Sexual Discrimination and Sexual Harassment around the US - Research Paper Example

 Sexual Discrimination and Sexual Harassment around the US Sexual discrimination and sexual harassment are major problems, not only in the U.S but worldwide. This paper takes into consideration the issues of sexual discrimination in relation to sexual harassment by people and punishments that they get for their offence. The offenders of sexual assault and sexual harassment are not punished, as they should be, which is a clear indication of sexual discrimination, which is illegal. Sexual discrimination refers to unfair treatment of individuals of a certain sex or gender. There are four different types of Sex Discrimination, including Sexual Harassment, Pregnancy Based Discrimination, Victimization and Marital discrimination. In order to understand the seriousness of sexual harassment related to citizens, the government and the private sector, the paper will discuss this issue from different points of view. The importance of this topic is to understand how different people are affected because of sexual harassment, and how we, the society can influence the punishments given to the sex offenders, in order to protect ourselves from them. Firstly, we need to have a basic understanding of what sex discrimination is. Some people call it sexism, while others may call it male and female chauvinism. Sexism is a term that was formed in the late 20th century. It means the conviction, standpoint or viewpoint that one gender or sex is subordinate to or is less valuable than the other is. Sometimes sex discrimination is described at the organizational level, as a system or policy of treating male or female unfairly. Sex discrimination is also practiced to benefit either male or female, or simply because one’s sex or gender is thought to be inferior to the other (Cohn, 2000). The word “sexism” was first used 30 years ago, but sex discrimination has happened long before that. One of the daily examples is the sexual discrimination in the workplace, for example sexual discrimination faced by nurses. A nurse could combine career and marriage, but careful planning is necessary to avoid sacrifice of either the career or marriage; marriage and children can greatly affect their job’s future (Cleland, 1971). Unlike men, women have to put their career at stake, as they have to choose between their family and career. In addition, women are given double responsibilities such as management of home, bringing up of children and career building if they choose to carry on with their career development (Kelly and Dobbin, 1999). On the other hand, men are at an advantageous side as they can go easily with their career growth without any familial pressure and management. Women stay connected with their families even at their jobs because of their double sense of responsibility while men show a little concern to their families while being at job. Women are also made to select between their career and family life, out of which, most of them choose family while men have no pressure of such kind (Cleland, 1971). They can go their own way without any pressure or obligation. Sexism still prevails in societies all over the world. In order to solve this problem, it is essential for the government to set up some laws to prohibit sex discrimination in all situations. However, laws cannot transform the way an individual thinks and laws cannot make people take sex discrimination seriously. We need to expel sex discrimination from the society. We need to motivate and enforce these laws to ensure equal treatment for both males and females. Many of the people in the society are still unaware of the broad picture of sex discrimination. Luckily, there is law to protect people from gender discrimination. There is a Federal law, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which protects people from being discriminated and usually takes effect to employers with fifteen or more workers. Additionally, similar state anti-sex discrimination laws protect people who work in smaller companies. Sexual harassment is dealt leniently and the offenders of this crime are not punished, as they should be because they get mild punishments for their gruesome felony, which is evidently a sign of sexual discrimination. This situation should be considered by the US authorities in order to minimize sexual discrimination, which is illegal. Crimes concerning sexual offences have been taken lightly especially by the authorities. They do not consider the fact that the offended party suffers mentally and physically because of being harassed sexually. The types of sexual discrimination, effects of the discrimination and the punishments given to the offenders are some of the issues that have been discussed. Among the four types of Sex Discrimination including Sexual Harassment, Pregnancy Based Discrimination, Victimization and Marital discrimination, I would like to concentrate on sexual harassment. Sexual harassment is the most prominent indication of sexual discrimination. The offenders of sexual harassment are dealt leniently without realizing the extent of their offence. We need to understand this issue deeply in order to prevent it from happening to us. We can provide some comments to the government related to sex discrimination. Catharine A. MacKinnon (1979) is one of the authors who have written on sex discrimination. In