WASHINGTON Sexual harassment plagues working women throughout theindustrialized world and many countries lack the legal means tocombat the problem, the International Labor Organization said Monday.
The ILO, in a 300-page report, said only seven of 23 nationssurveyed - Australia, Canada, France, New Zealand, Spain, Sweden andthe United States - have statutes that specifically refer to ordefine sexual harassment.
Studies cited by the report said that sexual harassment caused 6percent to 8 percent of working women to change their jobs and that15 percent to 30 percent have experienced serious problems such asunwanted touching, offensive sexual commentary and unwelcome requestsfor sexual intercourse.
"Sexual harassment is one of the most offensive and demeaningexperiences an employee can suffer. For those who are its victims,it often produces feelings of revulsion, violation, disgust, angerand powerlessness," Michael Rubenstein, a consultant on sexualharassment to the European Community, writes in the report.
Among the findings: The term "sexual harassment" originated in the United States andU.S. federal courts were the first to recognize it, in 1975, as aprohibited form of sexual discrimination.
ILO civil rights lawyer Constance Thomas said it's her beliefthat, "in general, American women are fairly intolerant and perhapsmore strenuous in their perseverance" in pursuing harassment charges. In Austria, a 1986 survey said that 30.5 percent of women reportedserious incidents of sexual harassment. In Czechoslovakia, a survey said that 17.5 percent of women saidthey had been harassed physically, 35.8 percent verbally. No courtcases have dealt with the issue. In Denmark, 11 percent of women questioned in 1991 said they hadexperienced sexual harassment at work and 8 percent said they hadlost their jobs as a consequence. In Germany, 6 percent of women in a 1990 survey said they hadresigned from at least one job as a result of being sexuallyharassed. Surveys said that 21 percent of French women, 58 percent of Dutchwomen and 74 percent of British women said they had experiencedsexual harassment at work, and that 27 percent of Spanish women saidthey had encountered strong verbal advances and unwanted touching.
"We look at these figures with a little bit of a jaundiced eye,"Thomas said, estimating that 60 percent of harassment cases gounreported.
She added that cultural differences can account for the lack ofuniformity in what nations define as sexual harassment. Forinstance, she said, a new French law targets supervisors who makeunwanted advances but not co-workers because "they don't want tobreak up the (workplace) romances."
The ILO report said men are also harassed, although to a lesserdegree than women. Fourteen percent of men in a 1991 British surveysaid they had been harassed.
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