We can estimate how much a strikes,, HIV/AIDS and people who abuse sick leave cost the economy. However, we fail to estimate how much sexual harassment costs.
Sixteen Days of Activism Against the Abuse of Woman and Children kicked of on 25 November and we are all suddenly inundated with stories sexually and physically abused women and children. I’m not underplaying the seriousness of these crimes but somehow sexual harassment in the workplace goes unmentioned.
It bothers me that the government and other statistic producing companies have all kinds of stats for all sorts of things except sexual harassment and discrimination against women in the workplace. You’d think that this is an important statistic. Let me break down what sexual harassment, in my opinion, costs the economy.
The Cost of Litigation- Civil and Criminal
Women who dare report sexual harassment are likely to want to see the cases through to the very end. They may want settlements or the men to be severely punished. Most costs related to sexual harassment are intangible, but surely costs related to litigation can be reduced to hard cold figures.
Counselling For Victims
Sexual harassment for most victims is traumatic and they need to be counselled so that they can be productive citizens and move beyond the incidences. Most companies think just because someone has been given a warning the situation has been dealt with, this is because sexual harassment is treated lightly and the long reaching effects on the victim and the perpetrator are ignored. So why isn’t this considered to be a cost?
Decreased Productivity
The time a perpetrator takes to harass his victim at work is a loss of productivity. The time the victim wastes on thinking up ways of dealing with the perpetrator is a loss of productivity. The time the company takes to deal with the harassment is a loss of productivity. The increased absenteeism by the victim who is afraid to come to work because of the abuse is a loss of productivity. And you are telling me this can’t be measured?
Reputation Loss for Companies Who Don’t Deal With Sexual Harassment Well
I can list companies who have a bad reputation when dealing with sexual harassment cases. Just go to the CCMAs case load and you’ll see them. I wouldn’t want to work for a company who doesn’t handle my rights as an employee to legal and personal satisfaction. Companies lose the very best female employees because of this.
When it’s all been said and done, sexual harassment costs our economy big bucks. Just because the majority male CEOs in our country don’t think that this is a real cost, it is. It is almost as if we are fighting a losing battle.
No man has a right to treat a woman like her sole purpose in life is to be pawed or to spread her legs. I just hope in a decade when we look back we no longer worry about sending out wrong signals to our male colleagues because they will no longer look at us as commodities but as intellectual equals.
Sexual harassment is the biggest form of professional disrespect and it is time it stops.
