Prevalence of Sexual Harassment among students of Khulna University

This research has been designed to describe the "prevalence of sexual harassment among students of Khulna University." The present world is dealing with several social problems. Among the social issues, sexual harassment is one of the major problems in our society. In Bangladesh, the scenario reveals the same situation for the sexual harassment problem. Sexual harassment is a problem in the streets, workplace, and academic sectors; the prevalence is equally the same Women are the prominent victims of sexual harassment incidents, and in the educational environment, female students face the same situations. So, the research work was conducted on the undergraduate students of the Social Science School of Khulna University. The main objectives of the study were to evaluate the nature of sexual harassment in academia, the impacts on female students and the consequences of the problem. The study was conducted in qualitative research method and collected primary data with the help of a questionnaire. Eight respondents were selected purposively for the study that fulfilled the criteria of the unit of analysis. Findings of the study disclosed that females are frequent victims of gender-based sexual harassment in the educational environment. Female students constantly face verbal and non-verbal sexual harassment in their educational environment However, the majority of the respondents doesn't disclose or report the incidents to the authority because they cannot rely on that perpetrators will not get proper punishment for their crimes. For this, the victims suffer from various impacts on their mental and physical well-being As a result, the female students replace their career focus, skipping their educational journey and constantly feeling insecure. This research also revealed that society and culture greatly impact the sexual harassment occurrences by men The major recommendations are that organizational authority should impose strict actions on the harassers and provide moral and respectful behavior to the faculty, students, and staff. The overall study found the negative impacts of sexual harassment, its consequences, and the possible solutions.

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