This can happen when the employer puts an employee in a situation where it knows, or should know that unwelcome sexual advances are likely to occur. For example, when a company requires an employee to dress in provocative clothing where customers or passersby are likely to make sexual advances to her. However, what constitutes "conduct of a sexual nature"? "It is understood that this includes sexual advances or propositions, but this term also refers to many other forms of indirect sexual harassment as well" (Till 2). The forms that such sexual harassment can take are as varied as a perverse imagination can create. Sexual conduct can also include pranks, threats and intimidation, sexual commentary and lewd humor, and sexual or pornographic pictures permeating the workplace. Hostile acts related to an employee's gender are another type of prohibited conduct of a sexual nature, even though they may not involve sexual overtures at all.
Although men face harassment, women are the most likely victims. Harm caused by sexual harassment is often extreme, including humiliation, loss of dignity, psychological injury, and damage to professional reputation and career. Inevitably, the victims face a choice between their work and their self-esteem. Sometimes, they face a choice between their jobs and their own safety.
Sexual harassment results from a misuse in power - not from sexual attraction. This misuse in power can be a result of male hostility toward the number of working women - Surveys have tracked male attitudes about the proper role of a man in society in .
order to understand the root of this hostility. When studying the issue of sexual harassment, one may agree that the problem stems from an abuse of power. Sexual .
harassment attributes the problem to women's subordinate position in the labor force. Women are victimized by harassment, because they are generally men's subordinates on the job, with men in the position to do the hiring, firing, supervising and promoting.
