Employee sexual harassment policies and Kuwait transnational higher education

Abstract

Transnational higher education providers based in the West are increasingly partnering with newer institutions in the Middle East. The present study investigates the extent to which workplace sexual harassment prevention policies are prevalent across the Western universities’ home country campuses and their partner institutions in Kuwait. Policies were collected from Kuwait and their foreign partner institutions’ websites followed up by e-mailed and telephoned requests. The policies were coded for characteristics such as procedures for investigation of sexual harassment complaints, training for sexual harassment prevention, sanctions, etc. Results suggest that foreign partner schools appear more likely to make policies available (58%) than campuses based in Kuwait (40%). The foreign institutions’ policies tend to have more of the prevention characteristics than those for Kuwait schools. Development of workplace sexual harassment policies is becoming essential for human resources management in the Middle East as the workforce grows in gender diversity.