Sexual harassment in a higher education institution

Abstract

Sexual harassment is a type of gender violence, which is generally naturalized and rarely reported. The aim of this qualitative study was to analyze the experiences of female university students who have been victims of sexual harassment. The intentional sample consisted of 10 participants between the ages of 22 and 24 years from a university in the southeast of Mexico. Interviews were analyzed through different categories, such as the perception of the interviewee, about the harassment, the consequences, and facing the event. The analysis was based on the QSR 6 (NVivo) software. It was found that students perceive harassment as something normal and even romantic, but subsequently there are feelings of humiliation and guilt. Those who reported the incident did not obtain help, in all of them there was a feeling of learned helplessness. In addition, harasser professors have a special language to communicate when they want sexual favors: "you have to take an equivalence test", language that the students know and understand.