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進入《TAIPEI TIMES》 Groups call for complaint procedure
Women’s rights groups hold a news conference in Taipei yesterday. Photo: Yang Yuan-ting, Taipei Times
SILENCE: Power relations in the workplace and a lack of preventive measures were identified as reasons sexual harassment cases are ignored, a charity said
By Shelley Shan / Staff Reporter
The government needs to establish a system for victims of sexual harassment to file complaints by updating the law, women’s rights groups said yesterday.
The call to amend the Act of Gender Equality in Employment （性別工作平等法） and other laws came after a series of sexual harassment allegations against politicians, political campaigners and writers last week.
Campaigners cited a survey by the Ministry of Labor （MOL） from 2017 to 2021 which showed that 70 to 80 percent of respondents who said they had been sexually harassed in the workplace chose to remain silent.
When asked why people did not file complaints, 15.5 percent of the respondents said they were concerned about gossip from coworkers, 13.5 percent said they were afraid of losing their jobs, 7 percent said they feared experiencing trauma again and 5.1 percent said they did not know how to file complaints.
A 2021 survey by the Garden of Hope Foundation found that only about a quarter of the respondents who had been sexually harassed in the workplace tried to file complaints.
However, 50 percent of them said the greatest difficulty they encountered during the process of filing complaints was insufficient evidence, while about 38 percent said that their employers tended to address the issues passively, the survey said.
The foundation identified power relations and an imperfect prevention and control system for sexual harassment in the workplace as two reasons so many cases were ignored.
“The MOL saw the ‘silent majority’ of the sexual harassment victims and did not propose strategies to tackle the issue,” foundation chief executive officer Wang Yue-hao （王玥好） said.
They only oversee the employers and make sure they have measures in place to prevent sexual harassment, but they are busy passing the buck to other agencies when it comes to protection of the victims,” Wang said.
“This has led to a significant gap between the supposedly ideal Act of Gender Equality in Employment and its implementation,” Wang said.
The MOL should work with the Ministry of Health and Welfare and corporate employers to establish a dual track system, Wang said.
“The government should allocate funding to recruit expert groups to help employers handle and investigate sexual harassment complaints and offer counseling and legal assistance to victims,” Wang said.
Society often treats sexual harassment cases as nothing more than trivial and unrequited romantic pursuits, Awakening Foundation legal affairs director Tai Ching-yun （戴靖芸） said,
Victims are often asked not to take these matters too seriously and to look at “the bigger picture,” Tai said.
“They are also asked to consider the negative impact that being involved in a sexual harassment scandal could have on their careers, even if the laws were applied in their favor,” Tai said.
“In the short run, political parties need to set up internal mechanisms to accept sexual harassment complaints from party members, and the standards must be stricter than those stipulated by law,” she said.
“The Act of Gender Equality in Employment stipulates that employers are responsible for investigating sexual harassment allegations, even if the perpetrator of the offense is the employer themself,” Tai said, adding that “employers could be players and referees simultaneously.”
“Such a loophole has existed for more than 20 years, and we are urging the government to close this loophole by proposing an amendment to the act,” Tai said.
Tai identified problems with the system of handling sexual harassment complaints, which could render the laws powerless and cause confusion.
Employers often have trouble investigating sexual harassment complaints if the perpetrators are clients or business partners, she said.
The laws that are applicable in each case are different depending on where the offense takes place, she said.
The MOL, which enforces the Act of Gender Equality in Employment, addresses sexual harassment complaints arising from the workplace, whereas the Gender Equity Education Act （性別平等教育法） is enforced by the Ministry of Education, which addresses the offense in schools, she added.
The Sexual Harassment Prevention Act （性騷擾防治法） addresses complaints that are neither from the workplace nor from schools, she said, adding that people could have trouble deciding where they should file complaints.
新聞來源：TAIPEI TIMES
