Pursuant to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court in the seminal Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson [14] decision, sexual harassment is a form of sex discrimination which is illegal under U.S. law [14-19]. Initially, however, it is important to note that the law does not proscribe all conduct of a sexual nature in the workplace; consequently only unwelcome sexual conduct will constitute a legal violation [14-19].

Sexual harassment can encompass unwelcome sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, as well as other verbal and physical harassment of a sexual nature [14-19]. This conduct must explicitly or implicitly adversely affect a person’s employment, unreasonably interfere with a person’s work performance, or create an intimidating, hostile, or offensive work environment [14-19]. However, the law in the U.S. does not prohibit simple teasing, offhand comments, or isolated instances which are not very serious in nature; yet harassment is illegal when it is so frequent, pervasive, and severe that it creates the aforementioned hostile environment [14-19]. Moreover, the EEOC when investigating complaints of sexual harassment will examine the whole record and the totality of the circumstances, including the circumstances of the alleged harassment, the nature of the sexual conduct, and the context in which the alleged incidents occurred. A determination of the legality of a particular action is made based on the facts of the case on a case-by-case basis [14-20].

Determining Whether a Workplace Environment is “Hostile”. The Supreme Court ruled in the Meritor Savings Bank case that to violate Title VII of the Civil Rights Act the sexual harassment must be “sufficiently severe or pervasive” so as to alter working conditions and create an “abusive working environment” [14]. There are several factors to determine if a workplace environment is abusive, intimidating, hostile, or offensive, to wit: “(1) whether the conduct was verbal or physical, or both; (2) how frequently it was repeated; (3) whether the conduct was hostile and patently offensive; (4) whether the alleged harasser was a co-worker or a supervisor; (5) whether the others joined in perpetuating the harassment; and (6) whether the harassment was directed at more than one individual” [15-19]. The key legal standard for determining if the alleged harassment is sufficiently severe or pervasive is the objective standard of the “reasonable person” [15-19]. As such, according to one federal district court, the law is not to be used “as a vehicle for vindicating the petty slights suffered by the hypersensitive” [15-19, 21]. Consequently, “if the challenged conduct would not substantially affect the work environment of a reasonable person no violation should be found” [14-19]. The EEOC provides an illustration, to wit: “Sexual flirtation or innuendo, even vulgar language that is trivial or merely annoying, would probably not establish a hostile environment” [14-19].

The EEOC, however, has brought considerable confusion to the so-called objective standard by bringing in a subjective element. That is, the EEOC further states that “the reasonable person standard should consider the victim’s perspective and not stereotyped notions of acceptable behavior [14-19]. The EEOC then provides an example, to wit: “A workplace in which sexual slurs, displays of ‘girlie’ pictures, and other offensive conduct abound can constitute a hostile work environment even if many people deem it to be harmless and insignificant” [14-19]. In order to establish this subjectivity standard, the complaining party merely has to testify that he or she found the alleged conduct to be hostile, offensive, or abusive when it occurred [22]. Moreover, unless the alleged perpetrator can produce evidence to the contrary, for example, the conduct of the complaining party, “the subjective prong of the analysis will be satisfied” [22]. Consequently, what the EEOC has “accomplished” is to completely conflate objective and subjective standards in determining a “hostile” workplace, thereby substantially complicating the life of employers, managers, employees, attorneys, and judges and juries.

Moreover, to further exacerbate the confusion as well as enlarge the legal pitfalls for employers, the courts are not uniform in applying legal standards that should apply in sexual harassment cases. Lewis [23], in examining the case law, finds that the courts have used three different standards, to wit: 1) a “reasonable woman” standard; 2) a “reasonable person” standard; and 3) a “reasonable victim” standard. The “reasonable woman” standard means the courts will focus on the unique female’s perception of harassing conduct; the “reasonable person” standard focuses on the impact of the harassing conduct on a reasonable person; and the “reasonable victim” standard focuses on the perception of the aggrieved party [23]. The courts that use the latter standard and abjure the “reasonable person” standard do so because the “reasonable person” standard might “reinforce the prevailing level of discrimination” and result in the harassers continuing “to harass merely because a particular discriminatory practice was common” [23]. Druhan [24] explains the rationale behind the “reasonable woman” standard, to wit: “The court applied the reasonable woman standard because women have different experiences with harassment and different perceptions about what constitutes harassment”. The “reasonable woman” standard also allows for “flexibility” and “respects the differences” between female and male views on sexual harassment [24].

