A case that mocks the image of a `fair' society

One of the habits of mind we have developed as a result of our peculiar recent history is a certain innocence about the relationship…

One of the habits of mind we have developed as a result of our peculiar recent history is a certain innocence about the relationship between legal change and social change. We've had so many passionate conflicts about the law on contraception, divorce and abortion that we tend to think that official attitudes actually reflect behaviour. Our politicians and officials have adopted the language of equality, openness and pluralism so quickly and so thoroughly that it's easy to believe that the new rhetoric reflects a new reality.

We are, for example, all feminists now. The notion that women have equal rights in the workplace is so broadly accepted that any politician who lets the old misogyny slip into his public utterances - think of Pee Flynn's remarks on Mary Robinson - is forever disgraced. And yet, how much has really changed? How deep, even within the public service, does the new culture of equality really go? A report of an investigation under the Employment Equality Act into a complaint of sexual harassment released a fortnight ago suggests some uncomfortable answers.

The woman who took the complaint is a Higher Executive Officer in the Department of Social, Community and Family Affairs. In mid-December 1994, the (male) Regional Manager who was her direct boss realised that she was pregnant. He started to make insulting and degrading remarks. He told her that "after your bundle of joy arrives, you won't be so preoccupied with other matters". Whenever he came into her office to give her a job to do, he would tell her "I'll knock the weight off you".

When she objected, he would tell her that she would be fine if she had a bucket of water thrown over her every day. He told her that "pushing out the child will quieten you down for life". He told her to "wait until you're lying down pushing out the child".

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When she complained that she had not been sent notice of a competition for promotion to the higher grade of Assistant Principal Officer, he told her he was amazed that the prospect of having a child had not quietened her down and that if pregnancy hadn't shut her up, nothing would. When she reminded him that she expected her old job back when she returned from maternity leave, he mentioned that there were lots of "Girl Friday" tasks she could do. At the hearing of the case before an Equality Officer attached to the Labour Court, the Regional Manager denied having made any of these remarks. The Equality Officer noted, however, that the Regional Manager explained the remark about "pushing out the baby" as being "open to a number of interpretations, for example, `pushing out a pram' ". "I must state that I found it odd that he should offer an interpretation of a remark which he maintains he never directed" at the woman, the Equality Officer remarked.

He also noted that when the remark about how pushing out the child would quieten her down was raised with the manager by a union representative, he replied "Big deal". The Equality Officer concluded, therefore, that the remarks complained of had in fact been made, that the woman was "subjected to sexual harassment" and that the Department of Social, Community and Family Affairs is liable for the consequences.

IT might be argued, with some justice, that the behaviour of the Regional Manager is a rare exception of the kind that can arise in any organisation, no matter how hard it tries to create a decent working environment. What really matters, after all, is how an organisation deals with this kind of discrimination when it occurs. But the problem is that, in this case, the Department of Family Affairs responded in more or less the manner that might be expected from the most blinkered old boys' club in the 1960s.

The personnel officer of the Department (a woman) was told of the Regional Manager's behaviour in a telephone call in November 1995. The Department was supposed to have guidelines and procedures for dealing with possible cases of sexual harassment. Yet, when asked by the victim whether the personnel office condoned "comments about childbirth and pregnancy . . . functioning as a punitive measure to `quieten' women", she did not "point to the existence of these particular guidelines and procedures".

According to the findings of the Equality Officer, she "did not take reasonable steps in relation to a possible case of sexual harassment". Likewise the Regional Director, who was the Regional Manager's boss, "ignored an allegation that offensive remarks of a sexist nature were directed at a member of staff by a senior official of his staff".

Here we have, then, a classic case of a manager abusing his power and denigrating an employee solely because of her sex, and a corporate culture that prefers to avoid the subject and opt for a quiet life. We have boorish misogyny and denigration of childbearing right at the heart of the Department of State that is meant to be preserving and protecting family life. And it's worth thinking about what happens when the victim of all of this tries to do something about it.

The first thing that alert readers will have noticed is that the incidents in question took place between late 1994 and late 1995, and that the findings of the Equality Officer were issued just last month. This is no reflection on the diligence of the Equality Officer, but it does reflect the inadequacy of the system. The second thing to be noted is that, after 3 1/2 years of anguish and unbearable stress, the victim was awarded the stunning total of £6,000. And this is right at the top of the range of awards for discrimination. A glance at the most recent annual report for the Employment Equality Agency (covering 1997), shows that most actions taken before an Equality Officer failed, and that in those that succeeded, the amounts of compensation ranged from £750 to £5,000.

By these standards the award to the woman in the Department of Social, Community and Family Affairs is very high. But it's hardly the kind of punitive measure that would force the corporate culture to change. And it doesn't seem that the behaviour that led to it is taken all that seriously. The Regional Manager stayed on in the Department until he reached the normal retirement age. The personnel officer who "did not take reasonable steps" in the case has since been promoted to a very high level. As for the victim, her prospects for advancement in her career seem very dim. Her health broke down under the strain of the abuse and she now has a poor sick-leave record. Instead of moving through the normal path to advancement in the Civil Service, she was effectively sidelined. She now works part-time under the public service job-*sharing scheme.

The moral of her story, if the word "moral" can be used at all in this context, is that she would have been much better off if she had been able to grin and bear it. Bearing insults, rather than bearing children, seems to be still the best option, even in the Department of Family Affairs.