A few months after having enacted a criminal statute creating the general offence of sexual harassment, the French Parliament enacted the Statute n° 92-1179 "relative a l'abus d'autorite en matiere sexuelle dans les relations de travail". In this statute, as in the criminal statute, the French legislator considers sexual harassment in a peculiar way, and departs from the North-American position on three points: / First, while American law and Canadian law understand clearly sexual harassment as a form of sex discrimination, the French approach is more ambiguous. It appears that the French legislator understands sexual harassment more as an infringement to freedom than a form of sex discrimination. / Second, the French legislator has defined sexual harassment in a more restrictive way than in North America. While American law and Canadian law prohibit hostile harassment and sexual harassment by colleagues, these forms of sexual harassment are not prohibited in French law. Finally, on the question of the employer's liability, the French approach is more "timid" than in American law and in Canadian law. / The French legislator has justified its more restrictive approach to the problem of sexual harassment in comparison with the North-American position by two arguments: the fear of the "American 'drift'" and the peculiarity of the relationships between women and men in France. However, it is argued that the choice of the French legislator is not convenient because it leaves a significant number of victims outside the scope of the law, and is not clear enough on the employer's obligations. Furthermore, it is maintained that both arguments of the legislator are more caricatural than real.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.42288 |
| Date | January 2000 |
| Creators | Benihoud, Yasmina. |
| Contributors | Sheppard, Colleen (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | French |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Laws (Institute of Comparative Law.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001787980, proquestno: MQ70329, Theses scanned by McGill Library. |
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