SEXUAL HARASSMENT IS NO JOKE

It is about time Swazi journalists realised that women are not sex objects and cannot be violently attacked at will.

The Times Sunday this week published an article on violence against women in the workplace that encourages men to continue in the practice and denigrates women and others who speak up against this evil.

The article headlined ‘Sexual harassment: Come on we love it’ written by ‘Sibongile’ makes this truly outrageous claim, ‘Most women just love what is termed sexual harassment, especially in the workplace.’

The article appeared in the Style section on 29 July 2007.

The writer goes on, ‘There’s always the office bum squeezer, you know the one when you walk past him either your breasts or your bum or any part of your body nearest to his hands will be touched.

‘Doesn’t have to be his hands though any part of his body will do.

‘I’ve noticed that when this happens the girl has one of these reactions, a giggle, a polite smile, very heavy blushing or a playful “stop that”’.

She goes on to say that the attention is not welcome from poor men, but ‘men at the top of the food chain are the only ones who can touch our humps.’

She says, ‘… girls if you are honest you know you love having your bum squeezed.’

The article is accompanied by a cartoon of a man touching a woman on her breast.

What makes the article harder to accept is that the writer is a woman. She seems to have been so conditioned by Swazi culture that she sees nothing wrong in men physically attacking women. For that is what bum pinching and breast groping is. A physical sexual attack. And the writer has told men that they can go on sexually assaulting women because the women like it.

The writer compounds her mistake by asserting in the very first paragraph ‘I am sure these women’s rights activists will not be pleased after reading this.’ She says this as if those who are against violence towards women and in favour of equality for all are to be despised.

One can understand how women in Swaziland may feel forced to accept the unwanted attention of men. Traditional culture in Swaziland dictates that women are minors. They are legally and socially treated as children. They are quite literally owned by their men (fathers and husbands). That’s why we see women, indeed often children, bought and sold into marriages that the women do not want. If you add to this the contempt with which women, even educated and professional ones, are treated in Swaziland you can see why people may not be too enlightened about sexual harassment in the workplace.

It comes as no surprise to learn that Swaziland is the only country within the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region not to have ratified the Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW).

It is a well known fact that women are subjected to more than bum pinching in workplaces. There are many documented accounts of women being forced to have sex with their bosses in order to gain and keep their jobs. This happens even in media houses in Swaziland.

In Swaziland, the media is part of the problem. A survey of women in the media in southern Africa, co-sponsored by the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) and Gender Links , found women’s voices are under represented in the news and are virtually missing from certain topic areas. Older women are invisible in both the print and electronic media. Women’s voices are not even heard in proportion to their strength in occupational categories, such as politics and agriculture. Other than on gender equality, the only areas in which women’s voices predominate have to do with the body, home and beauty, rather than with the mind, economic and political challenges.

Some people in Swaziland are trying to do something about poor media reporting of women. The Swaziland National Association of Journalists has a Code of Conduct. Article 6 specifically states that journalists should not originate material which encourages discrimination on the grounds of gender. Sibongile and the Times Sunday have clearly broken that code.

Journalists need to think more clearly about the consequences of their own actions. The published article gives its readers permission to go on attacking women and denigrates women and others who want to put an end to this disgraceful behaviour.

To begin with journalist could learn what sexual harassment actually is. The definitions below are based on the South African Code of Good Practice, which was itself based on international labour law and best practice.

In a nutshell, sexual harassment is unwelcome attention of a sexual nature. Both men and women can be victims of this kind of harassment, and its effects on a workplace can be profound and long-lasting, as well as opening the organisation up to legal action. It can take various forms, including:
• Physical conduct: this ranges from inappropriate touching or strip searching someone in the presence of the opposite sex to sexual assault and rape;
• Verbal conduct: this could take the form of jokes, suggestions or comments with sexual overtones; insults or comments about a person’s body; inappropriate enquiries about a person’s sex life; wolf-whistling;
• Non-verbal conduct includes unwelcome gestures; indecent exposure; unwelcome displays of sexually explicit pictures and objects in the workplace (such as pinups, screen-savers etc);
• Quid pro quo harassment occurs when a person undertakes to influence the process of employment, promotion, training, dismissal or salary increments in exchange for sexual favours;
• Sexual favouritism occurs when a person in a position of authority only rewards those who respond to his/her sexual advances, while those who do not submit are denied promotion, merit ratings, and increases.
(Taken from Colleen Lowe Morna’s Gender in Media Training book, co-published by Gender Links and the South African Institute for the Advancement of Journalism)