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Diana Mahabir-Wyatt

Sexual harassment is defined internationally as an aspect of gender discrimination which by its very nature is abusive.
It is a form of gender-based violence which is against the common law, the basis of all Commonwealth legal architecture. And/or because it affects humans, in most courts, it is seen as a violation of the right to equality, life, liberty and security of the person.
This can apply to any hierarchical status, from president to messenger, and to both women and men.
It is cruel and demeaning in the same way that slavery demeans both slave and slave owner.
Governments worldwide, including Barbados, have enacted legislation to prohibit it.
But in TT, we haven’t done so.
The role of the press in exposing sexual abuse in TT mainly brings it to light before elections. Any elections. The ones we have just gone through are no exception.
Political parties everywhere, not just in the Caribbean or against Trump, regularly use it as a method to repel voters once loyal to opposing parties. It seems to have little effect. It certainly has not against Trump, nor has it in TT.
In TT it has occasionally even taken us way back to charges against a young Keith Rowley and, for goodness’ sake, his father!
But going back a generation or two, similar accusations were made against Johnny O’Halloran, Eric Williams, George Chambers, and come to think of it, almost any man in a political hierarchy who was capable of sex in any form, as most of them were.
In a society that does not refuse to turn against influence-peddling; political candidates who have served time in jail; a culture not disgusted by corruption in contracts for government buildings that stand empty for years; by questionable procurement deals; by drug trafficking; money laundering; and child pornography, mere sexual harassment at work is soon forgotten.
Why it is dragged up again for elections, I do not know. Is it because male employees have only now begun to experience what women at work have endured for years?
When it comes to equality in respect to evidence of harassment at work, however, there is still a bias naming women as victims and men as perpetrators, when it can also be vice versa, where women – encouraged by the American publicity about the “Me Too” movement – have been exposed as manufacturing abuse and harassment allegations, shamefully prevaricated and career-destroying, against men.
They are often supported by a lawyer looking for a brief who may offer to share the expected multi-thousand-dollar penalties imposed by a sympathetic civil court against the perpetrators (expressed or implied).
Few such allegations have been passed through our Industrial Court by trade unions, whose shop stewards are hesitant to believe or support such allegations.
We also see this in recruitment, where, in our still-patriarchal society, male managers responsible for recruitment have been known to guarantee jobs to attractive and desperate young single mothers in return for sex. In a culture of high unemployment and absent baby fathers, it sometimes works.
That is fading fast, though, as the number of women university graduates is higher in most years than are male: 88 per cent of women students compared to 77 per cent of males actually reach graduation – and will be indispensable to employers – although more men than women still graduate in the STEM subjects, which is where the future professionals are going to be found.
Sometimes, recruitmental differentials are indeed accounted for by gender discrimination (which is contrary to stipulations in the Equal Opportunity Act and may therefore be interpreted as harassment) other than in service and care occupations, where there are, and will always be, greater numbers of women, but the gaps are closing.
The public service – our largest single employer – does not visibly discriminate in promotions, for example.
At work, men are still the major actors involved in physical violence, and feature more often in fighting-on-the-job disputes, but, occasionally physical incidents of violence among women employees also wind up in the grievance/disciplinary stream. These tend to be complex and disruptive to staff morale, as fellow employees take sides.
It is important, therefore, that company disciplinary policies include references to non-physical forms of harassment committed by both male and female personnel, as they contribute to mental distress. And since we have no laws forbidding sexual harassment as opposed to physical sexual abuse (which is a criminal offence), for the avoidance of doubt, harassment should be specifically included in the disciplinary policy.
I only mention this because lately I have noticed in male-on-male physical-violence cases, the perpetrator almost always claims, without outside evidence, the male victim in the dispute to have made sexual approaches to the perpetrator resulting in mental distress, which meant he was justified in violent retaliation, up to and including homicide. This is nothing new in sexual harassment cases.
Where it involves male-on-female violence, over the past 50 years, I have noted that the perpetrator almost always insists the sexual abuse was accepted and enjoyed by the victim, with no explanation as to why it was therefore reported as harassment.
The perpetrator, including those in “Stormy Daniels” cases, virtually always claims the harassment was originally consensual, and “When I broke up with her she was just trying to get back at me,” demanding monetary compensation .
Organisational behavioural rules have recently had to change to include harassment because, in the absence of legislation, organisations realise harassment involves breaches of every employer’s common-law obligation to provide a safe environment in the workplace.
Young women needing employment to support themselves, and more often their children and their mothers, used to react to harassment by senior and more powerful managers by just retreating to the “Ladies” and crying their eyes out in shame and despair .
Young men who were sexually harassed just kept quiet about it, also out of shame and despair. To save their own reputations, they kept silent and looked for another job.
But since the publicity about the “Me Too” movement and the enormous cash settlements given to keep both male and female "self-revealed" victims quiet, genuine victims and Machiavellian blackmailers have “come out” about their harassment.
False accusations usually result in criminal or civil court cases if levelled at politicians, prominent sports personalities and entertainers in the US.
We have seen this repeatedly in the press, and then there's the case of the Spanish coach kissing a player on the mouth and calls for him to be terminated as a result, despite his technical professional expertise in leading his team to victory.
This has implied to the world that any sexual relations within an organisation (unless sex is the service for which the organisation exists) is contrary to one’s social contract of employment.
Over recent years professional people have been more willing to testify about it in open court. This is damaging to any organisation’s reputation. If they are made in-company, they result – if evidence meets the court’s standard of a "balance of probabilities" – in summary termination.
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