Sexual Harassment and Bullying in the Workplace in Portugal. Policy brief

Abstract

The research project Sexual Harassment and Bullying in the Workplace was conducted by CIEG (Interdisciplinary Centre for Gender Studies), in 2015 as part of a partnership project led by CITE (Commission for Equality in Work and Employment), involving a number of different partners, with funding from EEA Grants. The starting point for this research, the findings of which are summarised in this brochure, was a comparison with the data gathered in a pioneering survey conducted in 1989 (Amâncio and Lima, 1994) on sexual harassment of women in Portugal. Considering the huge changes in society over the past 25 years, the scope of the research in 2015 was expanded to include bullying, and to include men as survey subjects, and not only women, as had previously been the case. Although the term sexual harassment is relatively recent, the abuse to which it refers, experienced by women in the workplace, is a much older phenomenon. But it was in the 1970s that the term entered the public consciousness as the feminist movement fought for change, locating sexual harassment in the wider context of inequalities of gender and power. Formerly regarded a moral or private issue, sexual harassment was now viewed as a social problem which needed to be addressed. At a later stage, the great diversity of employment situations and the complexity of gender inequalities prompted researchers to take a deeper, interdisciplinary approach to the subject, looking at both the female and male universes, their interactions, power relations and the organisational context. Introduction Bullying in the workplace is a social phenomenon to which little attention has yet been paid in Portugal, but which takes a serious toll on the physical and mental health of the individuals targeted. Internationally, research started to shed light on this problem in the 1980s, but it was in the 1990s that the debate and research in this area really developed. Both phenomena constitute an affront to human dignity, with consequences for society as a whole. In Europe, these are problems which affect tens of millions of workers of both sexes, although women are the main targets (Eurofound, 2015) Civic movements and international organisations, such as the ILO and the Council of Europe, have worked to gain greater visibility for these problems, voicing their condemnation, pushing them up the legal and political agenda, mobilising States and alerting employers, unions and public institutions to the advantages of preventing and combating these phenomena. In order to obtain a picture of sexual harassment and bullying in the workplace in Portugal, the researchers decided to combine and triangulate extensive and intensive methodologies. A representative sample of the Portuguese working population (mainland Portugal, excluding the primary sector) was surveyed by means of a questionnaire. At the same time, semi-structured interviews were conducted with men and women who had suffered bullying and/or sexual harassment.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio