Dealing with harassment by limiting opportunity?
May 15, 2018 6:56 AM   Subscribe

I'm looking for articles about workplaces addressing harassment in ways that are not quite the Mike Pence rule (no meetings alone with women), but close neighbors--keeping doors open, limiting out of town trips, having windows in every office. Articles that are pro and con are welcome.
posted by Mavri to Work & Money (5 answers total) 4 users marked this as a favorite
 
It might help if you clarify whether you mean limiting opportunity for harassment or limiting opportunity for women. (I assume you mean specifically sexual harassment of women by men.) Most of the controversy around Pence's rule is that the ability to staff Pence alone is valuable, and therefore his policy prevented women from performing certain valuable functions that enabled advancement.
posted by d. z. wang at 6:21 PM on May 15, 2018


Response by poster: I meant limiting opportunity for harassment. The Pence rule limits opportunity for women, but also ignores (or absolves) men and society of culpability for engaging in and allowing the behavior. I've read some good critiques along those lines for the Pence rule, but was looking for articles about less extreme versions of limiting the opportunity for harassment without dealing with the underlying problem. I worded the question badly.
posted by Mavri at 7:00 PM on May 15, 2018


I forget which article I read this in, but there was some executive who realized he was not comfortable having dinner with women mentees. His decision? No business dinners with anyone of any gender, and equal opportunity lunches.
posted by batter_my_heart at 8:51 PM on May 15, 2018


Here is an article about employer prohibitions on dating/relationships: You may need a love contract in the Boston Globe.

I recently reworked my organization's sexual harassment policy. We did not end up prohibiting any and all relationships, but we did prohibit "intimate relationships between a superior and subordinate". Advice from multiple lawyers and HR professionals led us to understand that kind of prohibition is now standard as the power disparity makes it difficult to define consent. Even in a truly consenting relationship, then the question of fairness and favoritism comes up with other employees.

The prohibition is now used during training as a way to encourage one-on-one interaction between supervisors and subordinates outside of office and at events. The idea is a lower level employee can get valuable time with a more senior manager or leader without fear of any outside-of-business ulterior motives.

If there is inappropriate behavior then the lower level employee is protected and the rest of the organization can bring the HR hammer down on the more senior employee.
posted by sol at 10:40 PM on May 15, 2018




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