Prevalence and perception of sexually harassing behaviours: The influence of gender and power in New Zealand academia.

Abstract

Sexual harassment within the university has attracted much research over the last 15 to 20 years, although very little has been undertaken within the New Zealand context. The purpose of the current research was to determine the prevalence and perception of sexually harassing behaviours and the influence gender and power in academia. The literature shows that the prevalence of sexually harassing behaviours in higher education is now acknowledged to be widespread. The current study looked at determining the prevalence of harassing behaviours in the university setting. A vast amount of literature has grown, focusing on such factors as the discrepancy between the experience of behaviours legally and objectively classifiable as sexual harassment and individuals' willingness to apply that label. One of the current study's aims was to elucidate the extent to which male and female university students and faculty members in the university setting experience behaviours which can be defined as sexual harassment but fail to label them as such. Most of the sexual harassment research on higher education has focused on the assumption that sexual harassment is what supervisors do to subordinates, where the power lies with the person of higher status. The current research aimed to determine whether the most prevalent higher educated-based sexual harassment was actually from those with more power or among subordinates. One of the more consistent findings in the literature has been gender differences in the survey responses to sexually harassing behaviours where women indicate higher responses to sexually harassing behaviours than men. This study also looked at establishing whether there were any gender differences to harassing behaviour within the university context. From the analysis there is evidence that the prevalence of harassing behaviours within the university setting is very high and there is a huge discrepancy between the experience of behaviours and individuals' willingness to apply that label. Examination of the results also show peer harassment between students and contra-power harassment between faculty members and students is more common in academia. Few gender differences were found amongst the sexually harassing behaviours.