Regarding this key issue in the law, the conclusion, posits Lewis [23], is that it is a “difficult to task to determine” the standards the courts will apply. In addition, the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals has stated that since the line between merely boorish behavior and illegal sexual harassment is not a precise one, judges should allow juries to resolve such issues at trial rather than judges deciding them beforehand [25]. Having juries resolve these issues means, obviously, that the employer is now engaged in defending itself in a federal lawsuit involving a perhaps sympathetic jury.

Welcome v. Unwelcome Conduct. Critical to the analysis herein is the distinction the law makes between “welcome” and “unwelcome” sexual conduct. The Supreme Court emphasized in the Meritor decision that to be legally actionable the sexual actions or conduct must be “unwelcome” [14]. Ramsini [26] explains the rationale for the “unwelcome” requirement, to wit: It makes at least intuitive sense why the Supreme Court would characterize unwelcomeness as the ‘gravamen’ of any sexual harassment claim. After all, courts are not in the business of awarding damages to plaintiffs who were confronted with conduct that they, in fact, welcomed”. Accordingly, as part of the complaining party’s initial hostile environment case she or he must prove that the conduct was “unwelcome”. “Unwelcome conduct” means that the complaining employee did not solicit or incite the conduct and that the complaining employee regarded the conduct as undesirable or offensive [15-18]. However, there is a major problem with this “unwelcome” requirement; and that is the Supreme Court has not decided from what perspective the “unwelcomeness” analysis should take place. Ramsini [26] points out that “the Supreme Court has not explicitly told lower courts from which perspective the analysis should take place”. Consequently, Ramsini [26] describes the “multiple perspectives” the lower federal courts have used to determine whether conduct was unwelcome, to wit: “The court could ask whether the plaintiff subjectively perceived the accused’s conduct as unwelcome, or whether a reasonable person in her position would perceive the conduct as unwelcome, or whether a reasonable person in his position would have known that the plaintiff did not welcome his conduct. Due to the lack of direction from the Supreme Court, the courts of appeals have developed their own tests, most of which do not involve a clear perspective”.

Regardless of the perspective, from an evidentiary standpoint an important fact is whether the aggrieved communicated that the conduct was unwelcome. As such, the EEOC emphasizes:

When there is an indication of unwelcomeness or when the credibility of the parties is at issue, the charging party’s claim will be considerably strengthened if she made a contemporaneous complaint or protest. Particularly when the alleged harasser may have some reason (e.g., prior consensual relationship) to believe that the advances will be welcome, it is important for the victim to communicate that the conduct is unwelcome [18].

Moreover, evidence of the complaining party’s conduct, dress, or speech, particularly if deemed “provocative”, is admissible on the issue of whether the sexual conduct was unwelcome [14]. However, the courts and the EEOC are cognizant of the fact that sexual attraction and actions often may play a role in daily social interactions among employees and that people do at times use sexually explicit language as well as tell off-color jokes [18]. Finally, if an employee has willingly participated in conduct of a sexual nature, but then ceases to do so and claims that any continuing conduct has created a hostile work environment, the burden, says the EEOC, is on the employee to demonstrate that the further sexual conduct is unwelcome and rises to the level of work-related harassment [18].

