a large majority of employees have already been exposed to inappropriate behavior

On Wednesday March 30, a law from last August will come into force in companies. It provides that repeated statements and behaviors with a sexist connotation will be likely to be qualified as “sexual harassment”. However, who says sexual harassment says criminal prosecution. Thus, sexual jokes, sexist behavior, may therefore have serious consequences for their authors.

Sexism is language or behavior that creates an offensive, hostile, degrading or humiliating environment. Many French employees are also subject to it. According to the latest survey produced by the firm Ekilibre Conseil with OpinionWay, no less than 60% of employees, both public and private, have already been exposed at least once to sexist or sexual behavior in the context of their work. Three-quarters of respondents believe that this phenomenon has no tendency to decrease, and on the contrary, for 14% that the phenomenon is increasing. For nearly two-thirds of the victims of these sexist comments or behaviors with a sexual connotation, it comes directly from colleagues.

Among the types of actions, there are especially inappropriate jokes. 47% of respondents say they hear jokes with a sexual connotation. But it can go further. 14% of respondents have been the subject of insistent looks on a part of their body, whistles, gestures or rude noises with a sexual connotation. Women are, unsurprisingly, three times more exposed than men to this type of behavior.

There is worse: 10% of those questioned were the subject of a request for an act of a sexual nature. And 6% of them were the subject of contact without consent. Clearly a sexual assault. A large proportion of victims, 40%, admit to not having known how to react. But when they are asked what should be done to fight against this phenomenon, many believe that the company must have a clear policy on the subject, with referents trained in these questions and procedures that can accommodate alerts.