Since the 2011 revolution, the media has given much attention to the problem of sexual harassment and assault in Egypt. Attacks against female journalists and protestors have thrust the issue into the international spotlight, but it is a problem that has plagued Egypt for years. The majority of women in Egypt face some kind of sexual harassment everyday. This report is about the men and women who are working to stop sexual harassment and assault in Egypt. / text

Although the topic of bullying generally leads to discussions of the dynamicsbetween and among children, bullying increasingly involves complex power structuresamong adults in their workplaces. The purpose of this project is to broaden theunderstanding of workplace bullying in the United States through the critical analysis ofpopular media and U.S. legal discourses. The analysis unravels the ways in whichbullying is normalized, individualized, perpetuated and rewarded. It seeks to denaturalizethe phenomenon and situate bullying as a construction that can bedeconstructed and addressed. It interrogates the messages of resistance, agency andblame as productive and disciplinary strategies that permit bullying to operate withdiscursive and material impunity. Legal prohibitions alone will not prove to be thepanacea but, along with reframed discourses, they will help undermine the naturalizationof bullying in the workplace and open new avenues for exploring solutions andalternatives.

Around the world, females typically represent fifteen per cent or less of registered professional engineers. They also leave the profession at significantly higher rates than their male counterparts. Incidences of sexual harassment and sexual discrimination continue to be reported in interviews with female graduate engineers. Despite many years of study and initiatives to get more females into engineering, girls and women continue to avoid this profession. Research into the workplace experiences of female engineers tends to neglect organizational and institutional contexts. In particular, there is a lack of attention paid to the ways in which engineering associations, as regulatory bodies in the profession, support their female members. To that end, Laclau and Mouffe’s discourse theory and concept of hegemony were used to open new empirical terrain by providing an account of the sexual harassment and sexual discrimination discourse of the Ontario professional engineering association. It was found that the discourse of sexual harassment and sexual discrimination is hegemonized by the discourses of regulation and the practice of engineering. Critical gender equality issues that academic research has reported for female practitioners inside engineering workplaces, such as sexual harassment and sexual discrimination, are considered outside of the practices of regulation and engineering. Gender work within the association is confined to supporting the female members of the profession and is performed by the female members of the association. This contributes to the maintenance of the status quo, the illusion of gender neutrality, and the privileging of one gender over another in this local setting of the profession. It is recommended that engineering associations examine the effects of hegemonized spaces created by their practices of regulation and professional engineering discourse, particularly in the area of the workplace conditions of its members. It is also recommended that the scope and range of gender equity change actions practiced by engineering associations go beyond mainly providing modes of support for females in the profession. / 2013-03

The study explores trainee teachers' perceptions and experiences of sexual harassment in Teacher Training Institutions in Ghana. Guided by the research literature on sexual harassment and a feminist framework, the study seeks to understand how sexual harassment and its subtleties are experienced by trainee teachers in Ghana. It particularly throws light on the coping strategies of these trainee teachers in different sexual harassment scenarios. The study also seeks to increase awareness of sexual harassment in the Teacher Training Institutions and the population at large. This study is also a contribution to the scanty literature in the area of sexual harassment in Africa and has recommended options available to enlighten educational and policy planners on areas of priorities for action and to ensure a more effective response to sexual harassment in the Ghanaian society. / Extensive review of the pertinent literature on sexual harassment was undertaken to support a critical analysis of the expressed perceptions and experiences of these students. Methods such as focus group discussions were employed with semi-structured interviews (open-ended questions) and memory writing as qualitative data gathering techniques to conduct group interviews and individual sessions with a random sample of 40 participants from two teacher training institutions of the country, the University College of Education in Winneba and Bagabaga Training College in Tamale. Female participants were engaged individually in memory writing using procedural guidelines. / The study found out that the main factors predisposing trainee teachers to sexual harassment in Ghanaian Teacher Training Institutions are Institutional practices by both teachers and students and the Institutional environment created from inadequate or complete absence of physical structures aimed at preventing sexual harassment and assaults. The lack of explicit policies to check sexual abuse, including sexual harassment, work in concert with the aforementioned institutional characteristics to create conditions that facilitate sexual harassment of female trainee teachers in the Ghanaian context. All these accumulate into an apparent institutional framework of sexual harassment that supports a regime of blatant disregard of the safety concerns of female trainee teachers. / Based on the testimonies of the students, it would appear that the problem of sexual harassment perpetrated by people in positions of authority is widespread in Ghana. Female student teachers are regularly exposed to a range of sexually motivated abuses within the learning environment, and these abuses are often carried out by tutors, professors, administrative staff and senior students. These three categories of agents of sexual harassment take advantage of available or perceived institutional power to abuse vulnerable female students. Also, perpetrators of sexual harassment against female students are not held accountable for their acts, thus perpetuating these abuses. By their very nature, the institutions of learning in Ghana are very hierarchically structured, such that power, might and right are often easily accorded to tutors over students, administrative staff over students and senior students over their junior counterparts. Most often they abuse the power and influence of their positions with threats of reprisals when the females refuse to consent to their sexual demands. The victimized females suffer untold consequences, which are minimized at every step in this structured power system.

