Excellent. Puts the focus right where it belongs -- on principles, not on specific rules of behavior.
The closest thing we really need to codes of conduct is consciousness-raising reminders of the sorts of things that can go wrong EVEN WITHOUT OVERT physically-aggressive behavior. The big three of those seem to be:
1. Tiresome references to objectification of women. E.g., booth babes, scantily clad women in marketing materials, etc.
2. Tiresome repetition of individually unobjectionable signs of attraction. What's fun at gender-balanced party and tolerable OCCASIONALLY in the workplace can be oppressive if it happens too often in a professional context. So if you're attracted to a professional colleague, you should do your best to refrain from showing it.
3. Bad conversational patterns. E.g., a woman who's interrupted in conversation may not power her way back the way many men would, so you should be more careful if you have an urge to interrupt.
If you want, you can add in some kind of affirmative action concept to that as well.
I have to disagree with "you should do your best to refrain from showing it". I believe that the attempted refraining is causing those tiresome sexual advances. I mean I know guys on both ends of the spectrum of flirting proficiency, and it's the guys at the "refrain" end of the spectrum that make situations akward when they try.
Courtship is just as much a skill as programming is. And refraining from programming because you aren't good at it is never going to get you anywhere near good. When you then try to skript something together desperately, you will fail.
On the other hand, the "experienced" rarely made conversations akward for them or the girl, in fact most girls they talked with enjoyed it.
Things like attraction, they're low level things, and they'll leak out. And the more you strain to hold them in, the more akward it gets. I have yet to see a person that can convincingly mask off attraction towards another person.
So don't simply try to force attraction out of the workplace, rather keep anything you do there as professional as you would with other things.
As in most non-trivial choices, context matters. I just emailed a woman that I know professionally that she is beautiful. More precisely, I replied to a photo of her lying in a hospital bed with her newborn daughter "Mother and daughter are both beautiful". I had little fear she would think I was hitting on her. :)
But it took a situation that extreme for me to say that. Her job requires her to be nice to me, so I surely don't want her to regret that necessity.
Back in the 1980s, when ever the most impressive of women -- e.g. Ann Winblad, Sandy Kurtzig or Esther Dyson -- felt they needed a flirtatious demeanor as part of their toolkit, I usually didn't respond ... unless, of course, we were dancing at a party. ;) But I recently saw Sandy again, made it clear she's looking awesome, and hugged her a couple of times; she's over 60 now, and at this point of her life I figured she probably wouldn't mind the attention. ;)
The closest thing we really need to codes of conduct is consciousness-raising reminders of the sorts of things that can go wrong EVEN WITHOUT OVERT physically-aggressive behavior. The big three of those seem to be:
1. Tiresome references to objectification of women. E.g., booth babes, scantily clad women in marketing materials, etc.
2. Tiresome repetition of individually unobjectionable signs of attraction. What's fun at gender-balanced party and tolerable OCCASIONALLY in the workplace can be oppressive if it happens too often in a professional context. So if you're attracted to a professional colleague, you should do your best to refrain from showing it.
3. Bad conversational patterns. E.g., a woman who's interrupted in conversation may not power her way back the way many men would, so you should be more careful if you have an urge to interrupt.
If you want, you can add in some kind of affirmative action concept to that as well.