I need to attend yet another sexual harassment training course at work, a common enough occurrence these days. I have to wonder, given the stories I hear about harassment lawsuits that get filed year after year, is there any evidence that the classes have any value in reducing harassment claims, or is it more about shielding the company from lawsuits and making it easier to terminate employees? I’ve always looked at the problem along the lines of, if you have to be told not to grab your coworker’s ass, it’s not going to do any good to throw you in a class where it’s pointed out to you.
This? http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1996-05-01/
Dilbert.com has a search feature
http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1994-08-28/
http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1994-08-28/
I think the main point is that the employer can tell the employee “these are the rules”.
The point of sexual harassment training is not to “work.”
The point is that so when they fire someone for sexual harassment, he can’t pull a George Costanza: “Was that wrong? Should I not have done that?” And when George tries to sue for wrongful termination, they have firm evidence that everybody was trained on what constitutes sexual harassment and that it’s a firing offense.
I found out a lot of things I didn’t know about sexual harassment, and now I’m able to sexually harass twice as many people in the same amount of time.
( I sent myself to the training, because I’m the boss…
While working at the big red X a friend of mine was outside sitting on a bench during break. A neutrally aesthetic woman was talking next to him when a heavy wind blew her dress up over her head showing she was wearing t-backs.
Embarrassed, she apologized.
Bill said, ‘Thats ok, I enjoyed it.’
She complained and he went to a sexual harassment (really? ‘harassment’, what poor choice of word) class. His (apparently) serious question to the instructor “Should I have said I didn’t enjoy it?” was not appreciated.
There is a lot less of it in the workplace than there was 20 years ago as a result of the lawsuits and the training. So I assert.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1939-3938.2010.01094.x/abstract
Found this in the wiki on sexual harassment.
Seems like theres only one study that explicitly measured long term behaviour change, but that one did find long term changes.
Obviously the main concern though is removing the ‘I didnt know’ defense.
Otara
More or less what I figure. I just find it interesting I have to attend these classes every two years, but as a manager I only have to go once to a class on identifying employees who may snap and turn violent.
In terms of changing attitudes - I wouldn’t think they’d be very successful.
In terms of changing behaviours - I would think they’d work quite well.
Many people come from different backgrounds, perspectives and standards - what I think is harrassment and what you think could be two different things.
The training would, presumably, get everyone on the same page. If I know that x constitutes harrassment I won’t do it…
But of course, does a long term change come from the training? Or is it from the fact that attitudes change and the smart guys, at least, understand what they can no longer get away with and stop doing it. It’s likely not the training, it’s what management says and does in the real world. 50 years ago, having your ass pinched was part of the job of being a stewardess and management told them to ignore it; today, it’s a sex crime.
The somewhat cynical view is that the goal of the training is as much to reduce liability as to reduce harrassment.
If a plaintiff sues for sexual harrassment, the absence of things like a policy and regular training could be used to assert that the company did not take things seriously and had a culture of harrassment. Conversely, if the company does have regular training, they can use it to rebut the accusation that they don’t take it seriously.
It isn’t really about changing people’s minds or even necessarily stopping them from their harassment. It’s to tell people “If you do this, you will get into trouble”.
You bet your sexy ass it works!
Just like with MADD or ethnic jokes … Any one instance of training doesn’t do much. But over the long haul of subjecting 250 million Americans to this stuff every year for a couple of decades, we’ve slowly turned the super tanker some distance.
And, just like racism, we’ve reduced the amount of overt behavior by X and the underlying attitudes by some fraction of X. Whether that fraction is 10% or 90% is a good topic for debate or study. But we *have *reduced overt behavior by X.
I always try to find out which mandatory sexual harassment classes will have the most hot chicks in it, and sign up for that one. They think it’s cute, and I have yet to file a complaint for them saying it.
On a less sarcastic note, in college I took a Women’s Literary Studies class. I actually took it partly because I knew the professor and thought she was great. I also took it partly because I figured I’d be the only guy in the room.
The class was a lot of fun, because the Prof. would frequently turn to me and say, “Alright, GiantRat, let’s hear the male perspective,” and I would often respond with things like, “she’s horny,” “she’s a cheating whore,” or “she only THINKS she’s a lesbian” (of course, with some flimsy bit of evidence… and I’ll avoid capitalizing on the word “flimsy”). It honestly made for some interesting discussions (some of them over dates with sexy classmates).
I find that these harassment “workshops” are usually 99% directed at telling men not to check women out (as though that will, or should, ever stop), with a 30 second comment that “women are capable of sexual harassment, as well.” It’s very similar to the racial diversity workshops that identify people as white or non-white, and then explain to the white people in the room that they are horrible monsters.
Actually, that could be one meaning of “works”. Another would be, “provides income for whoever is giving the training.”
ROFL!
Penn and Teller Bullshit! on sensitivity training (part 3) - YouTube
Dunno. Haven’t seen the empirical studies on whether SH training “works”(for a given value of “work”) but remember that the military takes apparent adults and teaches them the most basic things like how to shower, how to iron, make a bed, wipe their bum and so on. I suspect the bell curve principle applies. Most people know not to do this, but there are some Sheldon-esque outliers for whom social behaviour is not as instinctive as it is for most or who persistently misread signals and need clear rules spelt out.