I'm Shivani Gupta, and welcome to the Ask Shivani podcast. I believe that one of the best presents that you can give yourself is time to be able to sit down and ask yourself some questions. I believe that the quality of the question that you ask yourself will determine the quality of your life.

Hi, everybody, and welcome to the Ask Shivani podcast. today's podcast is going to be a little bit of a challenge in terms of looking at this topic of sexual harassment in the workplace. Now, let's get the definition clear what is actually defined as sexual harassment because many people seem to have very different views in terms of what's okay and what's not and what's classified as sexual harassment and what is not. I guess the legal definition is that sexual harassment is an unwelcome sexual advance, unwelcome requests for sexual favors or any other unwelcome conduct of any sexual nature. And it's not that who the person that is causing the advance worries about what happens if the person who feels offended or humiliated or even intimidated and what a reasonable person would under those circumstances.

So the Sex Discrimination Act in in Australia has been around since 1984. And it basically defines that the nature and circumstances in which sexual harassment is unlawful. And the examples include is unwelcome touching, staring or leering, suggestive comments or jokes, sexually explicit pictures or posters, unwanted invitations to go out on dates, requests for sex intrusive questions about a person's private life or body and brushing up against a person insults based on sex. They may be sexually explicit physical contact, and they may be things like emails or text message or jokes that are sent around. Anyway, the details of this can be found in 1.2.4, and it's called the sexual harassment in the workplace or code of practice for employers and further information.

I just wanted to start this conversation around, you know, my personal experience. I started my career career off as an engineer and worked at a number of organizations before moving into other areas of leadership and management. And when I look at that list of unwelcoming touching, yes experience that steering or leering? Oh, my goodness, I experienced a lot of that, where they're sexually explicit pictures or posters, absolutely. At that time in the workplace, was the unwanted invitations to go out and date? Absolutely. There wasn't a direct request for sex. There was absolutely intrusive questions about my life. And there was absolutely hands on my back going to different events. And you know, at that stage, certainly some emails and jokes that were sent around. So out of those 10 or 11, things, I'd say, Yeah, probably nine or 10 of those were things that I had experienced over a number of years. And as I was often the only female working in that particular team, or sometimes even in the organization, in that particular section of the organization.

You know, there's a bit of that Australian joke that says, Well, you know, it's it didn't mean anything. It's a joke. It didn't mean anything. Of course, I wouldn't want to upset you. And you could get away with some of that. And you think, Okay, well, you know, this was in the early 90s. And that's what, you know, people went through, certainly through the 2000s, as well. But the issue is that, you know, I end up mentoring, quite a lot of women. And I've now mentored over 1200 women, over almost, you know, 20 years. And when women asked me to work with them, often it's around some sort of improvement of their leadership capability. So it may be looking at the way that they communicate, they might want to do a bit of a career plan in terms of where they are, they often sometimes want to look at their communication skills. They want to become a more productive leader. They want to become a more conscious leader, they want to become a more connected leader.

So often the conversations start off around leadership, but invariably, you know, we dive into different elements of personal and the amount of times that women in voluntarily have told me that they have experienced some effects. Sexual harassment, most will then brush it off in that conversation, because they don't want to make a big deal out of it. And some of those women have actually taken it up to the next level. So they've either raised it with the manager, or they raised it with human resources, or they've, you know, even taken very few and far between, you know, from a legal perspective, try to get some legal advice on it. Very few people have actually done anything about it. And despite being 2021, these issues continue. And in fact, we've seen a number of these issues in our media this year, in terms of people claiming that they have been more than sexually harassed, they've, they've actually been sexually abused in Parliament, there have been certainly a lot of cases in the media about boys and girls, particularly in some private schools, and also some public schools. And this whole notion of sexual harassment in our workplaces, it's continued. It also seems to be a little bit on the rise. So it's not that Oh, yeah, that happened in that era. It's happening in our era. And unless we actually choose to do something about it, it's probably going to continue in other people's in our children's era as well.

