Friday, December 08, 2006

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’.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Beatroot wrote:
"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."


Yes, one does like to think that last bit, doesn't one? In fact you probably honestly believe it, but not a chance in the world.

beatroot said...

I actually DO believe it. And if you read the post I go further…I used to pay much more attention to their essays, exams because of it.

I remember one exam paper I got here in Warsaw University. It had strange single letter capitals places in random places throughout the text. Of course, I started to pay more attention to this particular paper (usually grading exam papers is VERY boring). Putting all the capital letters together I started to make words…LUST….DESIRE…that kind of stuff. I knew the student who was doing…one of the flirtatious ones.

So when I went back to the content proper of the paper I gave it a forensic going over…only to discover that much of what she was writing was word for word out of the notes I gave her in a lecture once. Plagiarism!

Now I would have probably not noticed that unless I got the strange capitals and had paid more attention consequently.

So, believe it or not, she got a lower mark for the exam than if she hadn’t done something silly like tried to chat me up via an exam paper.

Anonymous said...

Bravo! Bravo! Bravissimo!
You are the moral benchmark we've been waiting for. Beatroot for PM!

beatroot said...

I'd never thought of myself as a moral 'benchmark'. More a moral root vegetable, actually.