Isolated Instances of Harassment. Another problematic area of the law pertinent to the examination herein is the liability for isolated instances of harassment. As a general rule, a single incident or isolated incidents of offensive sexual conduct or remarks will not create a hostile or abusive environment; rather, there usually must be some type of a pattern of offensive conduct [18]. However, a single incident of harassment may be sufficient to constitute a legal violation if it is severe; and the more severe the harassment is, the less need to show a repetitive series of incidents [18]. In reviewing recent case law, Concannon [27] concludes that “taken together, the…cases stand for the proposition that a significant showing of severity can overcome a relative lack of frequency (or ‘pervasiveness’) of such conduct. This is so even if the conduct in question consists only of verbal harassment”. One court tried to explain the level of physical harassment required to sustain a sexual harassment claim. In Hostetler v. Quality of Dining, Inc. [28], the court stated: “There are some forms of physical contact which, although unwelcome and uncomfortable for the person touched, are relatively minor. Even more intimate or more crude physical acts – a hand on the thigh, a kiss on the lips, a pinch on the buttocks – may be considered sufficiently abusive to be described as ‘severe’ when they occur in isolation…. When the harassment moves beyond the sort of casual contact which (if it were consensual) might be expected between friendly co-workers, and manifests in more intimate, intrusive forms of contact, it becomes increasingly difficult to write the conduct off as a pedestrian annoyance”.

The EEOC, moreover, presumes that any unwelcome, intentional touching of a person’s intimate body areas is sufficiently severe to be offensive and alter working conditions and thus constitute a legal violation [18]. In such a case, the burden is on the alleged aggressor (and employer) to demonstrate that the unwelcome touching conduct was not sufficiently severe to create a hostile work environment.

Employer Vicarious Liability for Unlawful Sexual Harassment. Assuming there is unlawful sexual harassment, another significant aspect of the law deals with the employer’s vicarious liability for sexual harassment by its managers and supervisors. Vicarious liability means that the liability of an employee is imputed to the employer; there is no need of evidence that the employer itself acted in any wrongful manner [29]. In the momentous Supreme Court cases of Burlington Industries v Ellerth [30] and Faragher v. City of Boca Raton [31] the Court enunciated a principle of absolute liability in sexual harassment law [19]. Absolute liability principles are very rare in the law. One old and still valid example would be liability for extra-hazardous activities, such as building dams, spaying pesticides, and blasting for construction [29]. Nonetheless, there is now one in sexual harassment law and practice. The Supreme Court in the aforementioned cases held that when a manager or supervisor sexually harasses a subordinate employee who suffers a tangible employment action, such as a job loss, or adverse job action the employer is absolutely liable; there is no defense (presuming there is no “Machiavellian” scheme to defraud the employer). According to the EEOC, a “supervisor” is a person who “has the authority to recommend tangible employment decisions affecting the employee or if the individual has the authority to direct the employee’s daily work activities” [15]. Such a definition would apply to the typical manager too. Furthermore, the EEOC defines a “tangible employment action” as “a significant change in employment status”, encompassing “hiring, firing, promotion, demotion, undesirable reassignment, a decision causing a significant change in benefits, compensation, decisions, and work assignments” [15].

The Supreme Court, however, also enunciated a principle of conditional liability. If there is sexual harassment but no adverse employment action the employer does have an affirmative defense, to wit: (1) the employer must demonstrate that it used reasonable care to prevent or promptly correct any harassment; and (2) the employee failed to act in a reasonable manner by not taking advantage of any preventive or corrective opportunities supplied by the employer or to otherwise avoid the harm [15-17, 30, 31].

U.S. Culture and Sexual Harassment Case Law. The pertinent U.S. case law indicates that ethical and/or cultural relativism, however, as an affirmative defense in a US workplace sexual harassment claim, may present problems in the U.S. judicial system for the employee and employer. In the United States courts, as emphasized, the “unwelcomeness” element found in the legal definition of sexual harassment is generally based on the victim’s reaction to the act in question [32]. This fact weakens most defenses that the harasser was only acting para-sexual in a cultural sense since in the workplace the coworker victim’s reaction to such conduct is the key to determining “unwelcomeness”. Further, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has held that whether or not the conduct is sufficiently severe or pervasive is to be determined under the “reasonable victim” standard [32]. The Ellison [32] court explained how the standard is to be interpreted by stating that:

In evaluating the severity and pervasiveness of sexual harassment, we should focus on the perspective of the victim”. In so doing, the court should discount “stereotyped notions of acceptable behavior” and keep in mind that "what many men may not consider objectionable may offend many women”. The reasonable victim standard . . . classifies conduct as unlawful sexual harassment even when harassers do not realize that their conduct creates a hostile working environment”. Therefore, the alleged harasser's intent is unimportant and “compliments” are not a defense (pp. 879-880).

