Profiles of Youth In-Person and Online Sexual Harassment Victimization.

Introduction In an era of digitalization, online sexual harassment (OSH) has become a pervasive global issue, yet remains poorly understood. OSH refers to a spectrum of uninvited and unwelcome sexual behaviors—including sexual comments and solicitation—that take place on digital platforms. Using the lens of frames and framing ambiguity, this study explores the challenges faced by victims in identifying OSH and considers factors influencing their interpretations. Methods Data were collected through in-depth interviews conducted in Hong Kong between 2021 and 2024 with 41 victims of online sexual violence. Results Our analysis reveals that victims used frames inconsistently when interpreting their OSH experiences: some described their experiences as unrelated to sexual harassment (out-of-frame), shaped by factors such as inadequate sexuality education, a perceived hierarchy of sexually harassing behaviors, and the borderless and anonymous nature of cyberspace. Others misinterpreted their OSH encounters (misframed), often due to unclear boundaries between sexual interest and harassment, confusion about perpetrators’ motivations, and cultural norms in cyberspace. In most cases, victims eventually recognized OSH victimization after gaining new knowledge and conceptual clarity (reframed). Conclusions Our findings highlight the need to enhance young people’s understanding of sexual harassment in general, and OSH in particular, to enable timely and effective responses. Policy Implications This research calls for sexuality education reform by implementing a structured, digitally informed curriculum with mandated instructional hours, establishing a definition of OSH aligned with legal and scholarly definitions but also accessible to layman, and strengthening laws to address the distinctive challenges of OSH.

Online sexual harassment and cyberbullying in a nationally representative sample of teens: Prevalence, predictors, and consequences

