Recently, Wang Guiyuan, former party secretary and vice president of the School of Literature of Chinese University, was reported to have attracted public attention. Within 24 hours of receiving the report, the Chinese Renmin University completed its investigation, reported that the report was true, and fired Wang Guiyuan.
In addition, Shaanxi Normal University, Shandong University of Technology, Taiyuan University of Science and Technology and other colleges and universities have also reported teachers who are involved in sexual harassment, domestic violence and other teacher ethics problems.
In this context, a research article published in the Journal of Guangzhou University (Social Science Edition) eight years ago, "Sexual Harassment in Universities: Characteristics, Current Situation, Causes and Coping Mechanisms: An Empirical Analysis Focusing on Female Graduate Students" has attracted attention and has been widely reposted in the higher education circle.
The Paper noted that the article was included in the Ministry of Education's Humanities and Social Science Research West Project, and the authors were Li Jiayuan, then associate professor of China West Normal University, and Fang Suning, then an associate professor of China West Normal University, who was engaged in research on the psychology of education management, and Fang Suning, a student of the School of Management of China West Normal University.
According to the article, sexual harassment in colleges and universities is a special type of sexual harassment, and female graduate students are the hardest hit areas of sexual harassment. The study took 129 female graduate students from universities in Sichuan and Anhui as the survey subjects, and tried to refine and summarize the typical characteristics of sexual harassment in universities.
In the study, the authors defined "sexual harassment in colleges and universities" as "the abuse of power by teachers in terms of sexual desire and sexual identity, and the infringement of students by means of physical behavior, language, audio-visual electronic information, etc., hindering and harming the well-being, atmosphere and opportunity for students to fully enjoy education".
Table 1 shows that when answering the question of sexual harassment in universities, graduate students have the highest degree of agreement that "asking for sexual relations by coercion and inducement" belongs to the category of sexual harassment, reaching 92.2%. secondly, 58.9% determined that "creating unnecessary physical contact" was sexual harassment; The graduate students who agree with "the supervisor sends ambiguous and provocative messages", "look at sensitive parts for a long time" and "forced drinking and accompanying alcohol" are either less than half or less than sixty percent; "When the two are alone, the topics of communication are mostly related to private life" and "showing extraordinary interest, concern and concern for individual people", and the degree of recognition is mostly between comparative identification and uncertainty.
According to the authors, "female graduate students have incomplete cognition of sexual harassment in colleges and universities, narrow concepts, and lack due sensitivity and vigilance to its rich manifestations, such as special care, which is often the usual rhythm of sexual harassment in colleges and universities, which lays the groundwork for further sexual harassment." ”
In the survey, only nearly 7% of female graduate students admitted that they had been sexually harassed, while 32.56% said that their classmates or friends who were studying at other universities had been sexually harassed.
In this regard, the authors believe that "the results of the survey are consistent with the high degree of concealment in the typical characteristics of sexual harassment in universities, and only when researchers adopt a roundabout projection of questioning can they get closer to the truth." Sexual harassment has always been hidden among female graduate students in universities, so the 32.56% of the data projected on others is closer to the truth".
Through further interviews, the authors found that if the concept and manifestations of sexual harassment in colleges and universities are clarified, the proportion of sexual harassment experienced by both the person and the people around them will increase significantly.
How do female graduate students usually deal with sexual harassment in colleges and universities? The study found that 64.3 percent of female graduate students avoided sexual harassment, followed by silence.
In the author's view, "the reason for this is that the performance of sexual harassment in colleges and universities is particularly flexible, the means are diverse, the implementation conditions are convenient, and the lack of prevention and response mechanisms in colleges and universities." ”
Regarding the harm of sexual harassment in colleges and universities, the survey results show that 68.2% will have prejudice against the role of teachers and reduce interpersonal trust; 53.5% of people believe that their outlook on love, life and values will be affected; 66.7% of the respondents believed that sexual harassment would affect their studies and reduce their sense of environmental safety.
According to the author's analysis, "If university teachers are not only not demonstrators of social morality and defenders of fairness and justice, but play the role of perpetrators of sexual harassment, the beliefs of graduate students will be undermined or even subverted." The collapse of this trust system and the loss of moral bottom line will make the harassed students lose self-confidence, impact their own original value system, and affect the construction of the social value system by destroying the students' values. ”
The study also analyzes the causes of sexual harassment in colleges and universities from five aspects:
The first is "two feelings are happy" - a natural physiological theory that transcends the ethics of teacher-student relationship. According to this theory, sexual harassment arises from a natural, physical attraction between people. In the survey conducted by Li Jiayuan and Fang Suning, 59.7% of the people believed that the female students' admiration for the graduate supervisors was caused, and 38.0% believed that the sexual harassment occurred because the female students were not self-respecting and could not resist the natural attraction between the sexes, which was a voluntary behavior of both parties.
The second is "ignorance and fearlessness" - the contrast between the sexual and physiological maturity of girls and the serious lag in sex education. The survey found that 64.3% of graduate students tend to believe that insufficient education on sexual knowledge, sexual psychology and related legal knowledge is a major reason for sexual harassment, and 73.7% believe that graduate students lack sufficient awareness of protection and self-protection means.
The third is "coercion and inducement" - the power of the unbridled mentor: using power to seek sex. According to the survey results, 78.3% of the graduate students strongly agreed that it was due to the excessive power of the graduate supervisors, the monopoly of academic resources, and the lack of relevant supervision and management of the university, which led to frequent sexual harassment incidents, but little was known to the public. At the same time, the article emphasizes that "the dignity of teachers" and "respect for teachers and education" are long-respected concepts, which add intangible power to graduate supervisors.
The fourth is "a harmonious atmosphere" - the organizational culture of colleges and universities that supports sexual harassment. The article points out that at present, Chinese universities not only lack an organizational culture to prevent and prevent sexual harassment, but also a supportive organizational culture. For example, the authors say that supervisors have inappropriate gender role expectations for female graduate students, and that the treatment of female students as sexual roles rather than student roles is rationalized and maximized.
The fifth is "unrestrained" - the supervision and assessment mechanism of teacher ethics is not sound. According to the survey data, as many as 87.3% of people believe that the tutor's low morality and moral bottom line are one of the reasons for sexual harassment. At the same time, 78.3% of the graduate students believe that the supervision and assessment mechanism of graduate tutors in colleges and universities is not perfect, and sexual morality is not included in the scope of assessment, which leads to frequent sexual harassment incidents.
Finally, the author suggests that a normalized anti-sexual harassment mechanism in colleges and universities should be constructed from five aspects: implementing the specific implementation measures of the long-term mechanism for the construction of teacher ethics in colleges and universities, and improving the supervision and assessment system of tutors; Establish multi-dimensional legal safeguard mechanisms inside and outside colleges and universities, and promote the lawful governance of sexual harassment on campuses; Explore and establish specialized anti-sexual harassment institutions in colleges and universities, and unblock channels for students to complain about sexual harassment and seek help; Popularize and promote "anti-sexual harassment" education, improve relevant curricula, and clarify misunderstandings; Expand and improve the functions of psychological counseling centers in colleges and universities, emphasizing professional counseling for victims of sexual harassment.
It is worth mentioning that the study found that only 26.3% of graduate students who sought help from the relevant management department of the university in other ways of coping with sexual harassment showed that they had no way to seek help from the school. At the same time, 86.1% of the respondents believed that one of the effective countermeasures to stop sexual harassment in colleges and universities was to set up a special agency to deal with sexual harassment and smooth the channels for sexual harassment complaints, reflecting students' strong desire and demand for relevant complaint channels on campus.
Source: The Paper