The Wire

The wolf whistle once epitomised sexual harassment. And while it’s not altogether than common these days, the sexual harassment it represents is still perpetrated in the workplace in different ways. Jane Goodman-Delahunty, from the School of Psychology at the University of New South Wales, released a book earlier this year identifying and analysing three main types of behaviours that fall under the definition of sexual harassment. The first one, is coercion in the workplace – where one employee pressures another for sexual favours in exchange for a better position in the company. The second is that of unwanted personal attention by a work colleague – such as requests for dates, or sending gifts like flowers, through to straight out stalking. And the third type of sexual harassment is called “gender-based hostility”, which is not based around sexual attraction, but instead centres on gender roles. This type of harassment often occurs in areas of the workforce where there is less than 15% of one gender, which heightens the difference between the two genders in the workplace. Cinnamon Nippard spoke to Jane Goodman-Delahunty, from the School of Psychology at the University of New South Wales, who says that people in Australia generally don’t have a clear understanding of what sexual harassment is.