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This study reexamines sexual harassment in the accounting profession to update our 1997 study of the same issue. We find that improvements in addressing sexual harassment still need to be made. Both men and women still perceive themselves to be victims of sexual harassment and firms still need to improve their methods of addressing client-initiated sexual harassment of their employees. But not all of the news is bad. Several important improvements have been made since the last study. Firms have made serious attempts to implement sexual harassment policies and to communicate those policies to their employees. The occurrence of sexual harassment has decreased substantially and firm reactions to incidents of harassment appear to have improved as well.

This essay explores the reactions within police departments toward sexual harassment scandals. The study describes and analyzes reported cases of sexual harassment and misconduct in police departments to discern citizen narratives and political consequences for elected officials. This assessment hypothesizes that political leadership is an essential element in establishing organizational cultures that combat sexual harassment in local governments. The article contributes to the knowledge about possible gaps in agenda setting, especially for a policy area in which knowledge and problem definitions continue to evolve.

Sexual harassment against female employees in the workplace is one of the topics that have gained the serious attention of various segments of the Sri Lankan society. More than 50% of the female population in Sri Lanka is employed today. Many of them have experienced sexual harassment at least once in their workplace. Since sexual harassment is recognized as a criminal offence in Sri Lanka, this paper intends to investigate whether the prevailing penal laws of the country are sufficient to prevent and deal with these cases and punish the perpetrators. Furthermore, this paper investigates the other possible legal response in the civil law regime to provide a safer legal environment for the victims of sexual harassment. This paper also discusses the relevant international standards in improving the existing laws in the country. This study engages in the field research including interviewing relevant stakeholders (200 women employees including skilled, unskilled and managerial level from government and private sector institutions situated in the Western Province, Officer In Charge of Police of 6 Police Divisions in Colombo District as the highest industrialized District in the Western Province and 3 Commissioners of Labour Department of Sri Lanka) in addition to the desk review of the literature.

The public transport sector is known for high levels of violence, but women are particularly at risk of gender-based violence, including sexual harassment, from both passengers and fellow workers. Furthermore, women transport users face high rates of sexual harassment. This chapter provides evidence of the extent of gender-based violence and harassment in public transport, arguing that attention, though minimal, has been paid to the experiences of female passengers, but overlooks women workers’ experiences of gender-based violence. The chapter discusses the role of key actors in dealing with and preventing gender-based violence for both passengers and women workers. It draws on evidence from Kenya, collected as part of research for the International Transport Workers Federation on the future of work for women in public transport, and other published sources. It argues that the state (national and local), employers, trade unions and civil society actors all have a key role to play in preventing sexual harassment and gender-based violence at work, but need to do more, particularly through adopting and publicising a zero-tolerance approach to gender-based violence. It also highlights the importance of collaboration among key stakeholders for effective intervention and enforcement.

The International Labour Organisation Convention 190 on Violence and Harassment in the World of Work, with an accompanying Recommendation, came into force in June 2021. This represents a potentially powerful new framework for action on tackling and preventing violence and harassment at work that recognises the interrelated effects of gender-based violence and harassment, gender stereotypes and unequal gender power relations, which underpin occupational gender segregation. The transport sector was particularly mentioned in the Convention as an area where change is needed. The chapter briefly considers the Convention’s potential to tackle gender-based violence in the transport sector and how global trade unions are using this opportunity.

Purpose – Using sexual harassment in Japan as a case, this research illustrates how local gender culture, particularly sexual harassment consciousness, has changed since initial local legal reform.

Design/methodology/approach – The historical analysis draws on national newspaper reporting of a fairly new concept of sexual harassment into a local society.

Findings – My findings suggest that Japanese actively engaged in, rather than rejected, the new social issue; their active response gave rise to social consciousness toward sekuhara especially and sex discrimination more generally. Broader and more inclusive definitions of sexual harassment appeared in Japan than the original international legal definitions. Local–international interactions effectively shaped such outcomes.

Originality/value – This is the first qualitative and quantitative analysis of the media's portrayals of sexual harassment in Japan.

