Gender and Education
Sexual Harassment in Education
Education remains to be one of the broadest services offered to humanity in the entire globe. Universal codes of conduct affirm that everyone has a right to equal treatment in all service provision areas without getting tyrannized on a sex basis. Sexual harassment is a world-wide known notorious form of discrimination, which is highly prohibited and discouraged in education settings. The harassment ranges from unwanted touching, gesturing, uncomfortable jokes to someone making a promise for a good grade in exchange for a sexual favor. Different people in the education sector may carry out sexual harassment, ranging from the administrators, trustees, educators, the school staff, students, and even visitors within the school premises. Sexual harassment tends to result in a poisoned environment for the students and the staff of the school. In this case, “education services” include the primary, secondary, and tertiary education levels. Instructional activities such as sports, cultural activities, school functions, field trips, and tutoring also encompass the concept of “education services.” My essay will analyze sexual harassment as a common gender issue experienced in the education sector.
Education is a critical aspect in the life of a young person. It allows them to develop personally, socially, and academically, hence essential for future careers and integrating into society after schooling. Therefore, it is alarming that sexual harassment has become so widespread in the areas where the lives of young and promising students are entrusted to spend most of their time in. Evidential statistics indicate that in regions like Ontario, Canada, over 80% of female students reported sexual harassment in their school setting in 1995 (“Sexual harassment in education (brochure),” n.d.). The same report also indicated that in a study of over 4200 girls, girls aged 9-19 had experienced sexual harassment daily. What’s even more baffling is that most occurrences of sexual harassment in schools oftentimes go unreported.
Several reports of sexual harassment in the tertiary level of education have also gotten made. Most women experience sexual advances and adjuration from male professors, university staff, teaching assistants, and alike students (.Dranzoa, 2018, p. 4). For instance, professors and students may continually plead for sexual favors or dates from female students whom they feel attracted to. At times when women fail to give in to their requests, they tend to get abused in different ways, psychologically and physically. In the school environment, cases have also gotten reported of students receiving sexual requests from teachers to students in a K-12 setting. Sadly, female victims experience sexual harassment due to their sexual identity, which has reportedly been a part of school rituals and initiation of fresh students, newbies in teams, or new to any given fraternity. Ideally, students get demanded to participate in sexually explicit observances as parcel of heckling activities.
Ideally, sexual harassment does not need to be “sexual” in nature; it may involve teasing, intimidating, or offensive comments that emanate from stereotypical views. There has also been a “silent” problem where male learners harass female educators. This form of frustration is yet to receive the attention it deserves in various jurisdictions. Reports point that abuse has, in ancient times, gotten effected by men in authoritative positions and that this harassment implicates their misuse of their power of trust (Lorber et al., 1991, p. 9). However, when male learners frustrate female teachers, they display none of these traits. Some male students may undermine the classroom management, attributing it to the traditional western discourse of power, by relying on the notion that children get viewed as either innocent or naïve in association to adult-like concepts such as sexuality, gender, and power. However, the Australia Sex Discrimination Act since 1992, recognizes that students can harass their teachers, and thus provides in the student perpetrator aged 16 or older.
Further, still in the secondary level education, “gender regime” and gender authority are witnessed in non-traditional female disciplines of study such as physics, chemistry, and computing, which had been stereotyped, reflecting a robust male partiality contemporary society. Research indicates that some boys would challenge their female teachers’ authority and even doubt their knowledge on the given teaching subjects. Ideally, the boys tend to ask male teachers to assist them in such subjects rather than female educators.
Studies further indicate that adolescent students may sexually harass female teachers to gain and shift power relations within the school (Qazi, 2014, p.3). To challenge the female teachers’ authority, boys fail to display fear in the face of punishment to undermine the feminine and affirm their masculinity. It is unfortunate that in this type of harassment, the victim gets blamed for the frustration leashed on her with the claims that they have failed to maintain proper discipline among their learners.
It is imperative to note that for an act to get considered as sexual harassment, the thoughts of the individual who feels harassed highly matters. Therefore, it doesn’t matter if the harassment perpetrator thinks it was “harmless” or “welcomed.” Sexual harassment counts as long as the behavior made one feel uncomfortable, violated, or unsafe. Some victims may fail to stop their sexual harassers immediately. However, it is still considered harassment regardless of the reinforcement one took or did not take against it. No one deserves to experience harm from another person when they are incapacitated. Finally, some people fail to understand that sexual harassment can still be experienced regardless of a consented previous encounter with an individual; consent must always be given every time. Suffice to say, the teachers who get blamed for the sexual offenses they experience from their learners should always remember that “it is never the victim’s or survivors fault,” and hence should not allow anyone to shame and blame them for being victims of such heinous acts.
Conclusively, various forms of sexual harassment experienced in the education sector, from students being asked for sexual favors, to raping in the campuses, to male students sexually harassing their teachers in and out of the classroom. Sexual harassment in education should get considered extremely serious. What happens within the school premises speaks volumes on what the society upholds in their values and attitudes. Victims of harassment, regardless of age, may fail to acknowledge sexual harassment and may also unconsciously participate in it (“Sexual harassment and assault,” 2020, p.7). This calls for the protection of all women through the law against any form of sexual harassment. In schools that receive federal funding in the U.S, sexual harassment gets considered as illegal through Title IX of the Education Amendments Act of 1972, thus protecting individuals from gender-based discrimination at schools, colleges, and school programs.
References
Dranzoa, C. (2018). Sexual harassment at African higher education institutions. International Higher Education, 94, 4. https://doi.org/10.6017/ihe.2018.94.10513
Lorber, J., Farrell, S. A., & SAGE Publishing. (1991). The social construction of gender. SAGE Publications.
Qazi, E. (2014). Still failing at fairness: How gender bias cheats girls and boys in school and what we can do about it – David & Myra Sadker & Karen R. Zittleman (2009). Journal of Education and Educational Development, 1(1), 71-76. https://doi.org/10.22555/joeed.v1i1.15
Sexual harassment and assault. (2020). The SAGE Encyclopedia of Higher Education. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781529714395.n502
Sexual harassment in education (brochure). (n.d.). Ontario Human Rights Commission. https://www.ohrc.on.ca/en/sexual-harassment-education-brochure