Save the Children on Friday conducted an awareness campaign on cyber sexual harassment to create a conducive working environment for its staff free of the vice.
The campaign was to celebrate the just concluded International Women’s Day.
Sexual harassment includes unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical harassment of a sexual nature in the workplace or learning environment, according to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
The Friday drama depicted a hypothetical boss bordering a junior female staff with inappropriate touches whenever he called her to his office. The lady rejected his request to fall in for him, but John persisted with his advances and often trashes Jane’s [a character] alleged shoddy work. Despite the odds, John kept sending nude photos of him to Jane’s phone. The repeated acts angered Jane who later became stressed and was always absent-minded in the place work.
Because she could not take it any longer, she opened up to her mother about what she has been going through, prompting the mother to visit the office to raise the issue with the higher management.
Upon investigations, the man was fired from the job.
After the drama session, the participants were asked about their takeaways from the drama.
The first respondent said; “One of the things I have noted is that, in workplaces there is a lot of harassment going on, and most of the women are suffering in silence,
” Sometimes they are in dilemma of whether to report or not, because they think they will be sacked or sometimes they are also not confident, said one of the participants,
“Men take advantage of their positions to actually harass or abuse the women that we work with, and this happens if the system does not enforce the policies. Such things are likely to occur and they are likely to continue even if there are systems in place.
In his suggestion, Modi, not his real name said,” the most important thing for us at Safe the Children are to ensure that if their issues of harassment or safeguarding are reported we need to take immediate action.
Meanwhile, a female participant said “We need to be aware of the body language of the people we are working with.”
The 3rd participant said; “One thing I see is, if the lady accepted the proposal from the boss it would affect other staff because, in case of promotions, the lady would be promoted based on their relationship with the boss,”
Participant four used his live scenario saying, “I am not married, and if the lady on the other side is not married, and we identify something outstanding in common, and we wanted to progress that, what does Safe the children policy say about it?
In a response, Save the Children said in it’s policy, a staff can enter courtship as long as there is an agreement on the condition that they do not work in the same department and declares their love affairs to the human resource
But the in-house drama aimed to raise awareness on forms of cyber sexual harassment and the organization’s policy guidelines that protect the rights of the employees against the crime .
“We thought it is also important to raise awareness on cyber harassment that is affecting our female staff, that’s why we came with that drama,” said Veronica Gatpan who is Save the Children’s Gender Coordinator.
“I believe today, they are very aware of it because we want everyone to work peacefully, “
According to Gatpan, Save the Children like any other non-governmental organization has policies that protect individuals against what constitute sexual harassment.
“I believe that in every institution there is a policy that is guiding the staff because we are human beings and we cannot just assume that we will respect one another,
“If anyone comes to harass you, there is a way to handle it that’s why we also performed this drama including [highlighting] our policy guiding all our stall in the country office, she added.
Ms. Gatpan has advised the staff not to fear reporting any harassment saying the policy has granted this right.
“My message to the female staff is that never, everyone has a right, so never ever fear to report a case either to save the children or even in other organizations including the government,”
However, some of the staff said women should dress decently to avoid altering their emotions in a working environment.