Manager Training Guide Blames Women for Coworkers Who Come on to Them
Jhana, an online resource with articles and tools for managers used by employees at Google, Groupon, Eventbrite, Modcloth, and ask.com, published an article called “What if a male colleague gets the wrong idea?” to help women deal with unwanted sexual advances in the workplace. Unfortunately, as Jezebel’s Erin Gloria Ryan found, the manual doesn’t offer helpful advice for how to tell men to back off or even report inappropriate behavior, but instead tells women how they can modify their clothes and behavior to avoid it, placing the blame and the solution for the problem with them.
While the article may have been taken down (and is behind a paywall), Ryan took screenshots of the various tips that it gives to working women. Some of the problematic advice (emphasis added):
If you act the same way — always professional, but also always like yourself — around everyone, the problematic colleague will be less likely to get the idea that you’re coming on to him. One caveat: If you’re touchy-feely or flirtatious by nature, you might want to dial it back around him and any guys from whom you sense discomfort.
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