Three months after Chile's passage of a law on sexual harassment, officials report a big jump in the number of complaints. One woman's testimony and lawsuit helped spur the law, which had been stuck in parliamentary debate for 14 years.
Giovanna Riveri remembers dreading going to work at the Ministry of Agriculture, where her male boss would sexually harass her daily. She says she felt trapped by the need to make a living, yet powerless to resist his innuendos and outright harassment.
Riveri says he would touch her hair, make her attend unnecessary meetings and write her explicitly sexual letters. Although he never touched her, she says she was psychologically intimidated. After confronting him, the harassment escalated to the point where Riveri says she couldn't work.
Riveri's case is all too common in Chile, where 1-in-5 women, according to a 1993 survey, was the victim of sexual harassment at work. But Riveri herself is far from common. While most women suffered silently, Riveri considered her options, which were to stay silent or try to make some noise.
Eight years ago, Riveri filed a complaint to the National Service for Women — better known as SERNAM — in the expectation it might be able to apply some sort of sanctions against her boss. When that didn't happen, she stopped going to work and was fired from her job.
She filed a case for wrongful dismissal that made its way up to the Supreme Court. In April 2003, the court declared she'd been the victim of harassment and an unfair dismissal and awarded her about US$17,000 in damages, paid by her former employer.
Her case is widely credited with spurring Chile into action on an issue that had made it a regional laggard.
While a wave of laws penalising sexual harassment passed through Latin America in the past decade — beginning with Mexico in 1991 and, most recently, Puerto Rico in 2003 — Chile just enacted a law to define and punish sexual harassment earlier this year.
After 14 years of parliamentary debate the bill, passed by Congress in January, was signed into law by President Chilean President Ricardo Lagos on March 8, to mark International Women's Day.
"Brave public testimonies like Giovanna Riveri's have helped propel the current laws", says Myriam Verdugo, deputy minister of SERNAM. "They take it out of the private realm by shining light on the issue."
Government workers say the law has caused an immediate upturn in disclosures. Between March and May, SERNAM received 25 complaints of sexual harassment, a six-fold increase over the comparable period in the previous year.
Verdugo says the results are similar to the rise of complaints after domestic abuse was made an infraction 10 years ago.
"Before we made domestic abuse a misdemeanour, there were 3000 complaints a year", says Verdugo. "Last year, we had 80,000. In the case of sexual harassment, there had only been 13 cases registered in recent years. So we're hoping that the fact that there is now some protection for victims will bring this issue to light."
Under Chile's new law, an employer must adopt measures to safeguard those involved after a complaint by separating work places and schedules. Employers must launch internal investigations and report back to the Ministry of Labour.
If the harassment is confirmed, the perpetrator is to be fired without compensation and the victim has the option of pursuing legal action in the courts. If the perpetrator is the victim's boss, the victim can quit the company and receive the compensation normally paid when a worker resigns, plus an additional 80%. He or she also maintains the right to pursue legal action in the courts and demand additional compensation for moral and psychological damage. Jail time is not among the punishments.
Before this new law, women could try to mount lawsuits based on labour laws, but it would take years and Riveri's was the first woman in Chile to win a sexual harassment suit.
"There was no such thing as formal workplace complaints", says Pilar Oyarzun, Riveri's lawyer. "One could complain to SERNAM, but there was never any formal procedure to respond to those complaints because it wasn't illegal. So achieving this law was a huge victory. It means women will have options now."
Jen Ross
[Abridged from Women's eNews. The author is a Chilean-Canadian freelance journalist.]
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, July 13, 2005.
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