 |
| The danger of sexual harassment |
Sexual harassment can be defined as the act of someone to someone which affects the feeling of unwanted and unwelcome sexual advances or sometimes “requests for sexual favors”. To get this opportunity, the suspect tries several things including physical and verbal conduct. However, sexual harassment sometimes occurs in a very light act creating confusion in defining the conduct. For instance, by touching someone’s body-part like hands, shoulders and face. Therefore, to define it specifically, the Sexual Assault Prevention and Awareness Center of University of Michigan classifies the sexual harassment motives.
The problem about sexual harassment actually affects the emotion and feeling of the victims. Recently, the Department of Psychology of Norwegian University of Science and Technology throughout their publication stated that the exposure of sexual harassment provides negative impact implying to the post-acute syndromes such as anxiety, depression, negative body image and low self-esteem. The researchers also suggested that the most affected method of sexual harassment is the non-physical. This means that the verbal sexual harassment affects the most.
Sexual harassment actually happens daily and it occurs in common public areas such as workplaces or schools. Therefore, the most victims of sexual harassment are the females which take place in their school. This process also generates social phobia affecting to the development of young people either in aspect of physical and emotional. Long-term social phobia creates behavioral inhibition which is displayed as the act of crying or worrying when someone approaches them even though he or she was going to be asked about something.
According to the report conducted by the American Association of University Women in 1998, the girls in schools experienced the verbal sexual harassment for 70% while the 50% of them experienced unwanted sexual touching. This implies that the educational institution is the most vulnerable places.
To be concluded, either physical and verbal sexual harassment affects the development of the victims. Subsequently, if they are exposed in long-term of sexual harassment, anxiety, depression, negative body image and low self-esteem will be experienced. Furthermore, verbal sexual harassment in the schools happens the most indicating we should have concentrated in the school in preventing this psychological harm.