Heir Women Hub, an organisation determined to see young women take on decision making positions and venture into leadership opportunities, has released the report of a survey it conducted to guage the knowledge and understanding of men on workplace sexual harassment against young women.
The online survey was carried out in the six geo-political zones of the country and the United Kingdom, and had 200 men selected from the public, private and informal sectors aged between 18 and 35 years old as respondents.
The respondents agreed that more women were sexually harassed at the workplace. They identified rape, unwelcomed physical contact, verbal harassment, invitation of sexual nature and online stalking/unwanted phone calls as forms of workplace sexual harassment.
The men identified lack of policy,unestablished boundaries and abuse of power as other factors contributing to sexual harassment in the workplace.
However, 89 per cent of the respondents said that no femalecolleague had confided any issue of harassment in them. While 99.5 per cent agreed that perpetrators should be punished, only 21 per cent of the respondents had heard about the Violence Against Person (Prohibition) Act.
Speaking on the outcome of the survey, the Executive Director, HEIR Women Hub, Anuli Aniebo Ola-Olaniyi, stated that if organisations establish reporting mechanisms and Sexual Harassment (SH) policies andemploy gender transformative approach to educate men about what sexual harassment entails, work environments would be safe for young women.
She added: “Globally, data on workplace sexual harassment shows the damaging impact it has on employee and the organisation. When we carried out research on SHprevalence in FCT against young women, our findings showed us that we have a huge gap in knowledge and information. And so while the victimisers were mainly bosses and men; 99 per cent of the men in our survey agree that safe workplaces should be free from SH and 79 per cent do not know of any SH policies or laws to make workplaces safe from GBV.
“So, closing this information gap would add value in the understanding of SH and better aid us with solutions that are inclusive and sustainable. This catapulted us to check what men and boys understand about SH at workplaces so that we can, with evidential data we now have, create targeted interventions that are collaborative in approach to curb theseoutcomes from our survey.”
On progress made to reduce SH in the workplace, Ola-Olaniyi said there has been an increase in conversations about the issue.
“I consistently advocate for this purpose. We hear pockets of discussions but yet to see a follow through that’s consistent. There are organisations that have policies against SH. However, the application of these policies is where we are looking to analyse and see how effective they are.”
“Laws like VAPP also exist for us in our nation but according to the data we have, some men do not know what the provisions in the law are and we all should. For me, it’s the utilisation of these laws that we need to test but we know that from our survey and data, VAPP law still requires further socialisation and orientation,” she said.
On practical steps to reducing SH in the workplace, sheadded: “The steps that are low hanging fruits is achievable through clear accountability structures. Organisations need to verify that they have a policy that covers and protects all staff or employees.
“That policy should be effectively communicated to everyone; a clear disciplinary measure must be in place and a reporting mechanism that’s anonymous should be implemented to protect employees. Lastly, we all need to know more about the impact of SH and speak more about this.”
