Nearly 15% of Spanish women reported having suffered some form of sexual harassment at work during 2005. Sexual jokes, as well as inappropriate compliments and comments were the most common type of harassment reported. The role of companies in preventing and eliminating sexual harassment in the workplace appears to be rather limited in practice.
In April 2006, the Women’s Institute (Instituto de la Mujer, IM), an autonomous organisation under the Spanish Ministry of Employment and Social Affairs (Ministerio de Trabajo y Asuntos Sociales, MTAS), published a report entitled Sexual harassment of women in the workplace (El acoso sexual a las mujeres en el ámbito laboral: Resumen de resultados (in Spanish, 257Kb PDF)), intended to reflect the current situation in relation to this issue in Spain. The report is based on a broad survey conducted among 2,007 women aged between 16 and 64 years who are currently employed, or who were employed during 2005. The study also included interviews with experts, professionals, company managers and both female and male workers.
Definitions of sexual harassment
The report explains that sexual harassment can be considered in three different forms, namely violence against women, a sexist workplace environment, and the abuse of power, both in terms of gender and hierarchical inequality.
In order to assess the incidence of sexual harassment (acoso sexual) in workplaces, the report provides two definitions to measure its frequency:
- ‘actual harassment’ (acoso técnico) is harassment suffered by a woman irrespective of whether she perceives it as such;
- ‘reported harassment’ (acoso declarado) is harassment suffered and perceived as such by the affected women.
Types of sexual harassment
Taking into consideration that each woman may perceive sexual harassment in a different way, the report establishes three levels of sexual harassment in terms of increasing seriousness:
- low intensity harassment (acoso leve) includes situations that are considered serious or very serious by less than 55% of all the women surveyed. In these cases, sexual harassment – also referred to as ‘verbal pressure’ – refers to a verbal misconduct that humiliates women, such as sexual jokes, inappropriate sexual compliments, persistent invitations to dates, excessive physical closeness and provocative gestures.
- serious harassment (acoso grave) includes situations that are considered serious or very serious by between 55% and 85% of the women surveyed. In these cases, sexual harassment – also referred to as ‘psychological pressure’ – relates to a verbal misconduct that contains explicit sexual content, such as questions about sexual life, sexual insinuations, sexual propositions, and continuing to persist in respect of a personal relationship after it has ended.
- very serious harassment (acoso muy grave) includes situations that are considered serious or very serious by more than 85% of the women surveyed. In these cases, sexual harassment – also referred to as ‘physical pressure’ – is associated with unsolicited body contact, such as embraces or hugs, forced kisses, pinches, or work pressures and blackmail in order to obtain sex.
The report reveals interesting data on the frequency of sexual harassment in Spanish workplaces, including the following results.
- Up to 14.9% of working women in Spain have suffered sexual harassment at work at least once during the last year (actual harassment), although the percentage reduces to 9.9% for women who have the personal perception of suffering sexual harassment (reported harassment).
- Actual harassment statistics indicate that 26% of harassed women suffered serious harassment and 14% suffered very serious harassment.
- With respect to reported harassment, 35% of harassed women suffered serious harassment, and 21% suffered very serious harassment.
- Sexual jokes were the most prominent type of harassment (totalling 13.1% of all the cases of actual harassment and 5.5% of the cases of reported harassment). Likewise, inappropriate sexual compliments and comments represented 9.8% and 6.4% of cases of actual and reported harassment, respectively.
Profile of women suffering harassment
According to statistics on reported harassment, women aged less than 34 years who are single, non-European and professionally qualified are the most likely group to experience sexual harassment in the workplace. In addition, sexual harassment is more likely to occur in the construction and manufacturing sectors, as well as within medium (from 20 to 250 employees) and large (more than 250 employees) enterprises.
Physical and psychological consequences
Some 21.2% of women having suffered sexual harassment at work reported having experienced its negative consequences in the form of psychological and physical health problems. With regard to psychological consequences, 10.5% of women reported having lost interest in their work and 8.2% showed lower levels of self-esteem. In addition, some women suffered from sleeping disorders as a result, such as nightmares and insomnia (7.5% and 7.6%, respectively).
In relation to physical consequences of sexual harassment, 10.4% of women reported having suffered heart palpitations, 6.5% had difficulties breathing and 7.2% showed an increased incidence of illness.
Company reaction to harassment cases
The role of Spanish companies in the prevention and elimination of sexual harassment seems to be rather limited and disappointing. According to survey results, a relatively low 8.3% of women affected by sexual harassment consider the response of the company to be adequate when cases of harassment occur. Often, companies tend to avoid the issue, pretend to regard certain harassment-related behaviours as normal, or even try to cover up incidents of sexual harassment in certain cases.
Moreover, the role of public institutions and social organisations is also limited. Only 1.6% of women who have experienced sexual harassment have taken recourse to such an organisation (mainly a trade union) in an effort to obtain support.
Antonio Corral and José Ruiz de Munain, IKEI