Evolutionary psychological principles were applied to the issue of sexual harassment to investigate whether the gender, power, and mate value of harassers were related to perceptions of sexual harassment. One hundred and sixty heterosexual men and women were given descriptions of a target individual whose mate value and power was manipulated, and three behavioural vignettes involving imagined interactions with the target individual. Participants rated their perceived level of sexual harassment (the dependent variable) stemming from the imagined interactions. Participants also provided ratings of their self perceived level of attractiveness, attitude towards social-sexual communication in the workplace, and experience with social-sexual communication in the workplace. As predicted, females perceived higher levels of sexual harassment than males, and participants perceived higher levels of sexual harassment from low mate-value target individuals than high mate-value target individuals. Against predictions, no result was found for power. Additionally, self perceived level of attractiveness was found to moderate the relationship between gender and perceived sexual harassment, and attitude towards social-sexual communication in the workplace was found to moderate the relationship between mate value and perceived sexual harassment. Implications and explanations are discussed with reference to workplace issues, and evolutionary psychology.

Sexual conflict occurs when individuals of one sex express traits that reduce the fitness of their mates. Males of many species harass females to gain copulations, which benefits males by increasing the number of offspring they sire but imposes energetic and opportunity costs on the females they harass. This thesis examined the fitness costs of sexual harassment to females, the energetic costs of mating to males, and the factors influencing the intensity of male competition for mates in the western mosquitofish Gambusia affinis. I quantified male and female behavior, four female fitness components (number of offspring per female, embryo number, growth, and survival), and an index of male body condition in response to changes in operational sex ratio (experiment 1) and male and female density (experiment 2). I found that a strong, negative effect of female density on female fitness overwhelmed any potential costs of male harassment, suggesting that ecological interactions between females may play a larger role in determining female fitness than conflict between the sexes. Agonistic chases and displays between males increased as the operational sex ratio increased (became male-biased), while the number of copulations males attempted decreased. This inverse relationship suggests a tradeoff between interfering with other males and attempting additional copulations with females. Increases in chases between males were largely due to changes in female density, but not male density, suggesting that the availability of females determines whether males escalate contests with other males. In contrast, the number of displays between males depended varied with male density but did not female density. This difference between chases and displays is likely due to their difference in function; chases are performed to prevent other males from mating while displays are used to assess male competitors. I did not detect any energetic cost of mating to males.

The present study aimed to: (1) examine whether experiencing ethnic harassment was related to violent behaviors among immigrant youths (2) identify the conditions that elevate ethnically harassed youth’s engagement in violent behaviors. Specifically, current study examined the moderating roles of youth’s ethnic identification, anger regulation, and impulsivity on the association between ethnic harassment and violent behaviors. Participants included 341 first- and second-generation immigrant youth (Mage= 14.11, SD =.93; 48 % girls) who were recruited from seven different schools in a mid-size Swedish city. Regression analyses was conducted to test whether ethnic harassment predicted violent behaviors over the course of one year after and whether youth’s ethnic identification, anger regulation and impulsive personality trait moderated the association between ethnic harassment and violent behaviors. Results showed that when immigrant youth were exposed to ethnic harassment, they were more likely to display violent behaviors one year later. In addition, the results suggested that immigrant youth who identified themselves with their heritage culture, i.e., high ethnic identification, were more at risk displaying violent behaviors in the case of ethnic harassment. Moreover, the results indicated that anger regulation and impulsive personality trait did not moderate the relationship between ethnic harassment and violence.

