Harassment is conduct, which has the effect of degrading, intimidating, or forcing someone through personal attack. It is behavior that makes someone discomforting or humiliated, and causes emotional distress. It repeatedly occurs when one person wants to exercise power or control over another person. Harassment may be deliberate with a person targeted individually, or it may be unintended. While harassment because of sex gets the more attention, harassment because of other sheltered characteristics such as race, national origin, religion, age or physical and mental disability is also prohibited under state and federal laws. Harassment because of sexual bearings, marital status, or semblance may also be illegal, depending on jurisdiction; it is always insolent and improper workplace behavior.
 

The Laws that Prohibit Harassment
Title VII of the federal Civil Rights Act of 1964 forbids discrimination in the workplace because of race, color, sex, religion, and national origin. Other federal laws forbid discrimination by reason of age or disability. Sexual harassment is a form of discrimination covered under these laws. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has published guidelines on sexual harassment in employment which provide the legal definition of harassing behavior and which offer the standards ensued by enforcing agencies and the courts in handling charges of sexual harassment. Sexual harassment is an abuse of power characterized by manipulation, coercion, or unwanted sexual attention. There are basically two situations, where the notion of sexual harassment appears.

1. Quid Pro Quo, which means "this for that" harassment. It occurs when a supervisor or instructor makes employment or academic decisions based on an individual's willingness to go along with requests for sexual favors or makes sexual behavior a term or a condition of employment. Quid pro quo sexual harassment carries
Either:
 The threat of punishment, such as the lowered grades, belated dissertation progress, poor performance evaluations, shut off promotions, or firing
 The promise of rewards, such as higher grades, advantages during the dissertation process, excellent performance evaluations, promotions, or hiring
Taking example of a clerical worker who has been promised a promotion if she agrees to date her supervisor is the “this for that”.
2. Hostile Environment harassment is a sort of behaviors, which is sexual in nature and creates a workplace or academic atmosphere that "unreasonably interferes" with performance. "Sexual in nature" concerns not only to "amorous" behavior but also to antagonistic conduct of a sexual or non-sexual nature, which is based on a specific sex.

 
Taking the example of a male carpenter who continually makes off-color, sexual jokes about women in front of a new female apprentice. Furthermore, he does not give her significant training she needs to successfully complete her apprenticeship and puts her down in front of her co-workers gives way to the formation of sexually hostile environment. Sexual harassment can be a one-time incident, for instance sex for grades or it may be a continuing pattern of behavior, for instance sexually explicit jokes in the workplace. The context, severity, and frequency of the behavior must be considered when deciding sexual harassment. Following are the behaviors that come under the category of sexual harassment and leads to physical and emotional disturbances.

 Physical Harassment, that includes improper touching, thrum, feeling, pinching, undesired kissing or fondling, forced sexual encounters or assail
 Verbal Harassment, that includes suggestive or insulting sounds, sexist jokes or humor, gender explicit insults or comments, undesired sexual invitations, propositions, or pressure
 Non-Verbal Harassment includes, ridiculing, stares flirtatiously, and disgusting gestures, circulating sexually explicit materials, obstructing someone's path, etc.

There are highly adverse effects of sexual harassment behaviors at the workplace. Sexual harassment has negative effects on both the individual and the workplace environment. For example, the effects on the employee can include fear, anger, and anxiety, nausea, headaches, guilt, self-blame, nervousness, increased tension, confusion, depression, humiliation, eating or sleeping disorders, feelings of isolation, powerlessness, lowered self-esteem, changed professional goals, and decreased participation. Where as the effects on the workplace can include cost of staff time and potential legal fees, low morale, absenteeism, damaged reputation of department, employee turnover, undermined professionalism, lowered productivity, diminished trust and respect.