Sexual harassment of women and girls in public places is prevalent and well-documented in Egypt. In a 2008 study of about 1,010 women and 1,010 men in Greater Cairo, 83 percent of Egyptian women and 98 percent of foreign women respondents reported they had been sexually harassed (Hassan, Abul Komsan, and Shoukry 2008, 16). A 2013 UN Women study revealed that 99 percent of 2,332 women sampled from seven governorates across rural and urban contexts, including Cairo, Alexandria, Ismailia, Gharbia, Dakahleya, Assiut, and Qena, had been sexually harassed (El-Deeb 2013, 6). Additionally, a 2014 study by HarassMap reported that 95 percent of three hundred women surveyed in Greater Cairo experienced sexual harassment (Fahmy et al. 2014, 6).Collective sexual assault and rape by largely unidentified men were prevalent responses to protests in Tahrir Square between 2011 and 2014 (El-Nadeem et al. 2013; Langohr 2013, 19; Nazra 2014). Such violence added to the existing widespread problem of everyday sexual harassment of women and girls by men and boys in public places, as well as sexual violence against women activists by actors affiliated with state security and police forces (Amar 2011, 309; Hafez 2014, 178; Tadros 2013, 8). In a context characterized by lax security due to the withdrawal of the police from the streets after the 2011 revolution (Ahmad Zaki and Abd Alhamid 2014; Tadros 2013, 7), novel forms of street-level action-oriented initiatives emerged and intensified. These initiatives focused on bystander intervention and self-defense and aimed at changing individual behaviors and attitudes, particularly as sexual assaults against activist and nonactivist women and girls became a regular feature of life. Initiatives against sexual harassment and assault such as HarassMap, OpAntiSH, Tahrir Bodyguard, WenDo Egypt, Shoft Taharrush, Dedd el-Taharrush, and Harakat Bassma relied on large numbers of volunteers and used social media for mobilization (Ahmad Zaki and Abd Alhamid 2014; Langohr 2013, 19; Langohr 2015, 131). Such action-oriented initiatives were facilitated by growing mainstream and social media attention to sexual harassment and violence and the ease of mobilizing creatively on- and offline to expose and shame harassers, name experiences of violence, and discuss them (Langohr 2015, 132).Between 2005 and 2010, in contrast, anti–sexual harassment interventions in Egypt by women’s and feminist nongovernmental organizations had focused largely on raising awareness and improving laws and policies, although there were early efforts at bottom-up approaches that used art, music, and theatrical events; workshops and trainings held at El Sawy Culture Wheel, the Goethe Institute, and the campus of the American University in Cairo (AUC); and interactive information sessions that included the collection of survey data to understand people’s experiences at AUC (Rizzo, Price, and Meyer 2012, 471–72; Pratt 2005, 141). The new initiatives against sexual harassment and assault represent for Hind Ahmad Zaki and Dalia Abd Alhamid (2014) the rise of “an independent social movement” that includes hundreds if not thousands of volunteers. Dalia Abd Alhamid, who works with the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, emphasizes the “tremendous change” that occurred after the revolution as anti–sexual harassment activism moved away from small-scale “workshops, reports, documentation” that reached few people.1In addition to analyzing reports and secondary source material, this article uses fieldwork research we conducted in Cairo to explore the strategies and work of two prominent anti–sexual harassment initiatives, HarassMap, established in October 2010, and WenDo Egypt, established in May 2013.2 HarassMap activists mobilize bystanders to intervene if they witness sexual harassment, and WenDo Egypt trainers offer self-defense courses that encourage women to verbally and physically respond to harassment and assault against themselves and other women. We conducted participant observation and interviews with four activists in HarassMap and four trainers in Wendo Egypt. Participant observation included Abdelmonem working in the HarassMap office and attending unit meetings, trainings, and street outreach between 2013 and 2014. Galán participated in three self-defense workshops organized by WenDo Egypt in 2014 and 2015. We also interviewed six representatives of organizations and initiatives working against sexual harassment and assault, one each from the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, Nazra for Feminist Studies, El-Nadeem Center for Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence, Harakat Bassma, Dedd el-Taharrush, and Tahrir Bodyguard. All interviews were conducted in English.HarassMap was launched in October 2010 by going live with an online crowdmapping system, Ushahidi, a GIS-based technology that asks users to anonymously describe their sexual harassment experience and pinpoint the location of the incident on a Google map (Peuchaud 2014, i115, i118; Skalli 2014, 250).3 The HarassMap cofounders include Rebecca Chiao, a US citizen employed as international relations director between 2004 and 2008 at the Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights (ECWR); Engy Ghozlan, an Egyptian citizen who managed the ECWR anti–sexual harassment program in 2007 and 2008; Sawsan Gad, an independent Egyptian researcher who affiliated with ECWR in 2009; and Amel Fahmy, an Egyptian employee of the UN Population Fund from 2008 to 2011.In late 2008 Chiao and Ghozlan separately left ECWR because, as they report, they each sought other work opportunities and increasingly disagreed with the organization’s political advocacy approach in response to sexual harassment. In 2005 ECWR initiated the “Making Our Streets Safe for Everyone” project to combat sexual harassment. Initially, the initiative centered on bottom-up strategies that engaged local people to raise awareness of sexual harassment as a problem. It was not externally funded and was run by Chiao and unpaid interns and volunteers until 2007, at which point it received a grant from the UN Population Fund (Rizzo, Price, and Myer 2012, 470). With funding, Chiao contends that ECWR moved toward top-down projects, such as conducting research and promoting draft legal amendments to criminalize sexual harassment in Egypt (ECWR 2009; FIDH et al. 2014, 74).4 Within Egypt’s militarized and neoliberal environment, ECWR and other NGOs sought to combat sexual harassment without breaching a variety of legal restrictions on their activities, including the 1958 Emergency Law and Law 84 of 2002, regulating NGOs (Rizzo, Price, and Meyer 2012, 464).HarassMap founders bypassed registration with the Ministry of Social Affairs, a practice that became widespread among anti–sexual harassment initiatives after the revolution.5 Initially, Chiao and Ghozlan worked part-time at other jobs while using their private cars and personal funds for the initiative and meeting with volunteers in cafés.6 They held the first outreach meeting with volunteers in December 2010, although the revolution accelerated their work as people began to speak more freely about sexual violence and the “barrier between people and the street” was removed.7 Amal ElMohandes of Nazra similarly reports that between 2011 and 2013 “public space was very open” and “very promising.”8 She continues: “everyone felt that they own the streets.” Between 2012 and 2013 HarassMap incubated with the capacity-building NGO Nahdat el-Mahrousa, which oversaw the use of funds from the Canadian-based International Development Research Center. HarassMap used these funds to hire staff to coordinate volunteers and pay for the use of a coworking space in Heliopolis. In 2015, given the government’s renewed enforcement of Law 84, HarassMap