IMF: Sex between supervisors and subordinates is not harassment

[somone]

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/20/business/20fund.html

At I.M.F., Men on Prowl and Women on Guard
By BINYAMIN APPELBAUM and SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

... With Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s arrest earlier this week and indictment on Thursday on charges that he tried to rape a New York hotel housekeeper, a spotlight has been cast on the culture of the institution. And questions have been revived about a 2008 episode in which the I.M.F. decided that Mr. Strauss-Kahn had not broken any rules in sleeping with a female employee. What may draw even more attention to the culture of the fund is the revelation of an affair involving a potential successor to Mr. Strauss-Kahn, who resigned as managing director on Wednesday. Kemal Dervis of Turkey had a liaison while working at the World Bank years ago with a woman who now works at the I.M.F., according to a person with direct knowledge of the relationship.

Interviews and documents paint a picture of the fund as an institution whose sexual norms and customs are markedly different from those of Washington, leaving its female employees vulnerable to harassment. The laws of the United States do not apply inside its walls, and until earlier this month the I.M.F.’s own rules contained an unusual provision that some experts and former officials say has encouraged managers to pursue the women who work for them: “Intimate personal relationships between supervisors and subordinates do not, in themselves, constitute harassment.”...

In 2007, officials at the fund declined to investigate a complaint by an administrative assistant who had slept with her supervisor, and who charged that he had given her poor performance reviews to pressure her to continue the relationship. Officials told the woman that the supervisor planned to retire soon, and therefore there was no point in investigating the charges, according to findings by the I.M.F.’s internal court. The official, who is not named in the records, told investigators that he also had a sexual relationship with a second employee, and that he did not believe he had acted improperly.

In another case, a young woman who has since left the I.M.F. said that in 2009, a senior manager in her department started sending her increasingly explicit e-mails seeking a relationship. She complained to her boss, who did not take any action. “They said they took it seriously, but two minutes later they were turning around and acting like everything was O.K. to the person who had done it to me,” said the woman, who spoke on condition of anonymity because she still works in the international development community. “He wasn’t punished. Not at all.”...

[Mass]

1. I met my husband on the job. He was my direct supervisor.

Sorry, but I agree with the IMF here. In itself, it is not sexual harassment. Which does not mean that it is NEVER sexual harassment.

[Fumesucker]

3. While I agree with you I think I'll stock up on...

:popcorn:

This should be entertaining..

[Mass]

4. Also, I have been sexually harassed by several coworkers who were not my supervisors.

[Fumesucker]

8. Totally unsurprising..

As a man I know a lot of men are real assholes toward women.

[OHdem10]

5. There are a lot of people married to their boss. They met on

the job.

[Xithras]

7. It's harassment when it's unwanted.

Or when it's tied to employment reviews, promotions, etc.

It's perfectly OK for a manager and subordinate to date when they both want it. It's even OK for a manager to ask a subordinate out, when the subordinate isn't interested...if they do it ONCE and drop it when the subordinate says NO.

It becomes a problem when the supervisor won't take NO for an answer, and keeps pursuing or exerts pressure on an employee who isn't interested.

Even consensual relationships can be risky though. People break up, and if it ends badly, a mere accusation can end a career.

[Fumesucker]

9. Well said..

I agree with all your points

[blondeatlast]

10. Exactly. I read another article about the environment at the IMF

that indicates that there's a lot of "wink, wink, nudge, nudge" harassment going on there. I've dated supervisors before--but have never felt pressure to do so. From what I've seen, there's more than a little pressure at the IMF.

time will tell, but I'm inclined to believe it isn't an equality friendly environment.

[Ship of Fools]

15. thanks.

to me this is a no-brainer.

[bemildred]

12. It's harassment if it is persistent and unwelcome.

And the recipient gets to decide those things. A polite inquiry is OK, from that point of view, I suppose.

The other thing is that sleeping around with co-workers is disruptive to the work environment and ought to be forbidden as a matter of company policy, in the same way and for the same reasons that nepotism is. If one wants to pick up a date, one should go to a bar or other meat-rack and check out what's on offer.

[blondeatlast]

2. Sounds like the IMF needs a good swift kick out of 1959 and a whole buncha

strong American women working there.

[cleanhippie]

6. Its not harrasment, but it is unethical.

How can something consensual be harassment? Supervisor/subordinate relationships DO set up relationships that put one party in power over the other, and it creates ethical issues with everyone in the work environment.

People meet in all places, and attraction cannot be quelled, but as enlightened humans, we should be able to recognize that Supervisor/subordinate relationships are unethical.

[Bragi]

11. It isn't automatically harassment or unethical

Consensual sex between a boss and an employee is not necessarily harassment or unethical.

If there is a stated policy against any sexual relationships with subordinates may, however, then sexual activity might violate their terms of employment.

This prohibition may exist simply because the company does not want to workplace disruptions that can and do ensue when people hook up, fall madly in love, and then naturally proceed to the next stage in their relationship, which is hating each other and doing everything possible to inflict harm.

I speak from experience. Not mine, of course, but, ah, the experience of people I know.

[dynasaw]

13. It's harassment if

there is unequal power between the parties, where one party has more power coupled with the means to make life uncomfortable for the party that has less power;

it's harassment if the person with less power doesn't agree ( non-consensual) to the other person's sexual overtures;

it's harassment if the person with more power is able to retaliate when the person with less power refuses the advances or protests.

The trouble with work situations, colleges, psychological sessions, etc., is that there is always a power imbalance. Most universities have strict policies about professor-student relationships during the time one person is the student and the other is the professor. Psychiatrists and psychologists , lawyers and clients, doctors and patients, all have the same injunctions. Sexual relationships and even the appearance of something more than professional relationships is known in these professions as "the forbidden zone." There are feminist scholars and legalists who claim that in these relationships even if both parties "agree" to have sex, the relationship can never really be consensual when there is an imbalance of power.

A workplace or college environment where there is a relationship between a person with power and another person with less power also affects other workers or students as it confers privileges that other workers or students do not have--access to information, special favors etc.

[supernova]

14. This is exactly it ^^

The whole problem with dating in the workplace: the power imbalance.

Many, many people don't seem to get that, or think that it doesn't matter or doesn't apply to them.