Sexual Harassment

According to Zimbabwe’s Labour Relations Act, sexual harassment is deemed as an unfair labour practice. The country has a national gender policy to deal with such issues.

Criminal and Civil Charges

As it is an unfair labour practice, victims of sexual harassment can report offences through the Labour Officers who are in charge of conciliation of employment-related disputes and unfair labour practices. The victim may also appeal to the Labour Court.

A victim of sexual assault also has the right to press separate criminal and/or civil charges against an alleged perpetrator.

Forms of sexual harassment 

Sexual harassment may take a variety of forms, ranging from verbal, visual or physical abuse of a sexual nature.

• Verbal or written: These can be comments about clothing, personal behaviour, or a person’s body, sexual or sex-based jokes, requesting sexual favors or repeatedly asking a person out, sexual suggestions, telling rumors about a person’s personal or sexual life and threatening a person

• Physical: This can be assault, blocking a movement, kissing, hugging, patting, stroking or inappropriate touching of a person’s clothing

• Non Verbal: derogatory gestures or facial expressions of a sexual nature, following a person and looking down and up a person’s body

• Visual: These can be emails of a sexual nature, drawings or pictures constantly shown to someone without the person’s approval

How does it impact in the workplace?

Apart from being unpleasant, distressing or even physically threatening, repeated advances by a perpetrator without any official preventative action taking place can make one feel uncomfortable and cause poor performance at work.

Steps that can be taken

A code of conduct which spells out what steps can be taken in the case of sexual harassment may contain the following recommendations:

The first step is for the aggrieved employee to consider carefully whether the perceived behaviour constitutes some form of harassment. If so, he or she should take action as soon as possible along the following lines:

• Tell the harasser in the presence of a colleague, that the behaviour is unacceptable and must stop immediately.
• If preferred, inform the harasser in writing of the unacceptable behaviour.
• Report the incident to one of the following persons and ask for assistance:-

Departmental manager

Human resources manager

Workers' committee representative

Chief executive

The organisation may wish to name specific senior managers or executive directors who should be approached. These should include women as female employees may be too embarrassed to make a report to a male. Since one of the specified officials may be  the person against whom the complain is to be made, options must be provided. It can be very embarrassing for the offended employee to report such behaviour to management, especially if the offending party is the victim’s immediate manager or supervisor. In such a case, the victim may be fearful about losing employment.

Protection of employees

Where  valid complaint of sexual harassment has been made against an employee, management will ensure that the aggrieved employee is in no way victimised, for example in terms of salary, promotion or training.

The situation in Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe legal practitioners contend that because sexual harassment is treated as an unfair labour practice, dealing with the situation in the workplace is largely inadequate and the courts and work environment are generally not victim friendly.

Also, the assumption is that every company has a code of conduct, but labour and legal experts say this is largely ignored and absent in Zimbabwe.

Women in media houses surveyed say there is a gap between national laws and policies, and what really goes on in their workplaces.

A female respondent in Zimbabwe, for example, pointed out that complaints often go unresolved. “Where issues of sexual harassment or sexist language are concerned, women who raise these issues are often not taken seriously and in particular cases of harassment, male bosses sympathise with those accused of harassment and at times try to underplay the charge at hand.*

* This information is part of the GL Opinion and Commentary Service, excerpted from Glass Ceilings: Women and Men in Southern African Media, edited by Colleen Lowe and Pat Made

Recommendations

There is need for Zimbabwe laws to properly protect victims of sexual harassment, as the current laws are not adequate and are not enforced, allowing people to be victimised. 

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