You are a junior nurse and the specialist surgeon constantly makes suggestive advances, but you keep quiet for fear of recrimination — this is the sort of scenario a sexual harassment campaign aims to address at Groote Schuur hospital.
The hospital, together with the University of Cape Town’s department of health sciences, launched its sexual harassment campaign on Thursday, encouraging victims to come forward and report incidents.
”Sexual harassment at work is a real issue,” said the woman behind the campaign, Professor Lynette Denny.
Denny said sexual harassment at the hospital and at campus takes the form of veiled threats, innuendo, suggestiveness and sometimes even touching.
As an example, Denny told of a true incident, where a male surgeon regularly placed his bleeper just above the waistline, and while in theatre would let it deliberately ring, asking a female nurse to remove the vibrating mechanism.
”We had more serious incidents where a professor went to visit a girl’s home … and she didn’t report the incident because of fear of recrimination,” said Denny, who spoke of ”serial harassment” of juniors by what she described as ”pathological types”.
She said sexual harassment is not confined to women as the victims, but occurs in all circumstances where one person wields power over another.
Denny said it is the responsibility of the employer to create a safe working environment, and to this end is thankful of the support of top management for the campaign.
Denny said sexual harassment is not difficult to define. It is abuse of power and making people feel uncomfortable.
She said as far as she knew, nobody has been expelled from the hospital for sexual harassment.
”I don’t think the floodgates will open now… people will first test the waters,” she said.
A large crowd attended the campaign launch, held beneath a banner displaying the words ”Love, hope, respect”.
The second of three phases of the campaign will start within a few weeks with a poster campaign to reinforce the message.
Phase three will feature a hard-hitting poster campaign with serious messages that sexual harassment will not be tolerated, as well as highlight the experience of victims and emphasise a ”zero tolerance” approach. — Sapa