sought formal NGO status, which was approved in early spring 2016.HarassMap’s mission is to end the “social acceptability” of public sexual harassment and encourage people to stand up against it. Thus the primary focus of their work is to build community outreach teams comprising local people who speak to their neighbors and community kin to promote zero tolerance for sexual harassment and more recently to recruit schools, universities, small businesses, and corporations to become “role models” and devise internal measures—HarassMap calls these “escalation policies”—to manage sexual harassment claims. Initially, HarassMap activists hoped to use their Ushahidi-powered crowdmap to conduct community outreach in “hotspots” of sexual harassment. This idea was discarded soon after the first volunteer training in December 2010, when the cofounders decided that it made more sense to focus instead on the neighborhoods of their growing volunteer pool to more effectively impact the neighbors, friends, and family of participants.9HarassMap comprises several units. At the time this research was conducted, the Community Outreach unit worked with more than fourteen hundred volunteers in twenty-three governorates to coordinate monthly street campaigns. Within each governorate, HarassMap trains volunteers to become “community captains” who are responsible for building, training, and overseeing their own volunteer team to conduct a minimum of one or two outreach days per month to engage people and instill within them a sense of responsibility for solving the problem of sexual harassment and changing cultural sensibilities.10 The Safe Areas unit works with small businesses such as cafés, kiosks, and even taxis. The Safe Corporates unit works with companies such as Uber. The Safe Schools and Universities unit develops campus outreach teams. Additionally, the Marketing and Communications unit streamlines messaging, mediates media presence, and devises campaigns, while the Research unit manages the crowdmap, though this unit is currently being reformulated.Social movement theorists have long noted that social and political change depends on the mobilization of bystander publics, who have been described as “distal spectators” even if they are sympathetic (Snow, Zurcher, and Peters 1981, 31). Social movement actors often seek to sway bystanders to their cause and turn them into movement adherents to build a critical mass that will precipitate change (Benford and Snow 2000, 624). HarassMap seeks to end the bystander effect in relation to sexual harassment by convincing bystanders (al-nas illi waqifa), or those who “play stupid” (iʿmal ʿabit), to view it as a crime that is everyone’s responsibility to counteract. “Play stupid” appeared as a caption in a cartoon circulated on HarassMap’s (2013) Facebook page, showing a faceless woman on a crowded metro car being harassed while others ignored the situation. Bystanders, HarassMap activists argue, contribute to the social acceptability of sexual harassment.In a TedX (2012) talk, Chiao noted that bystanders use myths to excuse sexual harassment, for example by arguing that it happens only to foreign or unveiled women or that harassers are sexually frustrated because of delayed marriage. Referencing a 2007 political campaign poster of a lollipop covered with flies that encouraged women to veil to avoid sexual harassment, Chiao challenged this message, saying: “We believe that the only way that this problem will stop is if all the harassers stop harassing. And the only way they’ll stop is if we stop accepting these reasons. Stop ignoring, stop making excuses for them, and stop tolerating their behavior.” Like other activists, Chiao believes that men bystanders and harassers “actually interpret silence as welcoming.”11HarassMap’s Ebaʾa el-Tamimi argues that bystanders often consider harassers to be “cool” and believe that women want to be sexually harassed.12 To challenge common responses to sexual harassment, HarassMap launched a series of campaigns between 2012 and 2015, including “Byitḥarrash leh?” (“Why Does He Harass?”), “Mesh sakta” (“I Am Not Silent”), “Ṣaliḥha fi dimaghak” (“Get It Right”), “ʿAyyizin siyasa guwwa al-gamaʿa” (“We Want a Policy in the University”), “Di mesh muʿ aksa, da taḥarrush” (“It’s Not Flirtation, It’s Harassment”), and “Al-mutaḥarrish mugrim” (“The Harasser Is a Criminal”). El-Tamimi emphasizes that these campaigns either focus on or direct their message to bystanders:I’m not telling the harasser to stop harassing. I’m not telling him to “stop this long-term behavior that you’ve been doing all your life.” . . . I’m not even talking to him. I’m talking to people in the street who are generally passive and generally sit around and look at something happening, sometimes they even disagree with it. . . . The idea is to activate these people. You can do it on moral grounds, so you can go and do what the community mobilization guys do and talk to people and make eye contact and tell them this happens on your very street under your own nose and you don’t do anything about it.13In their fall 2013 biannual training workshop, called HarassMap Academy, activists conducted a performance activity in which they asked volunteers to compare how bystanders beat thieves and turn them into the police when a woman’s purse is stolen, whereas they are usually silent when a woman’s body or personal space is violated on the street. HarassMap seeks to “transfer the salience” of standing up to theft to standing up to sexual harassment (Von Atteveldt, Ruigrok, and Kliennijenhuis 2006, 2). As HarassMap’s former director of Community Outreach Hussein El-Shafei (2013) explained to volunteers in a training workshop held in Fayoum in October 2013, the initiative’s work depends on street awareness campaigns that gain people’s trust, transform their perceptions of sexual harassment, and obtain their agreement to speak up as witnesses in order to reshape the “social mentality” (al-ʿaqliyya al-igtimaʿiyya).The focus on bystanders and individual responsibility to stop harassment in a community avoids demonizing or alienating young lower-class men who are usually identified as harassers in popular discourse (Amar 2011, 317). This approach to combating gender-based violence has been criticized for shifting blame to bystanders, encouraging vigilantism, and endangering those who intervene (Elk and Devereaux 2014). These criticisms, however, do not address bystander approaches focused on producing social pressure that changes harassing behavior and creates new community norms, which is HarassMap’s goal.WenDo Egypt was established in May 2013 by Schirin Salem, a former gender project manager at the German Agency for International Cooperation. Being “half-Egyptian, half-German,” as she describes herself, influenced Salem’s decision to bring to Cairo WenDo, a women’s self-defense method created in Canada in the 1970s.14 “I have been coming to Egypt since my early childhood and always saw harassment,” notes Salem.15 She was surprised that her cousins and friends “never reacted” when harassed. Salem learned of WenDo when she attended a self-defense course as a thirteen-year-old in Germany. She recalls this experience as greatly increasing her self-confidence. Many years later she still remembered many self-defense techniques she learned. After she moved back to Egypt in the aftermath of the January 25 Revolution, she became certified as a WenDo trainer and decided to adapt this “Western concept” to the safety concerns of Egyptian women and girls.16 Salem trained weekly with a group of Egyptian women, practicing the exercises and modifying them to their needs and demands.WenDo self-defense training is addressed to women and girls of all ages, shapes, sizes, and abilities. It focuses on increasing women’s self-confidence