I think one of the questions that people have asked is, you know, who's, who's liable, who's responsible for sexual harassment and doing something if people are being sexually harassed? Well, I think in my perspective, that if everybody took some interest in, you know, who may be sexually being harassed, or what's happening, whether it's happened to you or not, then if it becomes everybody's business, then you know, it can be, it can be really well organized and sorted, and more voices can be heard around it. Certainly the part that's on the rise is, which is can also be seen as sexual harassment is crude conversation, or, you know, innuendo and offensive jokes. There's certainly more than ever, that we've got access to obscene or pornographic materials. You know, children, unless they've got some limitations in terms of their computers, and their phones have access to things perhaps I know, our growing up didn't have access to it at all, you know, those sort of things might have only been accessible on a DVD or, you know, you had to go through somebody who wasn't quite right that you normally wouldn't have anything to do with now you can touch a screen and you can basically get on to different sites, which then also, particularly for people, younger people can plant those seeds in their mind in terms of what's occurring and what's not.

I think the the trick that I've had when I'm speaking to some of these women is you know what to do about it, I think the first thing I've always suggested to them is that they probably need to note that down in some sort of a diary. And note down some of the details if they can, because that will come in really handy, if they ever do need to do anything more about it. And the second thing is, you know, you need to report it, you absolutely need to report it in the workplace. And you also might want to look at perhaps accessing things that some organizations offer, which is EAP, or employment assistant program, where you have access to a counselor, or even a psychologist, where you could speak to somebody else about this experience, or experiences if you've had more than one around what's actually occurring. Because, you know, no different to me, I remember experiencing a bully at school, that if we choose not to do anything about it than that might continue. So if you choose to do nothing about it, you might find that that sexual harassment continues, I have certainly known women that have left their workplaces based on being sexually harassed, not being brave enough to do. And I've also come across women that have raised it and nothing was done, you know, in that organization. So if you're listening to this, and it's something that you've experienced considering a lot of women in not only Australia, but in the world and the Western world experience, sexual harassment, that it's really important to really think about that.

And one of the things I've always said to the women in the mentoring programs is look, I want you to think about and close your eyes about, you know, being going through this sexual harassment, particular experience. And now I want you to close your eyes and think about somebody that you really love going through that maybe your sister, maybe a mother, maybe a close friend. And if they've got a daughter, I want you to now imagine that your daughter's going through that and what guidance and advice would you give her or your sister, somebody that you really love? What advice would you give them if they had come across sexual harassment? And often at that point, there's an aha moment where they say yes, I will do something about it. And so it's really important for us to be able to raise that conversation and be able to do something about it.

It's the more we raise the The more that we raise issues that we have in our society, and I believe that sexual harassment, it's not a employer issue or employee issue, I think it's a societal issue. And the more that we are willing to stand up and talk about it, the better chances that there are that something will be done about it. And, you know, sometimes it's, you know, it can be a colleague, and I've also had women that they've had the manager or a board member, you know, come across as being a very gentle thing, well, I'm just leading you into the function room that we've got for work, but they have, you know, put their hand up their back, if it feels offensive to you, if you feel humiliated, or you felt intimidated, then you have a right to put a complaint of sexual harassment into your organization. But you can obviously also put that in around human rights and equal opportunity commission and, and talk through some of those as well.

I don't have the answers for all of this in this podcast today. It's an area that has bothered me for a long time. And it's something that comes up continually. In my conversations with women, we can start to see a little bit of a rise in the media. And one of the things that I wanted to do was ask the questions and see if it's something that's happened to you. Are you willing to do something about it? If it's happened to somebody that you love? Are you willing to encourage them to do something about it, and see if that we can change the voice of what's occurring around sexual harassment and see if we can end it once and for all? Thank you for listening. Always, always welcome any questions, any comments, and look forward to provoking conversations with some of my guests and the conversations that we continue to have.

Thank you for the privilege that you continue to listen to the Ask Shivani podcast. I'm Shivani Gupta. And you've been listening to the Ask Shivani podcast where I'd like to ask some questions. Thank you so much for listening. Please follow Ask Shivani on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. And if you haven't done so, please go to the Apple podcasts and subscribe rate and review this podcast. It would mean a lot. Thank you.