Sexual Harassment in the Workplace Essay Example

When an employee is being subjected to sexual harassment, the workplace becomes an antagonistic environment, with the fixed threat of physical and/or emotional harm. Furthermore, a workplace environment that fails to appropriately address the matter of sexual harassment will be at risk of developing signs of negative work culture – low morale, discontent employees, and high levels of absenteeism will rather be mirrored in lower productivity and profits. (Geerinck, 2021)

An example from personal experience, I have been a bartender and a server for many years and several times I have had to be concerned with the lack of a sexual harassment policy not being in place at those establishments. I have been stalked, threatened, and finally had to see a psychologist as well as file police reports because, I believe, there were no rules regulated and this caused the sexual harasser to become lax on professionalism.

When it comes down to who is benefited/harmed from sexual harassment behaviors, in the end, it does not benefit anyone and both parties are harmed. Some are harmed physically or emotionally but most times it is both.

According to Kant’s judgment, it would be morally and ethically wrong to use a person as a sexual means to an end. In the younger more compassionate Kant, his view was, “makes of the loved person an Object of appetite; as soon as you have enjoyed that person, and your appetite is satisfied, you will throw it away; just as you throw away a lemon after you’ve sucked the juice out of it.” In addition, he even argued that “humans have a duty to avoid maxims that harm or degrade themselves, including suicide, sexual degradation, and drunkenness.”

As far as personal knowledge about sexual abuse in the workplace, I know volumes. From my experiences, I know that businesses I worked in, would rather the subject have never been worldly addressed in the first place and that the woman is always at fault. I knew that many humans feel/felt the same way as I have and have put action behind their beliefs and that the mental and physical abuse is so staggering that the human may never fully heal from it. 

Lastly, I have a very deep concern about sexual harassment in the workplace. As the years' progress, it seems on paper, it is being dealt with by larger companies, but the smaller ones seem to still be slipping through the cracks, so to speak. I think that there should be regularly scheduled meetings on the effects and repercussions of it, swift disciplinary action taken, (Chinn, 2016), and the lack thereof to be made aware to /law enforcement. Unfortunately, I do not have much faith in any of these ideas because if the CEO is sexually harassing, the employees have no fear of any of the above.