Workplace Harassment Research Paper

The word harassment comes from French word harassement, which means torment, annoyance, bother, trouble. (www.wikipedia.org)
Women are being harassed even when there was no a term for it. Women encounter different types of harassment behaviors when they join the workplace. There is no universal definition of harassment. Some defines the harassment is sexual in nature. While other explains it as offensive workplace situations that are based on their class, sexual orientation, language, gazing, sexually suggestive gestures, intimidation and whistling.
These types of behavior were not named till 1970s.the women of United States raised voice against these behaviors and demanded that harassment should be recognized as sex discrimination under the

At international level, both public and private sectors have introduced a range of laws, policies and procedures to make workplace free of harassment. They are establishing such rules and regulations to prevent and combat workplace harassment.
The importance of our research is an attempt to assess the degree of workplace harassment in Pakistan and evaluating women’s experience of harassment at the workplace of Pakistan.
Research Objectives:
Although the issue of workplace harassment has been acknowledged internationally yet in Pakistan, Harassment has not been addressed seriously. Workplace harassment is a phenomenon that is spreading in Pakistan with time. The objectives of this research are as follow:
• To examine the range of workplace harassment that women face.
• To get familiarity with the forms and aspects of workplace harassment.
• To what extent the harassment act 2010 of women at the work place in an organization has been communicated.
• To know the level of understanding of a women about their contribution in raising their voice against harassment.

Research

Most of the research is conducted in western countries.(e.g. Crocker &Kalemba, 1999, European Commission, 1988; U.S. Merit Systems Promotion Board, 1988). Little work has been done in broad(e.g. Lui, 1996; Limpaphayom& Williams, 2006), developing countries like Pakistan & Malaysia etc. Sexual harassment includes both men and women, however usually men are not victims of harassment but in fact stance more as harassers. Past research has shown that sexual harassment events commonly include male as harasser and female as victim (e.g. Terpstra& Cook, 1985). Problem has existed many decades ago when even there was no familiarity with the term harassment, research on this issue has started off in the late