This one didn't have wings
The National Commission for the Promotion of Equality has got a little bit confused as to what is sexual harassment and what is just damn general abuse.
Read this piece:
The Times, Thursday, 5 March
Female employees asked to undress
Female employees at an undisclosed workplace were asked to undress in order to prove they were not menstruating after a sanitary towel was spotted in a public area. This was one of the complaints dealing with various aspects of gender and race discrimination investigated by the National Commission for the Promotion of Equality last year.
The NCPE’s annual report says that, acting on information it had received, the commission had decided to investigate the case of sexual harassment involving the female workers who had been ordered to undress. The company under investigation had admitted that the event did take place. However, it pleaded that “the person in authority” responsible for such harassment had acted under provocation.
The commission found such behaviour amounted to sexual harassment and asked the company to implement a policy against sexual harassment at the workplace and to provide its employees with training in this respect.
Maybe I haven’t read up on the contemporary definition of sexual harassment, but this seems to me to be good old-fashioned ill-treatment of employees, and the fact that they are women is by the by. When you line up the women in your workforce and investigate them for signs of menstruation, that’s not sexual harassment. That’s criminal abuse. It’s not a matter for the National Commission for the Promotion of Equality, but for the unions and the police.
Or are we now going to say that if the boss locks up the filing-secretary and tries to rape her, that’s sexual harassment? Somebody, somewhere, is not thinking straight.
However, I must ask: did the offending item have wings? Was it one of those that keep you fresh and happy every day as you saunter through some city park wearing a small skirt with boys looking after you and thinking: “Who is that amazing girl with the fabulous sanitary towel?”
Almost nobody wears sanitary towels anymore, so I’m just wondering what the scenario must have been like, as pants were pulled down all over the shop and crevices examined for signs of blue strings dangling down. Gross? Of course it is. But the big mystery here is why the women capitulated, instead of walking out and straight to the nearest police station.
4 Comments Comment
Leave a Comment
Torn between disbelief, horror and disgust
Unbelievable. Is there any way we can find out which company performed this disgusting and humiliating exercise on its employees? It would also be interesting to know if “the person in authority” was a man or a woman. Not that it makes any difference, but if they were made to undress in front of a man, it would somehow make this story even more incredible than it already is.
I agree completely with you, for a change. This is NOT sexual harassment, but criminal behaviour against the dignity of employees, regardless of the genders of the employees or the employer/s. It is a pity that the employees did not handle the situation properly and report the action to the police. I find it horrific that a group of women could have been cowed into submission and made to suffer such an indignity, and that not one of them upped and left, given the situation. The NCPE should have encouraged the women to report such action, on behalf of the employer/s, to the police.
Another reason not to be a feminist.