In the past week the Liberal Democrats, for whom I once worked, have started to investigate and confront the way that complaints of sexual harassment by party figures were dealt with in the past – announcing two independent inquiries, one QC-led, and co-operating with the Metropolitan police.

We also know the new additions to the Supreme Court, formally announced today, are all men, making Lady Hale the court’s only woman judge.

The Lib Dem subject of these allegations denies the story, and I’m concerned here with the issue of workplace harassment and its link to gender equality.

For surely workplace harassment of the kind alleged and the evident imbalance in senior appointments are, at one level, part of the same story – and there are lessons for any workplace, be it law firms, chambers, political party, bank or supermarket.

We shouldn’t think that just because we know women who can ‘handle themselves’ and, who while being disgusted by an unpleasant experience, get past it, that one might as well put up with a culture where complaints are ignored or not looked at, and serial sleazeballs are seen as ‘characters’.

The impact on fair outcomes in politics, or any world of work, of such toleration is serious – and I think it’s a problem.

The problem with even ‘low-level’ boorish, leering, groping, propositioning, persistent, harassing behaviour is not just the unpleasantness. It invariably goes hand in hand with a lack of respect for those harassed.

And it is hardly an environment where mentoring and collegiality flower.

I’m sure the three judges appointed to the court this week are very good. I also suspect they’ve had long careers marked by the respect of those around them – respect for their brains, their legal skills and their good judgement.

But I also believe those are positive things that everyone should have, and that the absence of respect that goes with the lewd persistence we’re talking about excludes and crowds out such good things.

That doesn’t mean making work a sex/romance-free zone. Going back to the Lib Dems, a lot of my then-colleagues, like me, married someone we knew through politics – MPs in three cases.

I find the difference easy to spot, and I think most people do. But for those who don’t – isn’t it also better for them to know what is, and is not, alright at a point before it makes the national news?

Eduardo Reyes is Gazette features editor

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