The legal logic weakening an ethical or “cultural” based permissible conduct defense to workplace sexual harassment claims was also indirectly addressed in Richardson v. New York State Dep’t of Correctional Serv. [33]. In Richardson [33], the court rejected the narrow approach of a “reasonable person of the plaintiff’s group” and opted to continue to follow the “reasonable person” standard in discrimination cases under Title VII. The Richardson [33] court refused to go down the preverbal “rabbit-hole” by explaining:

In adopting this standard as the proper one under Title VII, we reject the view of those courts that look to the perspective of the particular ethnic or gender group, e.g., a "reasonable African-American" or a "reasonable Jew”.…we believe that examining hostile environment claims from the perspective of a "reasonable person who is the target of racially or ethnically oriented remarks" is the proper approach. First, Title VII seeks to protect those that are the targets of such conduct, and it is their perspective, not that of bystanders or the speaker, that is pertinent. Second, this standard makes clear that triers of fact are not to determine whether some ethnic or gender groups are more thin-skinned than others. Such an inquiry would at best concern largely indeterminate and fluid matters varying according to location, time, and current events. It might also lead to evidence, argument, and deliberations regarding supposed group characteristics and to undesirable, even ugly, jury and courtroom scenes 33, p. 436, FN 3.

Sexual harassment claims are based on Title VII. Consequently, the Richardson [33] court’s rationale and warning applies to any harasser’s legal defense in a U.S. courtroom that the actor’s “cultural” or “ethnic” background could justify, otherwise unacceptable, “offensive” sexual conduct in the workplace.

Workplace diversity and cultural sensitivity without rational “guardrails” erected to curtail common-place para-sexual physical greetings in the workplace, for example, as noted, common in Latin American cultures, can lead to negative consequences. As such, employees who acquiescence to a customary kiss on the cheek in the Latino culture would logically not be precluded to file a sexual harassment claim when that kiss becomes far more aggressive. To illustrate, see the federal appeals court case of Perez-Cordero v. Wal-Mart Puerto Rico, Inc. [34], in which the employer’s summary judgment was vacated and reversed, when the court reviewed the facts alleged in the employee’s sexual harassment complaint. The First Circuit Court of Appeals in Perez-Cordero [33] held that the employee’s participation and “acquiescence to the customary greeting” among employees at a Puerto Rican Wal-Mart of a kiss on the cheek was not “in any way probative of his receptiveness” to an incident in which the harasser “forcefully sucked on his neck” [34]. The more aggressive kiss was well outside the customary display of content neutral para-sexual displays of affection deeply engrained in certain cultures. The aforementioned Wal-Mart case justifies absolute company policies that forbid such physical contact between employees as a way to avoid the “slippery slope” argument of which physical touching or greetings are acceptable when avoiding sexual harassment claims.

In the U.S., there is also a state law case that relates to sexual conduct and culture. The Nebraska Supreme Court dealt with an underlying factual pattern where a female professor at Creighton University had sent alleged sexually harassing e-mails to another female professor. In Roxana Recio v. Michelle Evers [35], Recio sued Evers for intentional interference with a business relationship after Ever’s internal grievance successfully alleged that Recio had sexually harassed her and which placed her on probation and requiring her to attend mandatory counseling. Both professors worked in the Spanish department and the subject e-mails were exchanged in Spanish, between individuals with Latin American heritage over the course of a few months. Recio took the position that her e-mails were taken out of context and generally their true innocent meanings were lost in translation. At a five day internal disciplinary hearing conducted by the University complaint committee, one fellow professor explained in Recio’s defense that her e-mails could be “explained away by culture and effusiveness” [35]. However, the University’s internal grievance board believed that the e-mails, even when accounting for cultural differences, were inappropriate. The court highlighted the grievance board’s decision by stating:

The committee found that Recio's messages were inappropriate, noting that “[w]itnesses from various Hispanic cultures including Cuba, Venezuela, Spain, and Puerto Rico differed with . . . Recio's interpretation that culture could be used to explain away” the e-mails and had described them as "inappropriate, shocking, and of a sexual nature”. The committee found that “[at] best, the emails in their intensity and obsessiveness are ominous and caused . . . Evers great distress” [35, p. 129].

