Manual to act in case of labor harassment in the arts is launched today

Oprofessionals, employers or funders of performing arts have, as of today, a manual to act against harassment, which is “an obvious violation of human rights” often unknown, told Lusa the researcher Dália Costa.

The “Practical Handbook to prevent and act on labor harassment in performing arts and disciplinary crossings” is presented today in Lisbon and is the latest initiative of the MUDA Project, made known in the spring of 2025, to combat harassment in the arts.

With an accessible pocket format and legal language, the manual appears after an inquiry and an unprecedented technical-scientific study – published last March – that unveiled a reality of “widely disseminated” labor harassment in the performing arts in Portugal.

One of the researchers involved in the study and the creation of the manual, sociologist Dália Costa, explained to the agency Lusa that this manual will try to reach a sector in which people are “uninformed, unclear about their rights, about what harassment is about, about how they can, as harassed people, claim and demand effective enforcement of their rights by employers”.

“ We are talking about a clear violation of human rights and a clear violation of the rights of working people. And people who work don't always have this notion. And maybe not even employers,” Dália Costa warned.

The technical-scientific study, based on the cross-checking of data from a national survey and interviews, revealed that about 75% of performing arts workers admitted having experienced situations of bullying and half reported cases of sexual harassment, in both cases occurring more than three years ago.

Behaviors of humiliation, intimidation and professional devaluation, comments, insinuations and proposals of a sexual nature, systematic disregard of pause times or rest periods in the name of the creative process were some of the problems pointed out by the study.

The manual lists typologies and examples of behaviors that fit into moral and sexual harassment in the work context, explains legal distinctions between crime and contra-ordination, defines what consent is and “ecosystem of vulnerability”.

“The situation of vulnerability in the sector and the precariousness of employment contracts end up promoting, for example, this narrative that ‘I [the professional of the arts] have to do everything that is asked of me without contesting’. And this ends up putting a person in a more vulnerable situation. It's a feedback between the various factors. And the person who commits harassment, and the entrepreneurial entity that does not identify that harassment is occurring, takes advantage of these vulnerability factors ", explained Dália Costa.

The manual is also a tool to help act in case of harassment at work.

“ Most of the answers we received [in the national survey] are that people sought support from family members, friends and colleagues. Therefore, there is a huge difficulty, or embarrassment, or a large number of obstacles that cause people not to claim their rights, or to not know them or for fear too”, lamented.

Dália Costa recalled that there are already several channels of complaint in Portugal – particularly in public bodies – but “they are either little disclosed, or they are disclosed in a way in which the message is not reaching people, they are very little used, very little used”.

The manual is presented in the context of the MUDA Event, which takes place between today and Monday at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon, with several debates and a training action.

The director-general of the Arts, Américo Rodrigues, the artistic director of the National Theatre D. Maria II, Pedro Penim, the director of the Studios Victor Cordon, Rui Lopes Graça, or representatives of the union Cena-STE and the Portuguese Association of Legal Women are among the guests of this initiative.

As for the planned training action, Dália Costa explains that it aims to test ways of “clarifying and informing, discussing the issue of harassment in performing arts, raising awareness about the dynamics of harassment”, so that in future it can be replicated in other contexts.

The MUDA project was launched in 2025 on the initiative of Catarina Vieira, Raquel André and Sara de Castro, linked to the creation, research and training in arts, in order to survey situations of workplace harassment and prepare answers to improve the sector.

In the cultural and artistic sector in Portugal, this practical manual joins another manual launched in 2025 to prevent and deal with harassment situations in cinema and audiovisual, created by the Association Women Workers of Images on Movement.