Sexual harassment in the workplace in the context of the covid-19 pandemic: reflections on gender inequalities at work from the paradigm of relational justice

Abstract

The general objective of this research is to identify the reasons or motives that have led to the vertiginous increase in cases of sexual harassment in the workplace against female workers since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. The provisional hypothesis is that in the context of labor relations in which women are employees hierarchically subordinate to men or groups of men, there has been an alarming increase in cases of sexual harassment violence, mainly because the Coronavirus pandemic has highlighted the situations of violence that already exist in Brazilian society, generating a kind of systemic pandemic, which occurs when a viral pandemic interacts directly with other diseases and/or social problems. The specific objectives are to present the institute of sexual harassment at work, to present the relationship between the COVID-19 pandemic and the increase in the number of cases of sexual harassment in labor relations practiced against women and to propose a reflection on this socio-legal phenomenon based on Pierpaolo Donati's relational paradigm and Antonio Márquez Prieto's Relational Justice. The approach used was deductive; the research technique was documental and the method of procedure was monographic. It was concluded that the only way to put an end to the hierarchy of gender inequality at work is through a collective commitment to reciprocity and good faith within the legal culture.