A British study has revealed the reasons why victims of sexual harassment do not file a complaint as a priority.
- Sexual harassment is characterized by comments and/or behaviors that undermine a person’s dignity.
- A recent study assessed how victims of sexual harassment react to these acts, and how people who have never experienced it imagine they would act.
- According to this research, victims of sexual harassment do not file a complaint as a priority.
Sexual harassment can take different forms, but it results in the fact of frequently imposing on a person comments or behavior with a sexual or sexist connotation. These acts violatehis dignity because of their degrading or humiliating character, or create an intimidating, hostile or offensive situation against him”indicates the Ministry of the Interior on its online platform.
Sexual harassment: is the first instinct to file a complaint?
A new study published in the journal Psychology of Women Quarterly observed that there is a significant gap between how people imagine they would react if they were sexually harassed and how victims actually react.
For this research, the team from the University of Exeter (United Kingdom) compared the responses of a confidential online survey of people who had experienced sexual harassment with those of people who had not experienced it, but who had to imagine how they would react.
“A gap” between the expectations and the reality of victims of sexual harassment
Researchers analyzed the responses of participants who had experienced sexual harassment, specifically on the actions they took, and compared them to those of volunteers who had never experienced sexual harassment. According to the findings of the study, victims of sexual harassment prioritized meeting needs for safety, control and personal support over taking formal actions such as reporting to the police. Conversely, people who had never experienced sexual harassment indicated that they would go directly to file a complaint at a police station.
“Our study suggests that there is a gap between what people expect of people who have been sexually harassed and how these people actually react. It is important to consider that the feelings and actions of a person who has been sexually harassed can be very different from someone who hasn’t. Instead of asking ourselves why people don’t come forward more often, maybe we should ask ourselves which is the best action for the individualadvocated Professor Manuela Barreto, co-author of the study and researcher at the University of Exeter.
