Companies are understandably looking for effective ways to prevent and address sexual harassment. In a recent article, Bloomberg reported that interviews with more than thirty senior Wall Street executives revealed that many are adopting a controversial strategy: avoid traveling with women, avoid mentoring women, and, in some cases, avoid working with women altogether. But, as is usually the case, two wrongs don’t make a right.
Title VII of the Civil Right Act prohibits both harassment and discrimination. On the one hand, sexual harassment is defined as workplace conduct that “has the purpose or effect of unreasonably interfering with an individual’s work performance or creating an intimidating, hostile, or offensive work environment.” On the other hand, discrimination claims arise when an employee can demonstrate that a practice that was not intended to discriminate has a disproportionate adverse effect on minorities in the workplace, or when an employee can demonstrate that similarly-situated employees were treated differently. Thus, if senior executives limit contact with their female colleagues – and therefore limiting opportunities for mentoring, advancement, and business development, while also allowing male colleagues the same access, companies may avoid a sexual harassment complaint – but they are walking themselves right into a sex discrimination complaint.
