Sexual harassment should be reported but we should understand why it isn't - Women's Agenda

Sexual harassment should be reported but we should understand why it isn’t

I have experienced sexual harassment in the work place on two occasions in my career, and neither of those was when I was young and relatively junior.

The first time it happened I was in the leadership team of a major publishing company. The second time, I was a non-executive director on the board of a significant company.

The myth is that the vulnerable and powerless are usually targeted. But I was neither of those things and therefore reacted in a way that was private but personally powerful.

It was while on an overseas business trip with my manager that I first experienced sexual harassment. My boss had had a lot too much to drink after dinner and started banging on my hotel room door late at night. I ignored him initially and then eventually had to tell him to go away. He finally disappeared. The next day was awkward for me, but not for him. He appeared to have no recollection of the events of the evening before. I thought long and hard about how I should deal with the situation and decided not to raise it with him until all of our international business was out of the way. We had clients and suppliers to meet with across the next three days.

When we returned to Australia I met with him in his office to discuss the incident. He seemed genuinely surprised. He was extremely apologetic. I chose to leave it at that and not share that piece of information with anyone else. It never happened again.

I was on a board when I experienced it for a second time. I was a novice director and the only woman on the board. The chair would phone me the night before each board meeting and tell me what he wanted me to say during the meeting. I decided to ignore the directive and focus instead on governance best practice. As I arrived to each meeting he would pat his knee and tell me he had saved me a seat. I would instead choose a seat on the other side of the boardroom table. There were five other directors but only one ever spoke up in my defense. The rest would hang their head with embarrassment.

I felt I had two options: stay on the board and deal with it or resign from the board. I decided to stay and persevere. For the first year it was never more than the initial boardroom comment. It was during my director assessment that he truly crossed the line for me. We were having a one-on-one discussion and instead of raising my pros and cons as a non-executive director he asked me to be his mistress. Our professional relationship ended abruptly after that.

Again I decided that it was a personal issue and chose not to take action against him or to go public with it. The truth is that I assumed if I did I would never be invited onto a board again. I mentioned this incident to an experienced director recently and she agreed that it would likely have backfired on me.

So when women are sexually harassed and don’t report it we should resist punishing them again with our judgement. Yes it would be brilliant if we could all shame the offenders and then continue our career trajectory. But the reality is that on too many occasions the victim loses something additional to her security and confidence in the work place. She can also lose out in the career stakes because she will be viewed as a whistleblower. Until we can do something about the fallout, we shouldn’t expect everyone who is sexually harassed to put their hand up for the sake of others.

Do you agree? Is it worth the career risk?

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