and assertiveness in public places and on teaching women how to react against everyday sexual harassment through a wide range of strategies. The goal is to increase the number of women who walk confidently on the streets and react effectively and assertively to stop sexual harassment. Salem emphasizes that WenDo Egypt allows her to “see an effect right after” a training instead of waiting years for change.17WenDo Egypt basic training includes ten hours divided into two blocks. In the first, women learn how to enforce their boundaries through the look, voice, and body language. In the second block, they practice easy-to-perform kicks and punches that target vulnerable areas of a man’s anatomy. Since 2014 Salem has trained twenty-six new instructors from Cairo and Mansoura. WenDo trainers offer private self-defense courses to Egyptian and foreign women who can afford the lessons, which cost two hundred Egyptian pounds (about twenty-two US dollars), but they also train underprivileged women and girls on a voluntary basis in collaboration with children’s organizations, refugee service centers, and youth centers. Salem reported that by May 2015 around a thousand women and girls had been trained by WenDo Egypt, about seven hundred of them for free.18 Additionally, WenDo Egypt co-organized four igmadi (“be strong”) events, which combine self-defense, Zumba classes and awareness-raising sessions in cooperation with HarassMap, Nazra, and El-Nadeem. These events were attended by an average of 325 women and girls.19 Beginning in May 2015, WenDo courses are offered in youth centers across the country and new Training of Trainers courses have been planned in partnership with the Egyptian Ministry of Youth and Sports and the German Agency for International Cooperation, which provide funding to WenDo Egypt.Feminist scholarship on self-defense has demonstrated that norms of respectable femininity prescribe passive, helpless, compliant female bodies in need of male or state protection (De Welde 2003, 256; McCaughey 1997, 37). In public places, this gendered often into of rape and and 1981, of sexual harassment in Egypt that women respond to everyday and for of the into (Fahmy et al. 2014, Abul Komsan, and Shoukry 2008, they avoid public places, more and from or making eye contact with (Fahmy et al. 2014, trainer notes that women that if they look at they a . . . so they to by this of 1981, 2008, while women’s and awareness of WenDo Egypt in contrast, that women look up when on the street if back at the harasser into In the WenDo are up in and asked to at each other in a an that as to the exercises are to other and a look, voice, and convincing at the of a training, or raising their is to be so notes one of the after an that is or WenDo trainers the of using the to a message and for a space is to the WenDo their experiences of harassment without they will be for sexual They learn to a critical In addition to the look, voice, and body the of the WenDo training are to increase women’s self-confidence on the WenDo trainer emphasizes that women only need to use the voice, look, and self-confidence of the training to it is very to self-defense go from the training that . . . she can in the it such into practice in that of harassment while waiting for a on the or in the Trainers consider this one of the exercises because experiences and to them on their is voluntary and to others their they The harassed woman in a can the and for at The trainer often asks of the was and be in order to and With all manage to stop the who is by the This is very . . . that changes something them, because of them are very to of the and very and very of the end of the basic training, a with their using one of the learned the This more will than and as a of that the of which is in the that with and as a of their and Salem contends that WenDo to the of social that make sexual harassment by encouraging women to react against these sexual and other women who challenge sexual harassment on the 2008 Egyptian nongovernmental organizations the Sexual among other that sexual harassment be a The also called for the of and in the because the first the of rape to of a by a and the second to sexual assault as a of 2011, These which included article to and after the January 25 but have been ignored by the et al. 2014, a at El-Nadeem Center for Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence, emphasizes the of changing legal which do not consider by other than a to be as or men as of 2013, under the of the Ministry of the police a unit responsible for violence against women. 2014, after a sexual harassment incident at Cairo University to a public in of the to of the of so that and online sexual harassment be with of between six and years and of up to thousand Egyptian pounds of 2014). the is because it that an to gain a sexual which is to and depends on a In have because contact information is included in police reports, to the of the and often in As a the family of the will often the woman who the and her or so that their the state sexual harassment in response to “tremendous from notes that sexual harassment is the social of as by a series of by the Egyptian between 2014 and In October 2014 the Ministry of a new anti–sexual harassment women’s police the 2014). this unit has been criticized by anti–sexual harassment activists for being against sexual harassers and instead to and of their volunteers In early 2015 that all Egyptian anti–sexual harassment training workshops for who the training for the Ministry of Youth and Sports in 2015, was about the of such trainings given the of information on gender norms and the increasingly political such as Abd Alhamid similarly that the but not have the political will to sexual or make to women’s have legal and interventions do not transform gendered and and can even activate gender or when norms are not 2013, women will often use laws the laws women as who to They also men as men and women from to the 2013, The anti–sexual harassment initiatives that emerged after the revolution direct intervention on the streets as more than legal and political change strategies for gendered norms and although activists also encourage women to seek through and HarassMap activists Chiao and El-Shafei that people who do not the or political will seek to being when a WenDo Egypt’s Salem, the of the is a in the right but change” so that the and consider harassment as a this article we use the action-oriented to to against sexual violence after the on the of Dedd in 2012 to combat sexual harassment the “I had this that need to do something and do an that was the notes in relation to Harakat Bassma with that had . . . He had an idea and to it and had a stand to WenDo trainer and HarassMap Safe Areas reports that her was by a sexual harassment incident by a family The for an response what from Tahrir calls a approach that centers on people’s personal experiences in with the anti–sexual harassment initiatives were when the the on 2013, a and the Emergency Law between and In 2013 the Law and public of teams that had been in Tahrir Square between 2012 and 2013 their because of political in and security concerns in In 2014 the by anti–sexual harassment initiatives to as nongovernmental organizations under Law 84 of or of their the January 25 in Egypt, initiatives were organized or accelerated to combat public sexual violence through HarassMap and WenDo activists that people the changes they in and HarassMap activists that sexual harassment will only end when all people speak up and view it as WenDo trainers that self-defense is an of anti–sexual harassment activism that can bring change when all women react against sexual and each other in this initiatives promote gender and women’s in public places, working to new social with the goal of producing

