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Harassment is top concern: survey

Sexual harassment at work remains the top concern for working women, results of a survey released yesterday showed.

The survey on women's issues at work was conducted by the Modern Women's Association and the Women's Issues Research Committee of the Taipei Bar Association (TBA) last month on the Internet, with 1,000 valid responses.

The results showed that 61.5 percent of the respondents said they were worried about sexual harassment. Responses to further questions revealed that 37.2 percent of them had been victims of sexual harassment.

The survey showed that 37.4 percent of the victims chose not to seek help.

"In Taiwan's work environment, [sexual harassment victims] can't just stand up and report the case," Jennifer Wang (王如玄), director of the committee, told a news conference at the TBA. "If you do so, you'd likely be forced to leave your work."

Survey results support Wang's remark.

Of the victims who chose not to report their cases, 47.5 percent said they didn't do so because they were afraid that they might lose their jobs, be subject to revenge or simply believed reporting their cases would complicate the problem.

Although Wang encourages all victims to defend themselves, she advised that "you should gather enough evidence before reporting the case."

Other than harassment, 45.3 percent of the respondents were concerned that they were paid less even though they did the same work as their male counterparts, 42.6 percent complained about sexual discrimination in promotion, 36.9 percent believe they were more likely to be fired than their male colleagues, 29.2 percent thought that their boss prefers men for certain positions, while 24 percent said their companies discriminate against pregnant women.

A small-sized business owner who spoke on condition of anonymity admitted that some discrimination exists.

"We don't discriminate against women, but we do prefer women who are married and already have children," the business owner said. "That's because when a single woman gets married, we're required to grant her paid marriage leave and when she is pregnant, we're required to grant her paid parental leaves after she gives birth to a child."

The parental leave especially troubles the owner, since the Labor Standards Law (勞動基準法) stipulates that paid parental leaves may be up to eight weeks.

"Paying someone for not working over 50 days is really a burden, especially for a small business like ours," the owner said.

However, foundation executive director Chang Chin-li (張錦麗) said that creating a good work environment would help raise the country's competitiveness and thus urged both the government and businesses to put more effort into protecting the rights of female workers.
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