Topic: Workplace Sexual Harassment
Country: Israel
Delegate Name: Jasmyne Bush
School: Williamston High School
Topic page: background guide and all position papers All Israel position papers GLIMUN 2018 committees
Workplace sexual harassment is "unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, and other verbal or physical conduct of asexual nature constitute sexual harassment when this conduct explicitly or implicitly affects an individual's work performance, or creates an intimidating, hostile, or offensive work environment.” There is more than just sexual harassment. Quid Pro Quo (Something for Something) Harassment, hostile environment, retaliation, and unlawful harassment are also forms of harassment that women all over the world go through. The biggest issue of this epidemic is that women feel as though they can’t come forward if they are experiencing this harassment. Israel currently has a code in place to aid harassment in the workplace called, The Voluntary Code Against Sexual Harassment. The code is a structured and systematic tool for dealing with the phenomenon, and its purpose is to assist employers in implementing the law and in creating a respectful and clean organizational culture. Israel has experienced many cases of sexual harassment. In 2001, former Minister of Defense Yitzhak Mordechai was indicted for sexual assaults and resigned from public life in ignominy. In 2011, a former president Moshe Katsav was imprisoned, convicted of two counts of rape and other sexual offenses, much of which took place in his office. Lesser events, however, went unreported. Israel encourages all countries to adopt The Voluntary Code Against Sexual Harassment as a solution to this epidemic. The resolution condemns sexual harassment in all forms, especially against women and girls, and emphasizes the need to take measures to prevent and eliminate it, raise awareness, educate, promote research, and collect and analyze data and statistics.The code also applies to situations such as child athletes traveling to competitions accompanied by adult coaches, doctors and physical therapists. Israel expects employers to be eager to embrace the code in order to avoid lawsuits and the loss of productivity that comes from sexual harassment allegations due to absences, emotional stress and office gossip.Once these guidelines are embedded in the DNA of the organization they become easy to implement. Inspections of each participating workplace will take place every two years to determine if the standards set out in the code are being upheld. A tailor-made intervention consisting of two days a year should be upheld that enables countries to specifically understand the special characteristics of sexual harassment in a specific organization and then develop a prevention program suited to the organization. The priority is to introduce the Voluntary Code Against Sexual Harassment in local municipalities, businesses and organizations that the association identifies as high risk – such as the military, police, healthcare organizations, airlines, media outlets and first-response networks – because of vulnerability factors such as big gaps in age and gender (usually, older men supervising young women), night time working hours and frequent operations outside the office environment.
