SHAME on some lawyers who, instead of being on the side of the law, are sexually harassing women at work. If the Association of Women Lawyers (AWL) is right, women may be worried working for law firms. A profession, one of the oldest in the world, that insists on decorum in court, must surely be able to insist on decorum towards women. Not so, it appears. Rightfully, the AWL is disturbed by this dysfunctional behaviour that refuses to go away (NST, June 16).
According to AWL's vice-president, Meera Samanther, sexual harassment is endemic. This must worry women lawyers in the country to no end. It does, if recent revelation in social media is any gauge.
This is understandable. Women who are so harassed want the problem addressed but people in position in these law firms are not even listening, let alone acting against it. So the victims pour their hearts out in the anonymous world of the social media. Sadly, the social media isn't social at all.
Women lawyers sexually harassed in the brick-and-mortar world of the law firms are badgered by the cyber world. The devil of one realm becomes the deep blue sea of another. Let's not belittle the plight of the persecuted victims.
The numbers are disturbing. Take AWL's 2014 Baseline Study on working conditions of male and female lawyers in Malaysia. Thirty-one per cent of the respondents said they experienced some form of sexual proposition or gender discrimination. This is an unpraiseworthy path to take. Granted, the Baseline Study is six years old and things may be different today.
Not very much so, says another similar survey, this time an international one. Women lawyers continue to be hounded at the office and at lawyers' functions. London-based International Bar Association's global survey on bullying and sexual harassment in the legal profession conducted in 2018 in 132 countries is on AWL's side.
Eighty-seven Malaysian legal professionals took part in the survey, 81 per cent of whom were female. Twenty- four per cent of the respondents said they were sexually harassed. We may think that the number of cases is going south. Be not so quick. Only a small number of the 9,664 female lawyers then took part in the 2018 IBA survey.
Sexual harassment, for obvious reasons, is underreported territory here and elsewhere. What ails the legal profession? If AWL is right, those who hold responsible positions in legal firms, big and small, are not taking meaningful steps to end this vile practice. Very few law firms have policies in place to combat sexual harassment.
A few which do, are not making it easy to report such cases. Little wonder one female lawyer told IBA this of her boss telling her: "I pay you, so I own you". He should have no place in the bar. One way to make sure that even if a lawyer of such disrepute does manage to enter the profession is shown a quick exit is for the Bar Council to make sexual harassment policies mandatory for all legal firms, big and small.
Happily, the Malaysian Bar Council has some proposals in mind in addition to existing codes and Women Rights Committee that saw action days ago. Its president, Salim Bashir, said in a press statement yesterday that sexual harassment may soon be treated as "misconduct" in a proposed Legal Profession Bill. It better be. The sad truth is some men, and sadder still, some male lawyers, need watching.