Eating an ice bar in workplace considered as sexual harassment

By Yoon Ye-seul

If a woman eats an ice cream bar in office, she could be cautioned for sexually harassed her male colleagues.

Finnish lawyers have called for the new sexual harassment law to include women who eat an ice cream bar “too provocatively” in public, reported the Daily Mail on Saturday.

The lawyers have released a video showing a young female office worker sucking an ice cream bar in a highly suggestive manner. A man in the video looks away awkwardly as she moans and licks the bar in the minute-long clip. A question then appears on the screen, asking, “Is this sexual harassment? We know the answer.”

“We have released this video to raise a very difficult issue. Sexual harassment in the workplace can target anyone, men or women,” said the Finnish Lawyers Association, which represents thousands of lawyers in the country. “We fully intended to throw the cat among the pigeons and hope to stimulate debate about what is a very tricky area.”

“We also want to inform the public that if they are unsure about a complex situation they may have faced, lawyers are there to help them,” they added.

In the meantime, any gestures aimed at sexually harassing another person on purpose are considered a criminal offence across most of Europe.