I attended the seminar "Predatory Sexual Harassment, The Anaerobic Bacteria of Organizational Life" by Debbie Dougherty. She was a lovely speaker who was full of charm. First, she explained what makes predatory behavior in the workplace. These were her definitions:
-Persistent behavior
-Multiple Targets
-Organizationally supported
-Operates in a field of crafted Science
Then she moved on to outline the legal definition and how that can seem rather ambiguous and thus, the traditional approach lacks specificity. This is how Dougherty was led to create the Cultural Approach to Sexual Harassment.
The Cultural Approach to Sexual Harassment recognizes that sexual harassment is woven into the culture of an organization, and thus it occurs every day and it is normalized. This is highly destructive to organizational culture because it results in a loss of money and employees, but most importantly, it damages their brand and reputation. With all of this in mind, the speaker moved on to ask how we could change what was happening in organizations. We brainstormed using a bubble circle chart and proposed our various solutions. Some of these included increasing awareness of what predatory behavior really is, along with better administrative or executive action.
Overall, I was pleasantly surprised by the interesting points that Dougherty made. She shared a lot of ideas that I had never thought about before. Such as, what really is predatory behavior? How do we react to it? Etc. I think that this seminar was highly beneficial to me because I can now recognize what predatory behavior is and if it is occurring in a situation. I think that awareness is a crucial part of stopping the problem, and I believe that more people need to see seminars like this one so that they are educated on the topic.
Best,
KT
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