Workers reluctant to report sexual harassment: Women’s Legal Service

More women are coming forward with stories of workplace sexual harassment, something which more employers need to take action on, Tasmanian lawyers say.

A co-worker witnesses inappropriate work behaviour. Picture: istock

Tasmanians who experience sexual harassment in the workplace are often reluctant to report predatory behaviours, which for many workplaces are normalised, the CEO of Women’s Legal Service Tasmania says.

For the past two years, the service has been running the Working Women’s Centre, a workplace sexual harassment program which provides legal advice and representation.

Working Women’s Centre principal solicitor Jodie Lee and Women’s Legal Service Tasmania CEO Yvette Cehtel.

Principal solicitor of the program, Jodie Lee, said referrals to the program had been steadily increasing.

“It’s all serious,” Ms Lee said.

“I did have a client disclose a sexual assault at a work training event.

“Part of getting her instructions was to ask if she had made a formal complaint at work to a HR manager or a manager or a safe person.

“She said ‘no because it happened in front of all of them I had no one to report to’.”

A survey by Our Watch Institute, an organisation for the prevention of violence against women, shows one in three workers experienced sexual harassment.

Since 2023, new laws require employers to take steps to prevent workplace sexual harassment.

Of the 500 workplace leaders surveyed, only 60 per cent were aware of the changes, and of the 1000 employees, only 39 per cent were aware.

Workplace sexual harassment has been illegal for 40 years.

“In general, behaviour is not taken seriously, and women are then victimised,” Ms Lee said.

“They’re often sacked and victimised for coming forward.”

The service will hold a conference in Hobart next week, looking into the different aspects of workplace sexual harassment.

Women’s Legal Service CEO Yvette Cehtel said it was important to raise consciousness of the sort of behaviour which wasn’t okay.

“There’s a range of things, from inappropriate sexual jokes, unwelcome advances, right through to sexual assaults,” she said.

Yvette Cehtel, chief executive of Women's Legal Service Tasmania. Picture: Supplied

“What we’re finding is this kind of behaviour in workplaces is really normalised, we’re seeing a wide breadth of women reaching out for support from the service (Working Women’s Centre) to navigate what they’re going to do about the behaviour they’re experiencing at work.

“We’ve seen the full ambit of behaviours and prior to this program, there wasn’t any service that was necessarily showing these complaints.

Ms Cehtel said it was likely many incidents were going unreported.

“I think nationally there’s a normalisation of this kind of behaviour in Australian workplaces,” Ms Cehtel said.

“That’s certainly what we’re seeing in Tasmania.

“There’s still a reluctance for a lot of women to identify what they’re experiencing as sexual harassment in workplaces, a lot of the behaviour is considered so normal, it’s not being picked up.”

She said there was also a culture of women signing nondisclosure agreements.

“There’s an assumption women have to sign them,” she said.

“The problem with doing that is we don’t have a benchmark for how matters are being resolved and don’t build up what we rely on in the law as precedence.

“There’s a lot of regret down the track because they can’t communicate with certain people, depending on the terms of the NDA and they can’t speak out.”

The Safe Workplaces Sexual Harassment Conference will be held at the UTAS law school on the 14th and 15th of November.

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Originally published as Workers reluctant to report sexual harassment: Women’s Legal Service