Sexual harassment can make a man or woman to quit his or her job rather than face more harassment. Likely loss of promotion or the expectations of promotion in retaliation for protesting or failing to accede to sexual propositions are also real threats. Sexual harassment creates an antagonistic, stressful work environment that can lead to psychological or even physical illness. An unpleasant atmosphere for all workers can be created by harassment. It can have grave negative effects on the personal lives of its victims. Victims of sexual harassment often perceive threatened and terrified. They feel anger, tension, frustration, anxiety and fear, which sometimes cause headaches, nausea, depression, insomnia, stomach ulcers, skin disorders, cystitis or digestive problems. Sexual harassment intervenes with job performance. It is expensive to both employees and employers in terms of sick days used, thus in addition intensifying their health care costs. Many victims do not even discuss problem openly because they are afraid or someway feel that it is their own fault. Even when the victim leaves the job, the harasser may put in jeopardy the victim’s future job opportunities by way of bad references.  Even relatively mild forms of sexual harassment such as crude comments or sexist jokes over time can cause significant psychological distress, say researchers in a new study.

Thus, with the effects, it becomes is important that all victims, both women and men, report cases of sexual harassment to their union and that they be given backstop and help once they have reported it. Sexual harassment victims must be confident that their local union officials take the affair seriously and will deal with it efficiently. Labor and management need to make an atmosphere in which sexual harassment will not be admissible in the workplace. The issue needs to be frequently addressed at labor and management meetings. Development of joint policy statements, brochures, training, resolutions and procedures will help make all employees understand that harassment is unfitting, inappropriate and illegal. To reduce the events, a confidential survey must be conducted to determine the extent of the problem in a workplace. Educational materials should be given to inform members of the extent of the problem and what to do if they become victims.

Hard facts
On-the-job sexual harassment is not a new problem. The American court system did not decide the first sexual harassment case under Title VII until 1976. Furthermore, the wider public appears not to have completely appreciated the problem's scope until 1991, when the Senate Judiciary Committee held hearings on Anita Hill's charges against Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas.  In the same year that the District Court of the District of Columbia resolved the first Title VII sexual harassment case, a Redbook magazine poll found that nine out of ten women said they had been subjected to unwelcome sexual advances at work. The federal government in 1980 surveyed its own employees and found that forty-two percent of women stated they had experienced some form of work-related sexual harassment. Furthermore, fifteen percent of men reported such harassment. In 1987, the survey results did not change the previous results and the surveys done in the private sector revealed similar results. These statistics nevertheless, most cases of sexual harassment still go unreported, as many as ninety-five percent of all such events may not be brought to light.  While the cost to victims is great, the cost to American business cannot be over-estimated. It was discovered that in the federal government's first sexual harassment survey that the government itself had lost $189 million between 1978 and 1980 from the effects of sexual harassment. In another survey, the federal government saw its losses jump to $267 million for the years 1985 to 1987, even though the rate of sexual harassment had not changed.

According to Working Woman Magazine, an archetypal Fortune 500 corporation can expect to lose $6.7 million, in 1988 dollars, each year. Costs can result from absenteeism, inferior productivity, elevated health-care costs, poor morale, and employee turnover. These losses do not contain lawsuit costs or court-awarded damages. Furthermore not included is damage to a company's image. Vile press, which often go with such cases, can cost a business not just its reputation but also its customers and revenues.  In late years, the total of sexual harassment cases filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), as well as in federal and state courts, has increased dramatically. For example, in 1992 a year after the Anita Hill-Clarence Thomas hearings on Capitol Hill, the number of sexual harassment cases filed with EEOC offices across the country leaped fifty percent over the previous year. Accusations about sexual harassment have ranged from furtherance of a hostile work environment to demands for prostitution.

In spite of the fact that men face harassment, women are the much likely victims. Damage caused by sexual harassment is often exceptional, including humiliation, loss of dignity, psychological, and sometimes-physical injury, and damage to professional reputation and career. Ultimately, the victims face a choice between their work and their self-esteem. Now and then, they face a choice between their jobs and their own security.