Sociological Study: Reasons and Consequences of Sexual Harassment

This essay provides a sociological examination of sexual harassment, defining it as a range of actions involving harassment based on sex, often prevalent in workplaces where perpetrators hold social and economic power. It investigates the reasons and consequences of sexual harassment globally, employing primary research methods like surveys and interviews, alongside secondary data analysis of research books, articles, and journals. The essay identifies cultural background, male domination, military conquest, socioeconomic factors, and learned behavior as key causes. Consequences include workplace isolation, trauma, societal mistreatment, and pregnancy from rapes. Despite existing laws, gaps in enforcement contribute to the persistence of the problem. The essay also highlights the impact of poverty, lack of education, and societal norms that discourage women from reporting harassment. Desklib offers a platform for students to access similar solved assignments and study resources.

Running head: SOCIOLOGY
Sociology
Name of the student
Name of the university
Author note

1SOCIOLOGY
Sexual harassment has been one of the emerging social issue. It is usually described as a
range of actions that involves the harassment of a person due to his or her own sex. This
involves the bullying the victim and the ones who are bullying the victim have a good hold of
social as well as economic powers. It is mostly prevalent in the workplaces. According to the
researches in case of sexual harassment the victim in maximum cases are the girls. It results
in creating a hostile workplace environment.
The question that arises in this context is what are the reasons and the consequences of
the sexual harassment globally?
In order to make an extensive research of the topic the primary as well as secondary form of
research methods needs to be employed. The primary method would include the interview
method as well as conducting the survey. The secondary research method would include
analysing the secondary data that is research books, research articles and scholarly journals.
The survey can be conducted among the female staffs in many organizations. The survey can
be conducted online. The persons will have to answer in questionnaire that will be distributed
among them and they will have to mark in the likert scale (Koohsari et al., 2015). The
reponds of the responds of the participants of the survey can be analysed in order to find out
whether they are being sexually harassed. Apart from this the hard copy of the questionnaires
can be distributed among the college students and they can be asked to fill those up. In order
to understand the cause and the effects of the same an interview can be conducted of the
female strata of the society. The interviewer can visit in different work organization and they
can visit many schools and colleges and conduct an interview of the females. The interviewer
should make efforts to extract the various opinions of the interviewee (Skoog & Bayram
Özdemir, 2016).

2SOCIOLOGY
The secondary research would include the analysis of the scholarly journals and articles of
the research questions. This would include the instances of sexual harassment in the history.
This include the meanings and definitions of the sexual harassment. It would study the data
that has been recorded in the history of the amount of people that were sexually harassed. It
will study the real cause of the sexual harassment and find out the consequences of the same
(de Lijster et al., 2016).
After using the primary and secondary method it can be mentioned that the cause of the
sexual harassment is the culture in which a person is brought up. It depends upon the cultural
background of the decision makers of the organization and the people who treat the women in
the worst manner. It is also dependent on the culture of the society (Taylor, Bogdan &
DeVault, 2015). There are many societies that believes in male domination. The society in
that case is known to be the male dominated society. The identified causes of the sexual
harassment is the military conquest, the socioeconomic causes, the anger, the demonstration
of physical power, the sadism, the sexual pleasure, the psychopathy, the ethical standards, the
laws, the attitude towards the victims and the evolutionary pressures (Bryman & Bell, 2015).
The sexual violence is known to be a learned behaviour in some adults. It depends
particularly evident to suggest that sexually abused boys have shown that around one in five
continue in later life to molest children themselves. Those are the experiences that might lead
to a pattern of behaviour where the man justifies being violent and that denies the wrong
activities (Jiang et al., 2015). The family honor and sexual purity is also a major factor of the
same. The response of the family towards the sexual harassment is one of the cause of this.
The family blames the women without even punishing the men. Through research it has been
found that the society makes no effort to protect the women from the sexual violence. There
is no social pressure to control the young men or to persuade them in order to make them
believe that forced sexual activity is a crime. While conducting the survey this can be

3SOCIOLOGY
mentioned that poverty can be held to be one of the most important factor of sexual
harassment (Gruber & Fineran, 2016). This can be linked to the lack of education. In many
developing areas due to an increased rate of poverty the people were unable to secure good
education as a result they were unable to learn the basic behaviours related to sexual
harassment. The masculine identity is the priority of the people belonging to the poor class. It
has been found while researching about the number of complaints of sexual harassment that
in many countries the women find it risky to lodge complaint against the accuser. The risk
might include the fear of honor killing by their families, they were being prosecuted for
getting indulged in the sexual activity outside marriage. The government in many places did
it pay attention to the complaints from the women. The harassment occurs even inside the
relationship of marriage. In many places the sexual harassment is not considered to be an
issue in the marriage relation. The women are treated as a property and commodity in a
marriage. The man can do anything with his wife as she is his property (Bryman, 2015).
There are innumerable effects of the marriage that have been analysed with the help of the
research. By considering the opinions of the victims of the harassment, the common effects of
the harassment that has been recognized are isolation in the workplace, the trauma off the
incident that remains throughout the entire life of the victim. Post-assault mistreatment by the
society and pregnancy from rapes. However the laws and regulations have been formulated in
order to reduce this problem. There are some gaps in maintaining the laws and the regulations
this is the reason that the problem still prevails in many regions.

4SOCIOLOGY
References
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