Sexual harassment in workplace A challenge in diversity management

The aim of this paper is to collect the voices of women who report experiences of sexual harassment in the workplace and those who have not. Twenty-four participants were asked to describe a profile of the prototypical victim and indicate how the phenomenon can be prevented. Overall, the survey shows a significant difference in the way the two groups portray the phenomenon. While employees who state that they have experienced sexual harassment at work are more cautious when describing the prototypical characteristics of victims as well as strategies for coping with an incident, the other employees delimit the phenomenon in a more differentiated way. They state that they are not sure how to deal with the incident, especially if it is not physical harassment. There seems to be a perception that sexual harassment in the workplace is a misunderstanding, so the opinion of another person (colleague, relative, friend...) is needed to understand whether or not the incident should be considered sexual harassment in the workplace.