Los Angeles Employment Lawyer Blog

Sexual Harassment can be prominent but unreported in the workplace today. Many times it is because your harasser, or you, assumes that it is just you being “sensitive” and not that you have become the victim of a legally protected violation of a right to work without interference and fear. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has listed these helpful suggestions as to what sexual harassment can look like if you are unsure:

• The harasser can be anyone, such as a supervisor, a client, a co-worker, a teacher or professor, a student, a friend, or a stranger.


• The victim does not have to be the person directly harassed but can be anyone who finds the behavior offensive and is affected by it.


• While adverse effects on the victim are common, this does not have to be the case for the behavior to be unlawful.


• The victim can be male or female. The harasser can be male or female.


• The harasser does not have to be of the opposite sex.


• The harasser may be completely unaware that his or her behavior is offensive or constitutes sexual harassment or may be completely unaware that his or her actions could be unlawful.

Additionally, sexual harassment is more common than you might believe. The Equal Rights Advocates reports that “A Cornell Law Review article entitled “Exacerbating the Exasperated: Title VII Liability of Employers for Sexual Harassment” reported that between 40% to 90% of women in the United States workforce have been the victims of some form of sexual harassment on the job. As even conservative Ninth Circuit Judge Kozinski recognized: “It is a sobering revelation that every woman—every woman—who has spent time in the workforce in the last two decades can tell at least one story about being the object of sexual harassment.”

If you find yourself the victim of sexual harassment at your workplace in California, call the Law Offices of Greenberg & Rudman LLP at 1-800-252-9776 for a free consultation regarding your legal rights and how the law may be able to help you.

Quote taken from http://www.equalrights.org/professional/sexhar/work/workplac.asp