her book, Sexual Harassment of Working Women: A Case of Sex Discrimination, she presents how women have been treated unfairly at the work place. She maintains that sexual harassment establishes discrimination based on sex. Ezra Ovadia, (2006), wrote “Moral Dilemmas in Real Life: Current Issues in Applied Ethics”, a book which he discusses issues such as the punishments that sexual offenders should be given, while giving examples of some of the cases where the offenders have been given mild punishments. Firstly, I would like to explain what sex discrimination is. I would also like to introduce sex discrimination and sexual harassment from different sources. This paper will briefly discuss the types of sex discrimination, explaining the current problem of sex discrimination. We need to think critically about the laws related to sex discrimination This paper also addresses the current situation of sex discrimination in the United States and discusses what the United States is facing right now in relation to sex discrimination. I would like to discuss the sex discrimination Act. Some organizations working against sex discrimination have been discussed. The Sex Discrimination Act is one of the important things to be mentioned. Discrimination based on the sexual harassment or marital status is made unlawful by the Sex Discrimination Act 1975 and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Finally yet importantly, are examples of sex offences, which have been given mild punishments. Different types of sex discrimination Sexual harassment is one of the major types of sexual discrimination. According to the website, “Sexual Harassment: Knowing Your Rights”, sexual harassment is any unwelcome behavior related to sexual feelings, which causes the offended physical and mental suffering. Sexual harassment is divided into three categories. The first is the physical conduct, including brushing against the body “accidentally”, unzipping or undoing clothing, or any unwanted touch. Second there is verbal conducts, which includes intrusive questions about private life, like suggestive jokes, requests for sex, comments with sexual overtones, unwanted invitations to dates, or body and sexual advances. The last category is the non-verbal conduct, which includes constant leering and unwelcome display of pornographic pictures. Victimization also amounts to harassment. According to the article, “Policy on Equal Opportunities”, published by The Open University of Hong Kong, Victimization forms where a person (the discriminator) treats another person (the victim) less favorably than other people in comparable circumstances For example, the victim or the third party, may be intending to bring proceedings against the discriminator that may lead to his arrest. The third form of discrimination is marital discrimination. After conducting research, I found out that during the time of a job interview, it is illegal for the applicant to be asked questions related to family orientation or marital status. That is a violation of the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, and a lawsuit can be filed against the interviewer. Today, we see the offence still in practice, where employers prefer single women rather than married women, despite their qualifications being equal. (Netherlands, 1982) Finally, the last category is pregnancy-based discrimination, which is discrimination against pregnant women in all areas of employment, including firing, hiring and job insecurity. According to the article Discrimination Based on Personal Circumstances by Ridgeview, the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 bans marital status discrimination. There also have some measurements to forbid marital status discrimination. According to the article, “Sexual Harassment” by Inspiring Women Magazine, every single occurrence of harassment can comprise sexual harassment. Sexual harassment is violating of rights to human majesty and secrecy. It can happen at work or in school as a single confront, or as series of incidents. (MacKinnon, 1979) The Sex Discrimination Act According to the website, “Discrimination on Grounds of Sex or Marital status”, discrimination is made unlawful by the Sex Discrimination Act of 1975. This Acts apply to all employees whatever the position of the employer or whether in the public or private company. This Act may also protect ex-employees. The Sex Discrimination Act (1975) empowers the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) to undertake investigations of establishments where there is reason to believe discriminatory practices are taking place. The first such investigation, at the Luton site of Electrolux Limited, began in February 1977. Many employers had already set up maternity leave programs by the early 90s. At the same time, Congress passed the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993. Sex discrimination law played an important role in the growth of maternity leave programs. For maternity, women have all the due right to get leave for themselves. It cannot be considered as discrimination. According to the article, “Sexual Harassment” by Inspiring Women Magazine, the Employment Equity Act of 1998 claims that all employees have the right to receive fair treatment. Women should not be deprived of their right to get fair treatment. There is no person who has the right to unfairly deal with others