Sexual Harassment in Predominantly Male Workforces

Sexual harassment is a serious issue in the workplace, especially one that is still a predominantly male workforce like the police force. The legal definition of sexual harassment is “verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature that unreasonably interferes with the employee’s work or cerates an intimidating, hostile or offensive working environment” (Sbraga, O’donohue). There is also a psychological definition of sexual harassment, which is defined as “an unwanted sex related behaviour at work that is appraised by the recipient as offensive, exceeding her resources, or threatening her will-being”(Sbraga & O’donohue). These definitions have been defined since the 1990s, yet in male predominant environments it continues to go on as if they were never told about them. In workforces like policing, that are so dominated by males are seen to be more physically confrontational and daunting work environments, opposed to one that have a more equal ratio in

Meaning female officers are have higher stress issues than their male counterparts. Study done on gender and police stress, it was revealed that female officers have a higher levels of somatization and depression than male officers in the same environment (Zhao, Archnold, He). Although, female and male officers report having similar triggers for stress females have higher levels of stress, there are several reasons behind this. A large part of different stress levels comes form that fact that because so there are so many male officers, they are able to interact with one another about what is going on and relate to one another (Dowler and Arai). Female officers do not have this luxury, there are fast less female officers, only 35% of females work in the police force, therefore this can often make them feel more isolated with these issues (policing in Canada textbook or Dowler and