Polish sexual harassment at work

In the wake of ‘sex-gate’ (see here) the hot topic at the Polish workplace this week has been ‘sexual favours’ for promotion.

Everyone is talking about it. In an opinion poll for Polskie Radio by Pentor Research International, 33% of those asked believe that women are forced to have sex with their boss ‘very often, or often’ if they want to, er, climb up the greasy poll and get promotion. Only six percent thought that this never happens.

To say it never happens would be ridiculous. But to believe that it happens ‘very often’ is equally silly. But it would also be naive to believe that sexual dynamics does not play some role in the way men and women interact at work.

I am one of those people who prefer having a female boss to a male one. And it’s probably because the ‘sexual dynamic’ is always somewhere buried beneath the more official interactions. A bit a flirting never hurt anyone.

But I can’t say that any female boss has jumped me bones, and at the same time as she whispered sweet nothings in my ear promised me a pay rise. I have never had to get my leg over to get a leg up the ladder. .

But what I did experience quite often when I was working as a university lecturer – in the UK and Poland - was thinly veiled, and not so thinly veiled, advances from female students. It was always quite obvious and I quite enjoyed it, to be honest. It never affected the way I marked their work, though. In fact, I got even tougher with them, spent longer marking their papers looking for weaknesses.

But over emphasizing the potentially abusive nature of sexual dynamics at work is a deeply negative development and points to how we are trusting each other less and less. .

In US and UK universities it’s often the case where the male lecturer avoids being alone with a female student, or if he does makes sure the door is left open. That mistrust between adults is corrosive to teaching and learning and I hope that level of suspicion doesn’t come to campus or the workplace in Poland.

It’s better to trust our fellow men and women than be suspicious that every opening of the door or other courtesy is an invitation for a little rumpy-pumpy, or the opening salvo of ‘sexual blackmail’.