How is equality legislation regarded within your company? As an intrusion into the management of the company? As an unnecessary evil? As a compliance issue only? Or is it regarded as a code of good practice which contains the threshold of rights which can be built upon by your company? And as a supplement to your company's belief system?

These questions were put by Ms Sheena Clohessy, director of Clohessy Consulting in County Clare, at last week's EAP Institute conference Dignity at Work - Adding Value to Employee Contribution.

Ms Clohessy, who developed an innovative equality project which obtained the Action for Equality award for Shannon Aerospace in 1995, believes that in answering the questions posed above, a company will adopt either a strategy of compliance or a commitment to legislative changes.

Some years ago, a case was brought before an Equality Officer under the Employment Equality Act, 1977. The action complained of took place in a hotel during a weekend management development seminar.

Three managers entered the hotel bedroom of a female employee. They rearranged her personal belongings in a manner which the woman believed constituted sexual harassment. The managers admitted being involved in the incident. The company investigated what happened and initiated a disciplinary procedure and said it imposed "the severest disciplinary penalty short of dismissal".

The company admitted the incident took place but denied that it constituted sexual harassment. The company denied legal responsibility for the managers' actions and said it regarded the woman's complaint as "a disingenuous, exaggerated and wrongful attempt to extract financial compensation from the Company".

"In this case, we have an example where the belief system of the individual and that of the company have separated," said Ms Clohessy.

The woman believed she was on company business when an incident involving serious misconduct took place. Moreover, she believed there was a sexual motive and that the company should have handled the incident differently.

The company contended that it could not "be held liable for the acts of its employees which took place outside the place of work, outside normal hours of work, outside the authority of the persons alleged to have breached the Act, in a situation over which the Company had no control or input of any nature".

We grow up to accept that certain behaviours are acceptable and inoffensive to one gender which could be unacceptable and offensive to the other gender, says Ms Clohessy.

"Women who break acceptable behaviour codes can find criticism will issue from both males and females, perhaps even more strongly from females. Men who break acceptable behaviour codes will draw criticism but there will be a tendency to produce plausible reasons and expect that the behaviour will be excused, if not overlooked by females," she said.

She believes that in the case in question, the woman breaks the gender expectation by not accepting it as a prank and that she rejects the authority of the company to remedy the situation. Women are not expected to challenge the authority of a system.

"When women do the unexpected, the system can be unprepared and unwilling to accept such behaviour from a woman," she said.

Ms Clohessy believes that the company could not understand why the woman could not act in the way they expected: "They were genuinely unable to interpret the situation as their gender awareness lead them to believe they were completely correct." The belief system in a company concerning equality legislation - the answers to the questions posed at the start of this column - will determine whether a company adopts a strategy of compliance or one of commitment to legislative changes, she believes.

Leaders are needed to think and act beyond the operative assumptions in a company. They should challenge and change old patterns and beliefs and create new ones. "Managers are competent at operating the status quo. Leaders are called upon to question it and constantly reach for improvement," she said.

The Equality Officer found that the three managers had treated the woman less favourably because she was a woman but did not find that the employee had been sexually harassed.

Ms Clohessy told The Irish Times: "Under the 1977 legislation, there was no provision for sexual harassment. There was only provision for being treated unfavourably either because of your sex or marital status." Increasingly, as Roger Farrance, former president of the Institute of Personnel Management has observed: "An environment in which harassment occurs reflects as badly on the organisation as on any of the employees within it."