Sexual harassment is an interdisciplinary topic in organizational research that has received increased attention with the rise of the #MeToo movement. The online environment has complicated the experiences of employees who are sexually harassed by a coworker. One particular medium where online sexual harassment occurs is on social networking sites (SNS), such as Facebook. This research report examined how victims of sexual harassment believe organizations should handle online sexual harassment. We qualitatively coded 153 responses to the question, “What else do you think employers could do to handle sexual harassment on Facebook?” Our findings demonstrated a clear tension between whether harassment on Facebook is a private concern of the employee or a public concern of the employer/organization. Some victims advocating keeping work friends off of Facebook, while others suggesting having open door policies, conversations, and/or trainings. The difference in these approaches illuminates how the victims grappled with the public/private tension, and whether the organization should be made aware of their situations or if victims should handle it themselves. Implications of this research suggest that the blurred boundaries between employee face-to-face and online sexual harassment should continue to be explored, including why victims report harassment and to whom they report it.

EDITORS' NOTE: Howz serious and widespread a problem is sexual harassment in our universities? What means will effectively diminish its incidence without violating the rights of individuals? Each of thefollowing essays answers one of these two questions. In the first, Bernice Lott, Mary Ellen Reilly, and Dale Howard describe the results of a 1979 survey that examined a sample of the entire University of Rhode Island population. Its purpose was to determine how many of the respondents in the sample group had personal knowledge of or had experienced any form of sexual assault, intimidation, or insult; how they had responded to assault; and their beliefs about harassment in general. In the second essay, Judith Berman Brandenburg delineates a response to the problem worked out at Yale University: the establishment of a grievance procedure administered through a specially selected board. The process of this honest search for answers uncovers other questions: Do we have a definition of sexual harassment upon which most people will agree? Is power thefactor that transforms what may be cajolery into harassment? If so, power in what forms? Do these forms make the problem invulnerable to any solution? With these essays we open a dialogue on such questions. We invite your letters in response, in the hope that through the exchange we canfurther advance feminist efforts to analyze-and to overcome-this pernicious form of sexual injustice.

