Senator warns on "festive season" sexual harassment

SENATOR Mary Henry has warned about the likely incidence of sexual harassment during the Christmas party season.

Speaking at the launch of the sixth report of the joint Oireachtas Committee on Women's Rights yesterday, she said sexual harassment was often related to the culture of a firm, where "usually the people most vulnerable in the workplace are the most tortured, particularly very young girls".

The sources of such harassment were often older men, "most amazingly people in very powerful positions". To refer to them as "office Romeos" was too kind, she felt. They should really be referred to as "pests".

Complaints about sexual harassment were not a case of "getting snooty about wolf whistles"; it was "much more about groping and touching".

In some firms there were no problems at all, but in others there was a very blatant abuse of power.

Senator Ann Gallagher said such abuses were generally found in male dominated firms. She confirmed there was a problem in the legal profession - she is a solicitor - and said women had similar experiences in the building, surveying, and technical areas of employment.

She suggested firms might have a system similar to the Q mark, related to the level of sexual harassment reports from each. Relevant codes of conduct were particularly lacking in the private sector, she thought.

Senator Henry said a quiet word was not sufficient to deal with the problem.

She also raised the issue of stigma suffered by people who had been mentally ill.

"Depression is the most common illness in the world," she commented, saying the stigma associated with it was a terrible problem. "Disabilities are not just physical," she pointed out.

Earlier, the committee chairwoman, Ms Mary Wallace TD, in presenting the report, titled From Employment Equality Agency to Equality Authority, called for a three fold increase in the EEA's budget, to £1,700,000, for the Equality Authority as a matter of urgency. The expansion to nine areas of discrimination, in conjunction with the terms of the Equality Status Bill, would mean a vast increase in calls on the services of the new authority, she said.

She also said the authority should promote an information campaign on discrimination, that staff be drawn from a wider range of experience, that adequate and accessible premises were essential for the new body, and that a one stop shop on equality/discrimination matters be incorporated in any new premises.