3. Other types of harassment
The Equality Act 2010 also protects workers from:
- sexual harassment
- less favourable treatment as a result of harassment
Sexual harassment
Sexual harassment is unwanted behaviour of a sexual nature.
This type of harassment does not need to be related to a protected characteristic.
For example, someone thinks they've been sexually harassed. They do not need to show it was because of their sex or sexual orientation.
Find out more about sexual harassment
Less favourable treatment as a result of harassment
Sometimes someone is treated less favourably because of how they responded to previous harassment.
It can apply whether the person rejected or accepted the previous harassment. Accepting harassment can sometimes be called 'submitting to' the harassment.
It happens when the person is treated less favourably than if they had responded in a different way.
The previous harassment must have been either:
- sexual harassment
- harassment related to sex
- harassment related to gender reassignment
Example of less favourable treatment because of harassment
Jade receives several sexual advances from their manager, but rejects them. A few weeks later at Jade's annual performance review, the manager gives them a poor performance score. Jade is regularly praised by others for their hard work. This could be harassment if Jade's poor performance score is because they rejected the manager's advances.