in terms of discrimination. It is important to promote equal opportunity in the office by get rid of unjust discrimination. Men and women both should be allowed to get permission for leave in case of their personal problems such as maternity for women. Due to unfair treatment in the workplaces, a bigoted environment is created that is disadvantageous for both the genders. Sex discrimination is illegal or not According to the article, “Sex Discrimination Lawyers” by the Mesriani Law group, sex discrimination may be perfectly lawfully practiced by employers, if there is an imbalance of male and female employees, without the dismissal of any by recruiting specifically from one. Therefore, it is not easy to define sex discrimination by employee. If we have suffered sex discrimination or sexual harassment in workplace, we should report any kind of discrimination to the Sex Discrimination Attorneys, for example, the New York and New Jersey Sex Discrimination Attorneys. Effects of sexual harassment At the work place According to the article, “Effects of Sexual Harassment” by The Advocates for Human Rights, sexual harassment disturbs the working environment. It also provides negative impacts and effects on the confidence and the performance of the abused. As a result of the harassment, the abused person may suffer from anxiety and stress, and may need to take time off from work due to sickness. Sexually harassed people can also be very inefficient at work and at times may leave their job to seek work somewhere else due to the embarrassment felt. The employers may suffer too, in either the long term or in the short term, in that if the abused victims have to switch jobs, given that they were quite productive at their work, the employee will have lost a good employer. Sexual harassment may have damaging effects on the employees who have witnessed it or are have knowledge on the inhuman behavior. Such employees may not want to work late, or may fail to work to the best of their potential due to fear of being harassed. (Gold, 2004) Sexual harassment of the employers may have negative effects on the profitability of the organization, where the staff may resign from their jobs or their positions, or may take a sick leave to avoid harassment. Alternatively, the economic situation of the enterprise is affected because the employee's performance and productivity is reduced as she works in a climate where her integrity is not respected. Generally, it could be said that sexual abuse is a barrier to the coalition of women at the corporate world. The victim of sexual abuse always shows effects on her health and behavior. Her private life may be affected where she may show psychosomatic symptoms, loss of self-esteem and any other behaviors which destroy her personality. Research has also shown that the abused people are always affected more than the abusers. (Gold, 2004) Scholars in America have come up with conclusions similar to those of the European commission. They say that sexual harassment has serious negative effects on the emotional and the physical health of the abused person. Most women have reported psychological problems such as stress, depression, weight loss, anxiety, headaches and loss of hunger. Furthermore, researchers have found out that there is a connection between sexual harassment and post-traumatic stress disorder. The effects of sexual harassment in the work place are also serious, especially when the sexually abused person does not know the adequate complaint procedures and policies. There are financial effects to the abused because of salary deductions due to taking sick leave, resignation of the person before payment, or in cases where the person is fired due to under performance. Examples of such losses are those experienced by the federal employees of the U.S government, which amounted to $4.4 million in salary from 1992 to 1994. Research has also proved that in America, women are nine times more likely to quit from their jobs, five times more likely to transfer and three times more likely to lose their jobs. Instances of sexual harassment have made the witnesses, who are third parties to the incidences to lose their jobs through resignation in an endeavor to keep away from being harassed. There are also the global costs of the sexual harassment. The individual costs suffered by every person who is abused are added up to come up with the global economic effect. The burden of preventing sexual harassment in the work place lies with the employers. In some countries including the U.S, India, South Africa and Canada, the law requires them to take major steps to prevent or correct sexual harassment in the work place. Some of the steps taken in order to achieve this include; the publication and development of policies against sexual harassment, the maintenance of an effective sexual harassment complaint procedure, a thorough investigative process and a good record keeping system of all the harassment cases. Lastly, there should be a screening, training and monitoring of the supervisors and the managers and the employees to ensure that no harassment takes place. At schools A new study done by Alayne. J. Ormerod of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, on the psychology of women explored the results of sexual harassment in boys and girls at seven public schools in the mid-west. The results of the study showed that