29/11/2007
One person in 10 has suffered from some form of bullying, harassment or violence at work. The most vulnerable are women and those who work on temporary contracts although men are also vulnerable in the workplace. Last Wednesday Parliament's Committee on Women's Rights and Gender Equality held a hearing to discuss the level of sexual harassment at work. The hearing brought together experts in the field and MEPs from across the political spectrum.

One of the keynote speakers was John Hurley of the EU's Dublin-based Foundation for the Improvement of Working and Living Conditions. He told the hearing that more than 6% of working women and 4.5% of men had at some point suffered non-sexual harassment in 2005. Per country, the highest percentage was reported in Finland both by women (23%) and men (15%). Spain and Bulgaria reported the least cases - with less than 2.5 % for both men and women.

The percentage of "unwanted sexual attention" reported by women is almost 3% (most of them aged between 15 and 29). With men it is less than 1%. If you work in education and health, public administration, hotels, restaurants, transport or communication then you are more likely to be harassed according to Mr Hurley.

However, he was quick to say that "surveys may not be best instruments to capture some of these phenomena" and underlined that some of the differences per country could be due to "culturally variable issues or methodological". He explained that "the behaviour must be deliberate and repeated" to constitute harassment.

Lara Lazzeroni, a Professor of Labour Law at Siena University explained that under Italian law "a single contact, just a gesture, is enough" as it "already violates the dignity of the victim". Jukka Takala, director of the European Agency for Health and Safety at work added that "ethnicity and work status may also affect the results: one study found that 35% of adolescents working part time had suffered sexual harassment".

Slovak MEP Anna Záborská (EPP-ED) who chairs the Women's Rights Committee agreed that "harassment at the workplace goes against the dignity of the victim" and underlined that "it is necessary to involve NGOs and other social partners in order to address this topic properly". She went on to say that "we cannot accept attitudes such as looking to one side, we can tolerate neither harassment in the workplace nor domestic violence".

An EU directive in 2002 on the equal treatment of men and women at work gave the following definition of harassment: "where any form of unwanted verbal, non-verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature occurs, with the purpose or effect of violating the dignity of a person, in particular when creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment".

A representative from the European Commission pointed out that the effectiveness of it was being compromised as the field of application is wide and the transposition into national legislation is taking too long.

In February, the Commission launched a Community strategy 2007-2012 on health and safety at work that stresses the importance of negotiations between the social partners on preventing violence and harassment at the workplace. Last Sunday, 25 November was International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.

Source: European Parliament's press release