Sexual Harassment

SEXUAL HARASSMENT IN THE LEGAL ECOSYSTEM

Sexual harassment is rife in both the legal fraternity and the judiciary. Research conducted by the International Bar Association in 2019 revealed a high incidence of abuse: 1 in 3 women and 1 in 14 men in the legal profession reported sexual harassment or bullying in the workplace. The situation in South Africa is no different.

Sexual harassment in the legal profession is systemic, culturally embedded and institutionally enabled. It is not a series of isolated incidents involving individuals, but a structural feature of professional life, reproduced by power imbalances, normalised through silence and permitted by inadequate governance. [Learn more]

Between 2022 and 2024, the DGRU, together with its partners in South Africa and Malawi, researched how sexual harassment manifests in court buildings and how misconduct committees deal with it, and supported the development of sexual harassment policies for both judiciaries.

Building on this research and Chief Justice Mandisa Maya’s 2024 Sexual Harassment Policy, the DGRU seeks to establish coherent, interoperable accountability systems across courts, law firms, Bar councils, law societies and regulatory bodies.

Each of these institutions, including the courts, operates within its own policies and procedures, creating a fragmented landscape with unclear reporting lines and ineffective remedial mechanisms.

This patchwork approach fundamentally undermines the legal profession’s integrity and ability to safeguard employee rights.

For a system premised on justice, accountability and equality before the law, the continued failure to act carries severe reputational, ethical and constitutional consequences.

This problem is characterised by several compounding failures:

1. Regulatory fragmentation: Courts, Bar councils, law societies, law firms and the Legal Practice Council (LPC) each operate with separate, and often incompatible, policies and complaint mechanisms, leaving practitioners without coherent pathways.
2. Accountability deficits: Where policies exist, enforcement is weak, and perpetrators, particularly those with seniority or institutional influence, rarely face real consequences.
3. Reporting culture collapse: Power asymmetries, fear of professional retaliation, lack of trust in institutional processes and cultures of silencing have produced a near-total collapse of formal reporting. What is reported represents only a fraction of what is experienced.
4. Absence of trauma-informed infrastructure: Complaint mechanisms across the sector are not designed to protect survivors. The absence of confidential, independent and trauma-informed reporting channels re-traumatises those who attempt to come forward.
5. Junior practitioner vulnerability: Pupillage relationships, briefing dependencies and fear of reputational harm make the most junior members of the profession, particularly young women, systematically the most exposed to harassment and the least positioned to report it.

REFRAMING THE PROBLEM: FROM MISCONDUCT TO GOVERNANCE FAILURE

The IBA study’s most critical insight is that sexual harassment in the legal profession is a governance problem. It signals failures in oversight, reporting systems, disciplinary mechanisms, leadership culture and professional regulation.

This reframing is essential to a South African strategy: shifting the conversation from “bad behaviour” to “systemic integrity failure” and positioning sexual harassment as a threat to the administration of justice, constitutional compliance and the profession’s legitimacy. The most important measure is making sexual harassment a gross misconduct issue and a career limiter.

HOW TO SOLVE THE PROBLEM

Note: Throughout this page, we use the term ‘target’ rather than ‘victim’ or ‘survivor’. This recognises that people are targeted by perpetrators, that the responsibility for the trauma lies with the perpetrator, not the person harmed, and that the term does not define them or reduce them to a state of victimhood.

• Survivor-centred approaches must restore targets’ autonomy by giving them the right to choose from multiple resolution pathways, rather than pushing them toward formal complaints.
• Address delays in the process and ensure constant communication and updates with complainants.
• Minimise contact or interaction between targets and alleged perpetrators, especially during proceedings.
• Strengthen independent regulatory body oversight, mandatory reporting obligations and referral pathways. A strong relationship between the SAHRC, CCMA, LPC, Bar councils and equality courts is essential.
• Make fuller use of existing but underutilised mechanisms, including equality courts and the SAHRC, and close coordination gaps between institutions.

EVENTS TO DATE

DGRU AND LPC WEBINAR: “ADDRESSING SEXUAL HARASSMENT IN THE LEGAL ECOSYSTEM: HOW FAR HAVE WE REALLY COME WITH TRANSFORMATION?”

On 27 August, the DGRU, in partnership with the LPC, delivered a webinar in recognition of Women’s Month to address the issue of sexual harassment in the legal fraternity. The webinar highlighted the following issues: power dynamics and silencing mechanisms in firms, chambers and courts; regulatory bodies and institutional failures; and intersectionality and survivor-centred accountability.

WATCH HERE: