals: discrimination and harassment are illegal in the workplace.
In the US, laws protecting us from sex discrimination have evolved from an era when discriminatory practice was not only practiced it was the law. We have a dismal record of failure in trying to legislate equality. The 19th Amendment to the Constitution giving women the right to vote was drafted in 1878 and it was not sent to the states for ratification until 41 years later. In 1963, Congress passed the Equal Pay Act requiring companies to pay men and women equally for similar work. It wasn’t until 1974 that the Supreme Court upheld the Equal Pay Act in Corning Glass Works v. Brennan and reinforced the concept of “equal pay for equal work†after almost a century in the making. According to EEOC guidelines, it is forbidden to discriminate regarding “… any aspect of employment, including hiring, firing, pay, job assignments, promotions, layoff, training, fringe benefits, and any other term or condition of employment.†Employee education on this fact needs to begin with new hire orientation and periodically reinforced through spot training.
Sexual harassment is a complicated area to control. Much “sexual harassment training†begins after an offense happens and the company is found to be responsible for the actions of a supervisor or another employee. Logic says that preventive measures are preferable to firefighting a problematic situation after the fact. Policies and training need to clearly define acceptable and unacceptable behavior on the part of employees. Harassment as defined by the EEOC includes unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical harassment of a sexual nature. The gray areas that need localized interpretation stem from the fact that harassment does not have to be of a sexual nature and include offensive remarks about a person’s sex. Offhand remarks may be in the gray area, but since harassment is illegal it is better to err on the side of caution.  Â
By EEOC defined rules, both victims and the harassers can be either women or men, and the victim and harasser can even be of the same sex. In our need to somehow compartmentalize people into understandable buckets, the straight community sees LGBT, [Lesbian, Gay, Bi-Sexual, and Transgender if you have been living under a rock] as a unit without recognizing each aspect of that class for their unique characteristics. Did you know that there is often overt harassment of transgendered persons from the gay and lesbian communities? Again we see the problem with lumping things we don’t understand into stereotypical groups where our minds can comprehend things.
Make no assumptions about human nature policing itself and doing what is right or legal. Keeping the workplace focused on work and maintaining a culture of collaboration often means injecting management thought to steer the process.
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