The focus of this chapter is intersectional bullying and harassment in the rail sector in Britain, where the workforce is male-dominated, gender-segregated and ethnically diverse. There have been significant gender and race equality issues in the sector that have resulted in a number of high profile legal cases. The authors draw on data from a trade union survey of members (Transport and Salaried Staffs Association) focussing on their experiences achieving equality at work. The survey received 1,054 useable responses. The authors have used both additive and multiplicative data analysis methods to capture the methodological debates concerning intersectional analysis. The analyses provided some varied responses, depending on the methods used, but an enduring factor was that older, ethnic minority women were the group who were most likely to feel that they had suffered bullying and harassment. The authors discuss these findings in relation to the limited legal interventions for intersectional bullying and harassment. The authors argue that employers and trade unions must develop proactive institutional responses to mitigate its damaging consequences.

The implementation of internal committee (IC) in three different institutions of Coimbatore district, Tamil Nadu, one Government institution and two private institutions are discussed throughout the study. The author looks at the perpetuation of gender discriminatory practices among the members of the committees. The dynamics and constitution of IC in Government and private offices are examined. It looks at the implementation of the IC through case studies done in private and Government offices in Coimbatore district. It also highlights the prevailing gaps in the IC constitution and implementation by the employees in the organizations. The response to sexual harassment in working place is not recognized because of patriarchal nature of the working environment. The chapter is concluded with the findings that men and women employees remain unaware of the provisions of the act and the employees are hesitant to register complaints in the working environment. The act places the responsibility on the employer to form an IC to function as a Redressal forum for working women. The Sexual Harassment Act 2013 mandates the constitution of IC committee by employer in the institution having more than 10 employees. The sexual harassment act 2013 has completed eight years and the implementation part is still challenging. So the current research was undertaken to study the challenges involved in the effective implementation of the complaints committee. Hence it is suggested to conduct a series of awareness programs about the IC powers and functions among employees at regular intervals in the institutions.

While there are myriad legal issues confronting school leaders, the focus on the complexities involving special education law and bullying has increased recently. The U.S. Department of Education wrote in a 2014 “Dear Colleague Letter” (Guidance) that its office “has received an ever-increasing number of complaints concerning the bullying of students with disabilities and the effects of that bullying on their education, including on the special education and related services to which they are entitled” (p. 1). The Guidance as well as recent litigation illustrates how plaintiffs have alleged violations under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and/or the Americans with Disabilities Act when students with disabilities are bullied in schools. In this chapter, after discussing the related literature and the legal context, we examine several illustrative recent cases and the 2014 Guidance to highlight the relevant issues for school leaders. We conclude with recommendations and emphasize that school leaders must become knowledgeable about this emerging legal topic. Specifically, with a greater understanding of how they can prevent and respond to the bullying of students with disabilities, school leaders have the power to make great social change within schools.

Building on work that explores the relationship between individual beliefs and ability to recognize discrimination (e.g., Kaiser and Major, 2006), we examine how an adherence to beliefs about gender essentialism, gender egalitarianism, and meritocracy shape one’s interpretation of an illegal act of sexual harassment involving a male supervisor and female subordinate. We also consider whether the role of the gendered culture of engineering (Faulkner, 2009) matters for this relationship. Specifically, we conducted an online survey-experiment asking individuals to report their beliefs about gender and meritocracy and subsequently to evaluate a fictitious but illegal act of sexual harassment in one of two university research settings: an engineering department, a male-dominated setting whose culture is documented as being unwelcoming to women (Hatmaker, 2013; Seron, Silbey, Cech, and Rubineau, 2018), and an ambiguous research setting. We find evidence that the stronger one’s adherence to gender egalitarian beliefs, the greater one’s ability to detect inappropriate behavior and sexual harassment while gender essentialist beliefs play no role in their detection. The stronger one’s adherence to merit beliefs, the less likely they are to view an illegal interaction as either inappropriate or as sexual harassment. We account for respondent knowledge of sexual harassment and their socio-demographic characteristics, finding that the former is more often associated with the detection of inappropriate behavior and sexual harassment at work. We close with a discussion of the transferability of results and policy implications of our findings.