girls were harassed more frequently than the boys were, and that the girls were harassed more directly compared to the boys. The research also showed that the experiences of the girls were more upsetting and distressing, and that the harassment came from the school personnel. Surprisingly, the damaging effect of the harassment went beyond those that were directly harassed. Both sexes, reported feelings of insecurity at the schools where there were histories of sexual harassment. Some of the harassed students also reported intention of withdrawal from the schools, while others had low self-esteem. For the boys, a climate that tolerated the girls’ harassment was the number one variable associated with negative educational, health and psychological outcomes. Despite the fact that the boys were harassed less frequently, and that their experiences were not up setting, it was discovered that they still suffered the negative effects of the harassment. More research showed that women in the public schools are more harassed than those in the private schools, and that the effects were more or less the same (Wenniger and Conroy, 2001). Lea Studer of Alberta hospital in Edmonton says that many studies have shown that the children are preferred or targeted by the sexual offenders for both physical and sexual abuse. A study was done on 382 adults and 104 adolescents who sexually abused children. The results were that 70 percent of the adult offenders were either sexually or physically abused as children, while 92.5 of the adolescent offenders reported the same. It could therefore be said that sexual harassment can lead the abused to become an abuser later in life. Sex offenders are the most feared criminals in the society after murderers and their offensiveness is disadvantageous for social, psychological and developmental growth of an individual. Examples of mild punishments to sexual offenders In the book Moral dilemmas in real life, Ovadia discusses the tendency to reduce the sentences of the teenage sex offenders, both in length and incarceration and in the severity of punishment, which may be sometimes reduced to community service. Sometimes the judicial system is unfair in that it fails to serve justice to the sexually harassed person, by sentencing the offender in mild punishments, which are not obviously enough to pay for the injustices done to the person. A good example of the issuance of a mild sentence is of a group of teenagers, who brutally raped a high school girl many times over a period of several months and were sentenced in the Tel Aviv District Court to very short periods in prison. The two leading offenders were sentenced to four years in prison, another one was sent to prison for two and a half years, and the most outrageous of all was that the other four convicted offenders were not sent to prison; instead they were given only six months of community service. Those were the punishments for committing numerous gang rapes of a young girl. This is just one example of the ignorance of the judicial system of Israel concerning this issue. Not only in Israel but in many other countries, sex crime is dealt with leniency. In Israel, a Natanya court sentenced a man to 6 months community service and eight months suspended prison sentence. He was a 24 years old man convicted in February 2005 for nine cases of sexual attacks on girls of ages 6-12. It is shameful that the man did not spend even one day in prison, and what was worse about the situation is that during his community service, he attacked a seven-year-old girl twice. Another horrific example is that of a truck driver who tried to rape a young female hitchhiker in Hadera, Israel. The young woman managed to escape her attacker by jumping off the truck, but unfortunately, she was run over by another truck and a car and was killed. In June 2005, the attempted rapist was sentenced by the court of Hadera, which is located in Central Israel, to only one year in prison, of which he would be incarcerated for no more than eight months. The three examples mentioned above indicate towards the phenomenon regarding the social norms and values of Israeli state, which meets such mild penalties for sex crimes. By seeing such examples, it is required that suitable steps should be taken to make laws that authorize unsympathetic punishment to the sexual offenders. Punishments for sex offenders Sex offenders should not be treated like other criminals; there should be unforgiving punishments for them, so, that they cannot think of repeating the same crime again after being released. “It is sad that the sex offenders are treated like any other criminals, especially when it comes to punishment and rehabilitation”, says Alan. D. Eisenberg, an Attorney-at-Law at Milwaukee. A good example is a drug dealer who is released in to the community after completing his jail term. When he returns to the streets, he might meet the customers waiting for him to continue with the business. The same case applies to sexual predators. He continues to say that his or her release from prison is just another chance for the criminal to rape and abuse yet another person. The release of the person back to the community creates a lot of concern. Their return creates a fear of further criminal activities, the kind of fear that is not associated to any other criminal activities. These kinds of fears have led to the establishing of