Published: 16. 6. 2006
New publications

Alena Křížková, Hana Maříková, Zuzana Uhde (eds.), Marie Čermáková, Radka Dudová, Barbara Havelková, Praha: Sociologický ústav AV ČR 2006

Sexual harassment is both a manifestation and a cause of gender inequalities in the labour market. It affects the financial remuneration, advancement opportunities, and the equality of opportunities for men and women at work and even affects numerous individual factors related to the workplace environment and organisational culture. However, sexual harassment is not a narrowly defined concept: it encompasses a broad range of possible pressures or constraints that create an unfriendly and stressful environment in the workplace and often force victims to leave their jobs as a result of the long-term pressure and systematic erosion of their self-confidence, but such harassment need not contain any explicit sexual overtones. Sexual harassment is one of the main mechanisms of the assertion of male dominance, and it acts to systematically reduce the status of women at work. However, in the general public perception sexual harassment is often regarded as a purely private or individual issue, and thus the power relations that have such a decisive impact on the issues of gender-based and sexual harassment are essentially denied by the public.

The Sexualised Reality of Relations in the Workplace is the outcome of a sociological study on gender-based harassment and sexual harassment, which was conducted by the Gender & Sociology Department at the Institute of Sociology of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic. In the book, the authors describe the theoretical background to the research and present individual analyses that focus on specific types of actors: male and female employees on the whole, management personnel at companies and in organisations, victims of harassment and sexual harassment, male and female union representatives. The book includes an explanation of the legal context of the issue of sexual harassment in Czech and European law, and it also contains a glossary of terms.

Share this page

Attached links

Attached images