Ultimately, the Nebraska Supreme Court upheld summary judgment in favor of Evers since Evers’ internal complaint was not maliciously filed and was truthful, which amounted to an affirmative defense to Recio’s tortious interference claim [35, p. 137]. The case law indicates, therefore, that employers, business managers, as well as employees must realize that standards of what might be acceptable in society at large – culturally as well as ethically - do not always correspond to what is legally acceptable in the workplace.

U.S business managers not only have to be aware of the impact of U.S. civil rights law in the United States, but also must be cognizant of the fact that U.S. civil rights laws have extra-territorial effect of U.S. law. The Civil Rights Act of 1991 mandates that U.S. Civil Rights laws have extraterritorial effect. This important employment discrimination issue concerns the rights of workers employed by a U.S. employer or by a foreign employer in a foreign country workplace. The difficult issue is whether the extensive U.S. legal protections afforded to employees in the U.S. carry overseas. This legal question typically is regarded as an issue of the “extraterritoriality” of U.S. law. The leading employment discrimination extraterritoriality case was the Supreme Court’s 1991 decision in EEOC v. Arabian American Oil Company. In the so-termed Aramco case, the Supreme Court was called upon to decide whether Congress intended to apply Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to United States citizens working for U.S. companies in foreign countries. The Supreme Court ruled that Title VII did not reflect the requisite clear expression of U.S. Congressional intent to overcome the presumption against extraterritoriality of statutes. Consequently, the Court held that the protections of Title VII did not extend to a U.S. citizen working for a U.S. company overseas [29].

However, very soon after the Supreme Court had ruled in the Aramco case, Congress attempted to overrule the decision by at least partially extending U.S. employment discrimination law overseas. Accordingly, the Civil Rights Act of 1991 was promulgated to protect certain employees of U.S. firms overseas. Congress thereby expressly amended and enlarged the scope of Title VII to provide a clear indication of Congress’s extraterritorial intent to reach U.S. business firms that operate outside the U.S. as well as those under the “control” of a U.S. entity. The 1991 amendments to the Civil Rights Act expanded the definition of the key term “employee” to include any U.S. citizen employed by a U.S. company in a foreign country or by a foreign company that is controlled by a U.S. firm. Foreign employees working within the U.S. are protected, whether working for U.S. or foreign multinational firms, as are U.S. citizen employees. However, and most significantly, outside the U.S., only U.S. citizens working for U.S. firms or firms controlled by U.S. firms are protected because foreign employees were expressly excluded from protection when employed in a foreign country, even by a U.S. firm. Therefore, the Civil Rights Act of 1991 amended Title VII to extend certain extraterritorial protections against discrimination, including sexual harassment, to many employees [29]. The U.S. business manager, moreover, not only has to be aware of the extra-territorial effect of U.S. law, but also must be cognizant of the fact that many countries today have civil rights and non-discrimination law, including prohibitions against sexual harassment in the workplace. Although it is beyond the scope of this article to supply an exhaustive legal comparison of sexual harassment laws, the authors in the next section do wish to provide certain perspectives of sexual harassment law in the global environment and make some succinct comparisons to U.S. law.

In the United Kingdom, the key statute is the Protection from Harassment Act of 1997, which makes all forms of harassment a civil wrong as well as a criminal offence. The Act prohibits conduct which amounts to harassment of another person. Harassment is defined in terms of the effect on the person being harassed; and the term includes alarming the person or causing him or her distress. This Act allows for damages to be collected or an injunction to be issued prohibiting the harassment. The Remedies for Harassment component of the Harassment Act 1997 creates both criminal and civil actions against a person who pursues a course of harassing conduct [36, 37]. The Protection from Harassment Act was primarily enacted to deal with the problem of “stalking”, but in fact the law covers numerous types of public order and personal disputes and work situations, including bullying and harassment at work. Harassment includes any unwanted conduct that has the effect of violating dignity or creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating, or offensive environment. Harassment can take many forms and occur for a variety of reasons. It may be related to age, sex, race, color, national origin, disability, religion, sexuality, or personal characteristics of any individual. Sexual harassment is defined as unwanted conduct of any sexual nature affecting the dignity of women and men in the workplace, which can include unwelcome physical, verbal and even non-verbal conducts [36]. Sexual harassment, as such, refers to persistent unwanted sexual advances, typically in the workplace, where the consequences of refusing are potentially very disadvantaging to the victim [1].

