Women sexually harassed in workplace often suffer job loss, pay cut: Aware study

SINGAPORE - When a young woman's manager started touching her hair and making jokes of a sexual nature four months after she joined the company, she was in denial that he had bad intentions.

But as the harassment got worse and more frequent, Klee (not her real name) found herself feeling helpless.

He would chase her around the office and trap her in corners with a smile on his face, under the guise of a joke. But the fear that Klee felt was real.

"He had a lot of power over me, so I couldn't be too nasty with him because he could do things like deduct my pay, or not approve my claims," the woman in her 20s said.

The small company had no human resources department for her to report her superior, who was popular and well liked among colleagues.

When she had an opportunity to switch to another field six months later, Klee jumped at it despite having to take a pay cut.

"I joined the other company not because it was a very attractive job, but because I knew I had to leave this company," she said.

She made a police report after leaving her previous company and investigations are ongoing.

Klee is among the many women in Singapore who experienced career disruptions following workplace sexual harassment, says a report by gender equality organisation Association of Women for Action and Research (Aware).

The report, published on Dec 8, drew findings from 39 women who faced workplace sexual harassment in the past five years and were interviewed between 2019 and 2020.

The findings show that harassment led to various outcomes such as having to quit jobs, spending months or years out of work, low productivity and taking on lower-paying jobs.

Sada (not her real name) was taken aback when a popular team leader started giving her unwanted attention in 2017, including sending her messages inviting her to meet him at night.

The then 29-year-old felt uncomfortable with his advances, but he ignored her requests to stop.

After she again voiced her discomfort, the man's friend approached Sada in the office and warned her to keep mum about the situation. As the conversation grew heated, he lunged at her, but she was able to dodge him.

When she reported the situation to the human resources department, she was stunned that she did not receive help but was instead told to sign a settlement to resolve the dispute.

Colleagues started to distance themselves from her as she was relatively new compared with the popular team leader.

"A lot of them said things like, 'She's telling stories', but the fact is I wouldn't want to go down that route. Why would I invite so much hate and doubt?" she said.

After she left the company, Sada spent a year jobless and sought counselling and help from Aware to deal with her emotions.

As she no longer felt comfortable around male colleagues, Sada joined a female-dominated industry in marketing.

The Aware report found that more than half of the respondents, or 22 out of 39, quit their jobs after experiencing workplace sexual harassment, with one in four undergoing a change in their career paths afterwards.

Seven in 10 respondents had been employed for less than a year at their companies when the harassment took place.

Ms Shailey Hingorani, head of Aware's workplace harassment and discrimination advisory, said: "Survivors of workplace sexual harassment leave their jobs to put a stop to the harassment itself, or because of subsequent mental health impacts, negative reporting experiences or retaliatory behaviours."

"On the other hand, if they receive supportive first responses from colleagues, assistance from human resources trained in sensitive grievance handling, and protective measures against retaliation, they may not need to resort to such a drastic step," she added.