Sexual Harassment Laws Need Updating

Sexual Harassment The author of this report has been asked to assess and review an article that is related to the subject matter in the class text for this class. The topics that are there to be chosen from include regulation of employment, the employee/employer relationship, the Civil Rights Act/Title VII, affirmative action, race, gender, sexual harassment and affinity orientation. The author of this report shall focus on sexual harassment.

While the ubiquity of sexual harassment training and enforcement of laws (not to mention lawsuits) relating to the same would seem to reduce the practice by offenders, sexual harassment is apparently still alive and well. As described by the class text, sexual harassment is basically any behavior, action or condition that is sexualized in nature and that leads to a person being sexually threatened, denigrated or made uncomfortable.

Examples of sexual harassment would include having a picture of a bikini-clad woman on a cubicle wall, telling sexually tinged jokes in front of people that are offended by them and making sexual advances even after the recipient of the advances has rebuffed the other person. As a general practice, telling such jokes, having such pictures and otherwise having these sort of discussions are unwise at work in general but doing so can lead to employee punishment, firings, lawsuits or a combination of the three (Bennett-Alexander & Hartman, 2007).

The article that was chosen for this report was an article presented on the Huffington Post website and was written by Samantha Lachman. The gist of the article is that while sexual harassment rules and legislation commonly protect people that are employees of a company, the same is usually not true when it comes to unpaid interns. Indeed, the verbiage of the legislation found in most states relates to employees. Since the people in question do not meet the definition of employees, they are technically not protected by the law.

Only a few states are exception to this rather glaring oversight. Indeed, they include California, Oregon, New York, Washington DC and Maryland. States that have legislation pending to address the issue include Illinois, Connecticut, Michigan and New Jersey. The latter two have brought bills forward but have failed. Beyond the facts above, the situation is aggravated by the fact that interns often do not pursue complaints about sexual harassment for whatever reason. This is a big deal because about three quarters of unpaid interns are women (Lachman, 2015).

There are two major things that need to be pointed out about the article. First of all, a person being an intern or employee should not have a bearing on whether they are protected from sexual discrimination. However, it is also true that the law is meant to be precise and words mean things. Indeed, the laws in question often say "employees" and the interns in question (not to mention contractors and a lot of temps) are not employees.

In so many cases, a simple amendment that clarifies that interns are given protection as well would probably do the job. Regardless, the state legislatures need to step up and do the right thing. Second, employers should further be held to the same standards with interns as they are with employees. If an employer is aware of discrimination and does nothing, they can and should be held.