Where do we draw the line?

One morning earlier of last week, I overheard one MP in the parliament presenting some statistics on sexual harassment at workplace on the morning news while I was sipping my hot milo before leaving for work. I didn’t stay on to listen (or I would be late for work) but what I managed to gather in that few minutes was, apparently, sexual harassment at workplace in Malaysia is very low where only about 200+ cases have been reported since the year 1999. While driving to work, I couldn’t help wondering if those numbers were the true representative of what’s happening in this country or was it a case of under-reporting (or gross cover-ups).

I remember reading in the papers recently that a girl had a shock of her life when she was asked to take off her top during an interview for her potential employer to ‘assess’ whether she qualifies for the job or not since one of the criteria for the job was one need to be ‘beautiful’. Obviously, since the incident made it to the front page of many local papers, she didn’t get the job and the interviewer ended up with a legal action instead. This is one clear example of sexual harassment, am sure all would agree. But how do you truly define sexual harassments? Does verbal flirting among colleagues or between superiors and employees considered as sexual harassment? If not, where do you draw the line? How about if the verbal flirting from your male colleague or boss becoming too frequent or too obvious leading to office gossips hence making you uncomfortable or worst, miserable? And if the flirting leads to certain conditional favours like you-go-out-with-me-for-a-drink-or-else-I-wont-approve-your-leaves… is that still acceptable? If it is not, does that alone have enough weight to be brought upon a disciplinary board?

And how about touching? Of course if a male colleague or boss start touching your bums or boobs, you have the rights to complain but how about usually acceptable gestures like a pat on the back? I remember one superior at my old workplace has a habit of doing just that.. he would pat on people backs not just to congratulate on a work well done, but also when having usual conversation and even when saying hi while passing by at corridors. Some female staff found the habit a bit annoying that they would stay a distance away from him but others found it perfectly ok since he was more like a father figure… totally different perspective by different people...

I have also come across this one happy-go-lucky doctor who like to pinch female staff... It’s just his way of saying hi! No complaint against him so far but again, some would walk away whenever he enters the room/ward because the pinches can sometimes be really hard that your arms may turn blue! I personally don’t see it as any type of harassments but wonder if any other female staff thinking the opposite.

Alas, there is also one doctor who is very good at what he does and fully committed to his patients but who is also a well-known ‘Mark Sloan’ among the female staff due to his skirt-chasing activities although nobody really know how many has really fallen for his tricks. You’ll be unfortunate if you become his target (or fortunate if sleeping with a doctor is one of your wish lists!) since being a goal-orientated person as he is, he definitely won’t let you off easily! If this is the case, would you file a complaint or would you take it as a compliment (knowing that you’re desirable can definitely boost your self-confidence, would you agree?) and move along without making a big fuss out of it?