Document Type
Book Chapter
Publication Date
2004
Abstract
This chapter considers sexual harassment in the workplace from the perspective of international human rights law. Adopting a human rights approach locates sexual harassment in the context of women’s economic and social rights and more broadly in the wider frame of international imperatives such as the maintenance of international peace and security and global economic development. Sexual harassment has come onto the international agenda comparatively recently, and the story comprises both the inclusion of prohibitions within legal instruments and significant silences, especially where breaking the silence requires intrusion into state policies relating to militarism, trade and investment liberalization, and the domestic jurisdiction exclusion from international regulation.∞ Since sexual harassment is a relatively new concept in international law there has been no significant backlash as has occurred in some national jurisdictions. Indeed it has received little attention at the international level compared with other issues of women’s human rights such as other forms of violence against women, reproductive rights, and crimes committed against women in armed conflict. The challenge for international lawyers working in this area is to further the understanding of sexual harassment as constituting discrimination on the basis of sex and as violative of a range of human rights, such as freedom from degrading treatment and freedom of expression and association. These linkages emphasize that sexual harassment is committed in many locations,≤ not just in the workplace, and that international legal prohibitions must be sufficiently broad to address that fact.
Publication Information & Recommended Citation
Chinkin, Christine M. "Sexual Harassment: An International Human Rights Perspective." In Directions in Sexual Harassment Law, edited by Catharine A. MacKinnon and Reva. B. Siegel, 655-671. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004.
Comments
Reproduced with permission of Yale University Press. All rights reserved. Originally published as Chinkin, Christine M. "Sexual Harassment: An International Human Rights Perspective." In Directions in Sexual Harassment Law, edited by Catharine A. MacKinnon and Reva. B. Siegel, 655-671. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004.