What are harassment and victimisation?

What is harassment?

According to the Discrimination Act, harassment is behaviour that violates a person’s dignity and that is associated with one of the grounds for discrimination. This can take the form of direct address, email contact or text messages. An example is if a manager comments on an employee in a derogatory, generalising or ridiculing manner associated with any of the grounds for discrimination, for example, religion, age or ethnicity.

What is sexual harassment?

According to the Discrimination Act, sexual harassment is behaviour of a sexual nature that violates someone’s dignity. For example, it can refer to inappropriate staring, unwelcome physical contact, jokes, jargon, images or sexual innuendo either in private or in front of an entire group.

What is victimisation?

Victimisation can be equated to bullying. According to the Swedish Work Environment Authority’s provisions on organisational and social work environment (AFS 2015:4), victimisa- tion is defined as ”Actions directed against one or more employees in an abusive manner, which could lead to ill health or their being placed outside the community of the workplace”. It can take the form of freezing