Introduction The purpose of this review is to explore the prevalence and impact of online sexual harassment (OSH) in adolescent populations. Moreover, this review considers characteristics of victims and perpetrators in relation to OSH. Methods A scoping review using PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) guidelines was conducted in August 2023 using internet-based bibliographic databases (CINHAL, MEDLINE, PsycINFO and GoogleScholar). Search terms relating to ‘sexual harassment’, ‘online’ and ‘adolescents’ were used to discover studies published since 01.01.2000 that explored OSH in adolescent populations. Results Only 11 studies were identified to specifically investigate OSH in adolescents, with studies illustrating in-person SH to be more common than OSH. Nevertheless, studies reported OSH occurs in various forms and across a range of online platforms which can lead to damaging psychological and physical impacts in adolescents. Conclusions Our review shows that OSH during adolescence is a global issue that can have profound effects on an individual’s mental health and educational journey. Future research is still needed to fully explore this niche topic area as well as the long-term consequences of OSH for victims. Policy Implications Educating adolescents of what OSH is, how to interact with others safely online and develop healthy relationships would also be valuable to potentially reduce incidences of OSH. Our review shows that OSH during adolescence is a global issue that can have profound effects on an individual’s mental health and educational journey.

The ways sexual harassment occurs both online and in face-to-face settings has become more complicated. Sexual harassment that occurs in cyberspace or online sexual harassment adds complexity to the experiences of victims, current research understandings, and the legal dimensions of this phenomenon. Social networking sites (SNS) are a type of social media that offer unique opportunities to users and sometimes the communication that occurs on SNS can cross the line from flirtation into online sexual harassment. Victims of sexual harassment employ communicative strategies such as coping to make sense of their experiences of sexual harassment. The current study qualitatively examined problem-focused, active emotion-focused, and passive emotion-focused coping strategies employed by sexual harassment victims across multiple settings. We conducted 26 in-depth interviews with victims that had experienced sexual harassment across multiple settings (e.g., face-to-face and SNS). The findings present 16 types of coping strategies-five problem-focused, five active emotion-focused, and six passive emotion-focused. The victims used an average of three types of coping strategies during their experiences. Theoretical implications extend research on passive emotion-focused coping strategies by discussing powerlessness and how victims blame other victims. Furthermore, theoretically the findings reveal that coping is a complex, cyclical process and that victims shift among types of coping strategies over the course of their experience. Practical implications are offered for victims and for SNS sites.

