This information sheet is intended to assist persons conducting a business or undertaking (PCBUs) to prevent and respond to incidents of workplace gendered violence.
Background
Exposure to psychosocial hazards, including gendered violence, poses risk of significant harm to the psychological and physical health of workers. Under the Work Health and Safety Act 2020 (WHS Act), PCBUs must ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health and safety of workers they engage or cause to be engaged. These obligations include controlling workplace risk factors that increase the risk of workers’ exposure to psychosocial hazards, such as gendered violence.
Summary of hazard
Gendered violence at work is any behaviour, directed at a person or that affects a person, because of their sex, gender or sexual orientation, or because they do not adhere to socially prescribed gender roles, that creates a risk to health and safety. Work-related gendered violence can include incidents of sexual assault, and can be by a client, patient, the public, a co-worker or a manager.
Sexual assault is defined as any sexual behaviour which is threatening, violent, forced, coercive or exploitative and in which the victim has not given or was unable to give consent. Consent is when the person freely and voluntarily agrees to sexual activity and they have the freedom and capacity to make that choice. In Western Australia, legislation requires that consent must be freely and voluntarily given without force, threat, or coercion (see Appendix 1 for the Criminal Code definition of consent, along with other legal definitions and offences in relation to sexual crimes). A person may be unable to consent to sexual activity if that person is heavily intoxicated.
Sexual assault describes a broad range of sexual crimes committed against a person, including sexual penetration without consent and indecent assault.
Exposure to sexual assault at work can potentially lead to a number of significant physical and psychological outcomes for exposed persons who have been affected and that may have short or longer-term implications. These include:
- physical injuries resulting from sexual assault
- psychological injuries including depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
- suicidal thoughts
- sexually transmitted infections (STIs)
- unwanted pregnancy.