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1. Introduction: Sexual harassment, which includes anything from drawing attention to an individual’s body, causing embarrassment and demanding sexual favours, is a powerful discriminatory factor for anyone at any stage of their career. It is the conduct interferes with an employee's work or creates an intimidating, hostile or offensive working environment. The victim as well as harasser of sexual harassment may be a women or a man. Differences in power or status can be a significant component in sexual harassment at workplace. Like many other countries in Bangladesh also men have the power in organization and professional life, while women are in subordinate position. This gender power discrimination causes sexual harassment where women who are powerless, are the main victims. The European Commission offers a broader definition of sexual harassment as, “Sexual harassment” means unwanted conduct of a sexual nature, or other conduct based on sex affecting the dignity of women and men at work. This includes unwelcome physical, verbal or non-verbal conduct. This conduct constitutes sexual harassment under three conditions: the behaviour must be a) Unwanted, improper or offensive b) Refusal or acceptance of behaviour influences decisions concerning a job and c) The behaviour in question creates a working climate that is intimidating, hostile, or humiliating for the person. (European Commission, 1991 cited in Timmerman and Bajema:423. Emphasis added.) In Bangladesh, the Suppression of Violence Against Women and Children Act of January 31, 2000, for the first time made sexual harassment a criminal offence punishable by law. Section 10 (2) of the Women and Children Act states that, If a man in order to satisfy his unlawful sexual desire touch a sexual organ or any other part of the body of a women with his organ or by any other object, it will be considered as sexual harassment.(Siddiquer R M, June 2000) The consequences of unchallenged sexual harassment are to poison the organizational culture, both in the long term and on a daily basis. So, prevention is the best tool to eliminate sexual harassment. 2. Methodology: The essay contains some case study in Garment Factories, Banks, NGOs and other business firms to find out the occurrence of different types sexual harassment where most of the information are collected from Internet and magazine. To make the policy of prevention it takes the help of several acts like European Commission, Women and Children Act, Civil Rights Act, Equal Pay Act from home and abroad. The information for these Acts are taken from books and URL. 3. Background: Sexual harassment is not new, nor is legal remedies against it. It has been recognized for nearly 20 years as a form of sex discrimination under the Civil Rights Act of 1964 states that, sexual harassment is illegal to discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, age, national origin, and sex. Title VII of the Act prohibits employers from, among other things, discriminating on the basis of sex with respect to compensation, terms, conditions and privileges of employment. Sexual harassment in employment has been defined as unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct that enters into employment decisions and/or conduct that unreasonably interferes with an individual's work performance or creates an intimidating, hostile, or offensive working environment. This guideline identifies two forms of sexual harassment: (1) Quid Pro Quo harassment; and (2) Hostile work environment harassment. Quid pro quo harassment: Loosely translated, "Quid Pro Quo" means "something for something." where the harasser demands sexual conduct as a condition for receiving a tangible benefit. This type of harassment occurs when an employee is required to choose between submitting to sexual advances and losing a tangible job benefit. An essential aspect of Quid Pro Quo harassment is the harasser's power to control the employee's employment benefits. This kind of harassment most often occurs between supervisor and subordinate. A claim of Quid Pro Quo harassment must meet several criteria: o The harassment was based on sex. o The claimant was subjected to unwelcome sexual advances. o A tangible economic benefit of the job was conditional on the claimant's submission to the unwelcome sexual advances. In quid pro quo cases, the harassment consists of "Unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature."(Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) Guideline #11(a)). Here "Unwelcome" means that the person did not invite or solicit the advances. This is determined by an objective standard and not the claimant's subjective feelings. However, there is no requirement that these requests be express demands for sexual favors like, some one says, "Sleep with me, or you will be fired !!" Hostile work environment harassment: Hostile work environment harassment is unwelcome conduct that is so severe or pervasive as to change the conditions of the claimant's employment and create an intimidating, hostile, or offensive work environment where working environment becomes so offensive as to adversely affect an employee's job performance.
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