different policies concerning the release of the sex offender, which definitely add to his punishment even after his release. For example, Meghan's Law legislation requires that a community-wide announcement, that the sex offenders is placed after release. There are jurisdictions, which believe that such announcements will promote the rehabilitation of the offender and will inhibit recidivism. We have to ask ourselves whether we agree with the mild punishments given to the offenders of sexual harassment. Men are not superior to women, and violence is not a legitimate way to achieve men's goals and desires. If the society does condemn such offences, then it follows that the courts that represent this society should impose much more severe penalties for sex crimes. The judicial system should also make the crimes more severe to teach and educate any other people who may intend to commit such crimes. The punishments should also be more severe if the person offended is weak and defenseless or is an underprivileged member of the society. The public need to make every effort to change the standards of punishments for sex crimes and demand the enforcement of the fairly new law, which requires imposing at least a certain amount of prison time on sex offenders. In my opinion, this minority should also agitate for longer periods of incarceration for perpetrators of sex crimes. Changing of the levels of punishment might change public norms and attitudes towards these heinous crimes; at the very least, it would prevent laughable penalties such as community service to be meted out of gang rape. Despite the fact that the majority would cry that such a change in legislation would never happen, and that the people's will would never be granted, I respond that sometimes the people and the majority might be wrong and that the government might as well increase the punishments to the sex offenders. The demand that feelings of outrage and disgust should be expressed in the verdict and punishment is not only a demand to reestablish justice. It expresses the idea that ignoring public anger and frustration about mild punishment for abominable crimes is not merely social insensitiveness or obtuseness, but a clear sign of social bestializing. When punishment does not fulfill its function as a social practice, people lose confidence not only in the legal and judicial institutions but also in the morality of society as a whole. Some people have suggested that the sexual offenders be taken to rehabilitation, instead of being imprisoned. However, I prefer that that the system of punishment is continued with as opposed to the system of therapy. It would be unfair of the court to offer such a kind punishment to the offender and deny justice to the offended party. Furthermore, the offender should not be given the chance to plead for a lighter punishment. Instead, the law should make a fixed punishment for the sexual offenders, which should include a period of imprisonment and community service. Conclusion The paper discussed sexual discrimination because of sexual harassment. Women face the problem of sexual harassment to a great extent due to which, there is sexual discrimination in the society. The criminals who are involved in sexual abuse and who are sexual offenders get negligible or mild punishments for their criminal acts pertaining sexual abuse due to which, they are not threatened in order to keep away from this crime in future. The sexual offenders should be treated with much unsympathetic punishment, which keeps them to stay away from the assault in future. Due to the sexual harassment, sexual discrimination is there. When the sexual offenders are given a short-term punishment, sexual discrimination prevails in society, which is disadvantageous for the society as a whole. Due to sexual harassment at the schools and in the workplaces, sexual discrimination is created. Women have to face sexual discrimination and harassment to a great extent. Due to sexual harassment at the workplace, there can be negative consequences on the employees and on the business as a whole. Unfair treatment to persons of one gender and unjust behavior on the basis of gender results in sexual discrimination. Women become much more vulnerable because of sexual discrimination. Even, after being sexually attacked or harassed, the offender is not given his due punishment. Sexual discrimination is illegal but after committing the crime of sexual harassment or sexual assault or even after sexually abusing, the offenders are dealt mildly by the judicial system due to which, the assaulter is made free quickly and he can continue to commit the same again. The courts of US and other countries should construct such laws for sexual assaulters and offenders that are a source of lesson for those people who have any intention to commit the crime. The crime of sexual harassment cannot be considered similar to other crimes; it is a somewhat extensively cruel act that can affect the abused physically, psychologically and socially. References Cohn, Samuel. (2000). Race and Gender Discrimination at Work. US: West view Press. pp.1-5. Cleland, Virginia. (1971). Sex Discrimination: Nursing's Most Pervasive Problem. American Journal of Nursing, 71 (8), 1542-1547. Gold, Liza H. (2004). Sexual Harassment: Psychiatric Assessment in Employment Litigation. 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