Most Korean organizations and companies have tried to solve the sexual harassment problem through compulsory sexual harassment prevention education and formal grievance handling procedures. Nevertheless, many women still say they have been sexually harassed at work. Moreover, secondary victimization of sexual harassment in the workplace has been reported constantly. After the damage, sexual harassment victims at work experience negative experiences such as mental health problems such as depression, anxiety, low self-esteem, guilt, suicidal thoughts, and overall stress. This affects not only individual problems but also organizations. The strategies to prevent secondary victimization of sexual harassment in the workplace are as follows. First, laws, policies and agencies related to secondary victimization of sexual harassment in the workplace should be unified. Second, the victim and supporters must be actively protected. Third, it is necessary to train a dedicated supervisor with expertise in handling sexual harassment and gender discrimination cases in the workplace. Fourth, Specific guidelines for secondary victimization of sexual harassment in the workplace should be prepared. Fifth, a gender equality in the workplace culture should be created.

This study intends to apply explanatory factors from criminology theories to explain both offline and online sexual harassment and compare their effects. This study use various factors: strain in family and school, differential association peers with sexual harassment, attitude toward sexual harassment, moral belief, low self-control, smartphone addiction, and attitude toward traditional sex role and analyze data from university students in Seoul. It is found that differential association peers is the largest explanatory factor in explaining both offline and online sexual harassment. In addition, attitude toward traditional sex is found to have an influence on both offline and online sexual harassment. Results shown that attitude toward sexual harassment, moral belief, and low self-control have significant effects on only online sexual harassment. Overall, the explanatory factors from traditional criminology theory have more strong power in explaining online sexual harassment than offline sexual harassment. Implications of results are discussed.

This study aims to identify homogeneous groups of individuals based on self-reported victimization and perpetration of three subtypes of adolescent relationship abuse (ARA; physical, psychological, and sexual) and sexual harassment (SH). Study sample consists of 645 current or past-year daters aged 12-21, drawn from the National Survey on Teen Relationships and Intimate Violence (STRiV). Latent class analysis was used to classify individuals, and a three-class model was selected (Low ARA-Low SH, High ARA-High SH, and Psychological ARA-Medium SH). Results provide evidence for three latent classes with varying patterns of ARA and SH. A number of exogenous variables were significantly associated with these patterns, e.g., youth who were previously exposed to any general violence were three times as likely to be in the High ARA-High SH class as those not previously exposed to violence. Adolescent relationship abuse prevention efforts should include activities to address sexual harassment, and vice versa. Results call for universal preventive intervention programs targeting adolescent relationship abuse and sexual harassment to start as early as adolescence, and the existence of the High ARA-High SH group supports the need for more targeted effort to interrupt such patterns.

This essay explores the differences in the legal treatment of online sexual harassment (OSH) in China and South Korea. China's Civil Code addresses sexual harassment by emphasizing the violation of a woman's dignity, but the legal consequences are minimal, typically resulting in fines comparable to civil disputes. In contrast, South Korea classifies sexual harassment as a crime under the Criminal Act, with punishments including imprisonment. The analysis identifies three key disparities. Firstly, China lacks a clear specification of what constitutes sexual harassment, while South Korea provides detailed definitions. Secondly, South Korea treats OSH as a severe offense on par with rape, leading to stricter enforcement and deterrence. However, in China, OSH cases are often addressed as defamation or infringement of portrait rights rather than distinct sexual crimes. Lastly, social media censorship in China hampers tracking and locating perpetrators, granting them more leeway to evade punishment, while South Korea actively prosecutes OSH as a sexual crime. Addressing these disparities, the abstract suggests placing sexual harassment in China's criminal legislation and implementing supplemental laws to support its enforcement.

