This objective article assesses from the definition of social roles in gênero relations, the treatment and conduct of crimes of sexual harassment within the Brazilian legal framework, in particular in relation to the difficulty of social institutions characterising the crime of harassment, which is based on our cultural pattern that legitimises misgine sexual behaviour on the part of man, and ends by not incriminating the perpetrator’s conduct, treating harassment as a problem in employment relations, and not as violence against women or the victim of harassment. In addition, the article proposes a psychologic reading for a more detailed understanding of the aggressor’s behaviour, which extrapolates the understanding of the phenonyone from a reading restricted to social and cultural. Keywords: Sexual harassment; gênero relationships; violence against women.