“Honey, make some coffee.” Such requests from the boss may be discriminatory or even harassment

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Although employers’ and employees’ awareness of what discrimination against women at work is has increased significantly in recent years, this does not mean that situations where female employees are treated worse than their colleagues no longer occur. Some behaviors of superiors or colleagues should not be justified in the workplace, while women often hear requests and orders, although they might as well be carried out by a man with the same qualifications and working in the same position.

“Honey, make us some coffee”

Imagine a situation where a meeting is held at work. The supervisor would like to drink coffee and offers it to his guests. He doesn’t have an assistant at his disposal, so he has to ask one of his employees for one. He will almost certainly make this request to a woman, even though there is a man sitting next to her who works in the same position as her and has the same scope of duties. Often a woman hears a request formulated, for example: “Honey, make us some coffee”, which can additionally affect her.

Such texts, seemingly funny, intended as a joke, very often affect female employees and can be considered reprehensible

– believes lawyer Marta Handzlik-Rosuł, a labor law specialist who runs an Instagram profile and a blog of the same name.

The behavior cited above has features that can be considered not only discrimination (contracting tasks such as coffee brewing only to women, although men are also employees), but also sexual harassment

he adds. The lawyer reminds that sexual harassment is any sexually motivated behavior that is unwanted, i.e. leads to a sense of threat, anger, humiliation or powerlessness. It can make it difficult to perform work, but also impair the employee’s functioning outside of work due to the high stress he experiences. Harassment can be verbal, physical or combined.