Introduction

Welcome to Preventing Sexual Harassment Training Before you start this course, take a moment to pause and reflect on an experience in your life when you felt uncomfortable about an expression or a joke in the workplace, or a physical touch that felt unwelcome.

It turns out that sexual harassment in the workplace is much more common than you might think. In fact, although we can observe many forms of harassment in a workplace, like bullying, exclusion, and violence, you’ll be surprised to learn that the most common form is actually sexual harassment. After completing this course, you'll learn how to identify situations of unwanted or inappropriate conduct.

You will also learn how to distinguish between different types of sexual harassment.

Finally, you'll learn strategies for protecting yourself from experiencing or perpetuating such behavior. You must already be familiar with the well-known movement from 2017, called MeToo. It was started by an activist but soon, popular actresses and singers, as well as many other prominent women across the globe, shared their stories of being victims of sexual harassment. This helped us all realize just how common this issue is, which led to new laws being made, focusing on training on anti-workplace harassment and support systems for victims. By definition, sexual harassment is any behavior that includes unwelcomed sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical harassment of a sexual nature in the workplace or learning environment.

According to a survey conducted in 2022 by I.T.I.C, up to 62% of women working in STEM professions claim to have experienced sexual harassment and became a part of this shocking statistic. Of course, this type of harassment can happen to other genders as well. Statistics show that most often, the victims are women, however, anyone, regardless of gender, can be a victim of sexual harassment, or a perpetrator. Next, you will learn about the different types of it in the workplace.