Another important statute in the United Kingdom is the Employment Equality Act of 1998, which construes harassment as any act or conduct encompassing spoken words, gestures, or the production, display or circulation of written words, pictures or other materials, if the action or conduct is unwelcome to the recipient and could reasonably be regarded, in relation to the relevant characteristic of the recipient, as offensive, humiliating, or intimidating. Typical harassing behavior encompasses the following actions: (1) verbal Harassment in the form of jokes, comments, ridicule, songs, inappropriate comments, suggestions, and name-calling; (2) written harassment, Including faxes, text messages, emails, and notices; (3) physical harassment, such as jostling, shoving, or any form of harmful or offensive touching; (4) intimidator harassment in the form of inappropriate looks, gestures, posturing, or threatening poses, as well as interference with or damage to property, threats, or extortion; (5) visual displays, such as posters, emblems, flags, and badges; (6) isolation or expulsion from work or social activities; and (7) pressure to behave in a manner that a person thinks is inappropriate, for example, being required to dress in a manner unsuited to a person’s ethnic or religious background [37].

The Employment Equality Act of 1998, in addition, views sexual harassment as any act of physical intimacy or request for sexual favors. The statute also includes other acts or conduct, including spoken words, gesture, or the production, display, or circulation of written words, pictures, or other material, which is unwelcome and could reasonably be regarded as sexually offensive, humiliating, or intimidating. The following are examples of behavior that could reasonably be regard as sexually offensive, humiliating, or intimidating: (1) physical conduct of a sexual nature, such as un-wanted physical conduct, for example, unnecessary touching, hugging, patting, pinching, or brushing against another’s body, hair, or clothing, as well as, of course, any type of sexual assault, battery, and coercive sexual intercourse; (2) verbal conduct of a sexual nature, including unwelcome request for sexual favors, unwelcome sexual advances, propositions or pressure for sexual activities, continued suggestions for dates or social activity outside the workplace, particularly after it has been made clear that such suggestions are unwelcome, unwanted or offensive flirtations, offensive jokes, suggestive remarks, sexual innuendos (double-meaning comments of a sexual nature), lewd comments, inquiring about a person’s sexual preferences, fantasies, or activities; (3) non-verbal conduct of a sexual nature, including the display of pornographic or sexual suggestive pictures, objects, computer pornography, written materials, emails, text messages or faxes, and also including leering, whistling, and sexually suggestive gestures, movements, or facial expressions; (4) sex-based conduct, including conduct that denigrates or ridicules, or is intimidating, or is physically abusive of a person because of his or her sex, such as derogatory or degrading remarks or insults about his or her gender or body [36].

Japan, in 1991, enacted an antidiscrimination law that requires employers to prevent sexual harassment. However, sexual harassment in Japan was not treated with the same degree of seriousness and priority as in the United States. For example, few Japanese companies had training programs specifically designed to prevent sexual harassment, whereas most U.S. employers, especially large ones, do. Furthermore, there is still a “clash of cultures when it comes to business practices in Japan versus the U.S., as shown by the still-common Japanese executive practice of asking lower-level female employees to serve tea to guests [29, 38]. Consequently, in 1997, Japan amended its Equal Employment Opportunity Law to specifically regulate sexual harassment. Accordingly, the Japanese Civil Code now provides a basis of judicial relief in both contract and tort form for the two main types of sexual harassment: quid pro quo and hostile working environment [38]. Regarding the hostile environment form of sexual harassment, the Civil Code provides that any person who intentionally or negligently infringes on another person’s rights is subject to tort liability. The word “rights” has been defined as encompassing not only statutory rights, but also legally protected interests that are considered in need of protection. Again, if the “hostile” type of sexual harassment amounts to a recognized tort—such as assault or battery, invasion of privacy, or defamation—there will be no problem in asserting that the conduct infringes on a legally protected interest and thus constitutes a tort. However, if the alleged abusive or offensive sexual conduct does not constitute a recognized tort, the critical liability question will have to be judicially resolved as to whether a legally protected interest is at stake and, if so, which one. Regarding the employer’s liability for sexual harassment under Japanese law, the employer is held to a legal duty to make sure the workplace is conducive to working and that employees are treated with dignity and can do their jobs. If a manager fails to meet this legal duty, the employer will be vicariously liable for the manager’s failure [38].