Online sexual harassment and depression in Chilean adolescents: Variations based on gender and age of the offenders

Studies about crime seriousness have consistently shown that the public regards sexual offenses as serious. Yet, only a few studies examined public perceptions of the seriousness of sexual harassment. To fill this gap in the literature, we explored three dimensions of the public's perceptions about offline and online sexual harassment: its perceived seriousness, harmfulness, and wrongfulness. The study explored various socio-demographic factors associated with these perceptions, focusing specifically on gender differences. The data used to examine these perceptions was collected in 2023 from a representative sample of Israeli adult internet users (N = 525). The results show that in both spheres, sexual harassment is regarded as a less serious or harmful behavior, but one that is more morally wrong. The participants generally regarded online sexual harassment as less serious than offline sexual harassment. Finally, gender is a significant predictor of the perceived seriousness of both offline and online sexual harassment. Findings indicate that compared to males, females perceive both offline and online sexual harassment as more serious, more harmful, and less moral. The theoretical implications of the findings are discussed.

Purpose This study aimed to outline the construct of online sexual harassment (OSH) to ensure its accurate measurement and to develop a tool to measure OSH victimization in adults. Secondary aims were to explore potential gender differences in victimization and the emotional impact of OSH. Methods A systematic process was used to develop The Online Sexual Harassment Scale (OSHS) to measure OSH victimization. This included a systematic review of current literature, content analysis of online posts from the Everyday Sexism Website, exploratory factor analysis of a pilot scale, then a subsequent confirmatory factor analysis to confirm scale items, structure and ensure scale reliability. Finally, an online survey using the OSHS explored the emotional impact of OSH. Results Two types of OSH, gender harassment and unwanted sexual attention were identified. The OSHS reliably measured both types of harassment, ω = .95. The most frequent type of OSH found for male and female participants was unwanted sexual attention. Univariate analysis found that females ( M = 0.83) experienced significantly higher levels of OSH than males ( M = 0.56). Further analysis found that the emotional impact of OSH was significantly more upsetting for females for both types of OSH. Conclusions This study contributes a valid a reliable way to measure OSH in adult victims. The development of the OSHS would benefit from further testing using a larger and more diverse sample, which should include non‐student populations.

The article is devoted to the study of a special type of discrimination in the workplace – harassment, which manifests itself in various spheres of life and is the subject of research by representatives of psychology, sociology and legal science. It is generally accepted that harassment is stalking and sexual harassment, although in reality the meaning of this term is much broader.In Ukraine, especially in recent years, the topic of sexual violence and harassment has received increasing attention, especially from the media, and more and more reports of sexual violence have been reported. This indicates changes in the norms of social life, the culture of perception and attitude of society towards this problem. Accordingly, further attention needs to be paid to research into the causes of gender discrimination, various forms of harassment in the workplace and measures to combat it. The article emphasizes that harassment is a global problem, one of the manifestations of gender inequality in the sphere of social and labor relations. It is widely believed that harassment is sexual harassment, although in fact this term has a much broader meaning. It is emphasized that Ukraine, at this stage of social development, is at the beginning of the path to adopting effective measures to combat harassment in the workplace. Currently, national legislation is partially adapted to protect employees from sexual violence, harassment, and other unlawful actions at work. It has been proven that in Ukraine, victims of sexual harassment in the workplace are provided with legal tools to protect their rights and interests. These tools range from filing complaints about sexual harassment with authorized entities to bringing perpetrators to criminal liability. At the same time, the existing regulation of labor relations in the field of combating sexual violence and harassment is clearly insufficient and needs improvement. Including by adopting international trends in improving labor relations, primarily the ratification of Convention No. 190, which establishes effective mechanisms that will become available in the signatory state to prevent, combat harassment, and protect employees who have been harassed. In addition, it is advisable to conduct ongoing educational work with the population on the topic of combating harassment to increase the level of legal and gender culture.