The present study investigated whether the presentation of severe psychological injury increased the perceived likelihood of sexual harassment and more plaintiff-friendly verdicts in a hostile environment sexual harassment claim. Four hundred thirty-two participants were presented with a case summary divided into five paragraphs. Within the fifth paragraph, participants were informed that the plaintiff suffered from different severity levels of psychological injury. Gender was monitored to ensure a proportional amount of males and females in each condition. Results indicated that the presentation of psychological injury in any form increased the likelihood of perceived sexual harassment and verdicts for the plaintiff. Participants believed that garden-variety injuries (i.e., embarrassment, humiliation) were more likely to occur from sexual harassment, and had a greater impact on their perceptions and liability determinations. These results suggest that participants may use the presentation of psychological injury as a heuristic that when present, favors the plaintiff. / Department of Psychological Science

In the South Africa mining industry women have been subjected to unfair discrimination due to their gender or sex, for thousands of years. The aim of this study is to establish if women discrimination still exists in this sector by exploring the experiences of women in this mining sector. More and more women are being employed in the mines, but it is not clear if they are subjected to discrimination or not. The research method for this study consists of a literature review and an empirical study. The aim of the literature review was to discuss the research done by others on the subject matter and their findings. Information gathered is used as a base for compiling the questionnaire which is used in the interviews that are conducted during the study. A qualitative phenomenological research method was used for the empirical study because of its effectiveness in identifying intangible factors, such as social norms, socioeconomic status, gender roles, and ethnicity, which are imperative for this study. The results of the study confirm that discrimination still exists in the mining industry. The evidence of this form of discrimination is in men's negative attitudes which are a problem that women have to deal with on daily basis. Men's negative attitudes create a hostile work environment for women that comprise of: disrespecting women, undermining of their capabilities, unequal treatment of women versus men, physically and verbally harass and I or abuse them, sex segregation and glass ceilings Few discrimination cases are reported to management because of fear of victimisation, fear of being seen as cry babies and because there is a perception that management is not supportive to women, therefore it's no use reporting a case because nothing will be done to discipline the perpetrator. The conclusion reached is that most mining organisations are faced with challenges of effectively implementing and managing change. Transformation policies are implemented but there is no internal and external (from government) monitoring, evaluation and verification systems. There is also limited buy in from people (middle and lower management) who are supposed to implement the policies. For effective transformation to happens these are the key issues that must be addressed. / Thesis (MBA)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2011

In the South Africa mining industry women have been subjected to unfair discrimination due to their gender or sex, for thousands of years. The aim of this study is to establish if women discrimination still exists in this sector by exploring the experiences of women in this mining sector. More and more women are being employed in the mines, but it is not clear if they are subjected to discrimination or not. The research method for this study consists of a literature review and an empirical study. The aim of the literature review was to discuss the research done by others on the subject matter and their findings. Information gathered is used as a base for compiling the questionnaire which is used in the interviews that are conducted during the study. A qualitative phenomenological research method was used for the empirical study because of its effectiveness in identifying intangible factors, such as social norms, socioeconomic status, gender roles, and ethnicity, which are imperative for this study. The results of the study confirm that discrimination still exists in the mining industry. The evidence of this form of discrimination is in men's negative attitudes which are a problem that women have to deal with on daily basis. Men's negative attitudes create a hostile work environment for women that comprise of: disrespecting women, undermining of their capabilities, unequal treatment of women versus men, physically and verbally harass and I or abuse them, sex segregation and glass ceilings Few discrimination cases are reported to management because of fear of victimisation, fear of being seen as cry babies and because there is a perception that management is not supportive to women, therefore it's no use reporting a case because nothing will be done to discipline the perpetrator. The conclusion reached is that most mining organisations are faced with challenges of effectively implementing and managing change. Transformation policies are implemented but there is no internal and external (from government) monitoring, evaluation and verification systems. There is also limited buy in from people (middle and lower management) who are supposed to implement the policies. For effective transformation to happens these are the key issues that must be addressed. / Thesis (MBA)--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2011