In Peru, the Law of Labor Competitiveness and Productivity was the first Peruvian legislative norm to address sexual harassment generally. Due to an ongoing desire to attract foreign investment, the law applies to all private-sector enterprises and treats foreign and Peruvian companies alike, meaning that there is no preferential treatment for “local” companies. Thus, foreign subsidiaries are treated as local employers and their employees are covered by this law. The prohibited sexual harassment encompasses not only physical acts against the employee but also verbal acts against the employee or the employee’s family, acts of discrimination based on sex, immoral acts, and acts adversely affecting the employee’s dignity [39].

In India, the Supreme Court ruled that sexual harassment in the workplace violated the fundamental rights granted in the Indian Constitution to gender equality and the rights to life, liberty, and equal treatment. Article 15 of the Constitution specifically prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex as well as religion, race, caste, and place of birth. Also, Article 19 states that all Indian citizens are entitled to practice any profession [40]. Sexual harassment in India, like in the U.S., is broadly defined. The Indian Supreme Court construes sexual harassment as unwelcome sexual behavior that a harassment victim reasonably perceives may negatively impact one’s health and safety in the workplace [40]. Moreover, in one aspect, Indian sexual harassment law is even broader than in U.S. law. Feld [40] points out that while in the U.S. sexual harassment needs to be “severe or pervasive”, in India, “the definition of sexual harassment does not explicitly require that the harassing behavior occur over time. Instead, the guideline language implies that an incident, or only a few incidents, can constitute harassment…..The Court…thereby indicat(es) that harassing incidents do not have to be persistent to constitute a valid sexual harassment claim. Moreover, the Court declares that sexual harassment includes any single act that outrages the modesty of a woman”. Furthermore, in order to combat sexual harassment in the Indian workplace, employers must create a complaint procedure, resolve sexual harassment claims, institute disciplinary actions, and, where necessary, effectuate prosecution of sexual harassment offenders [40]. It is very interesting to point out that the sexual harassment complaint committee must be headed by a woman and must be at least half-comprised of women. The employer also must notify its employees of the sexual harassment policy. Article 32 of the Constitution grants the Court the power to enact guidelines providing remedies to those who have suffered a violation of Constitutional rights, which the Court has done in the case of sexual discrimination and harassment [40].

French law prohibits sexual harassment; and the law has both criminal and civil consequences. This article will briefly address the civil law aspects pertaining to employment. The Labor Code of 2012 states that no employee shall be required to submit to sexual harassment; and defines sexual harassment as “the fact of imposing on a person, in a repeated manner, words or behavior with a sexual connotation, which undermine his or her dignity by reason of their humiliating or degrading nature or create against him or her an intimidating, hostile or offensive situation” [41]. The law also imposes an obligation on employers to “take all necessary actions with a view of preventing acts of sexual harassment” [41]. The emphasis on harming one’s “dignity”, according to Hebert (2013, p. 14), “introduce(s) a new conception of sexual harassment into the provisions of the Labor and Penal Codes”, which were originally promulgated in 1992. Hebert [41] also points out that the 2012 law was “inspired by Anglo-Saxon notions of harassment”; yet Hebert also relates that this fact is a “source of irony” in that “legislators and others in France have also expressed concern that French sexual harassment law not reflect the perceived ‘excesses’ of the United States’ sexual harassment law”. Sexual harassment, therefore, must be understood not only in cross-cultural and ethically relativistic perspectives, but also “cross-legal” perspectives [42]. Taking all these perspectives into consideration, the authors in the next section of the article discuss the implications for employers, managers, and employees, and then make appropriate recommendations.