Coping with sexual harassment in the Egyptian context: a study on female academics

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/EDI-10-2021-0281
• Published date: 20 April 2022
• Date: 20 April 2022
• Pages: 907-926
• Subject Matter: HR & organizational behaviour,Employment law,Diversity,equality,inclusion
• Author: Mohamed Mousa,Hala Abdelmoneim Abdallah Abdelgaffar

Coping with sexual harassment in

the Egyptian context: a study on

female academics

Mohamed Mousa

Department of Management Sciences, Pontifical Catholic University of Peru,

Lima, Peru, and

Hala Abdelmoneim Abdallah Abdelgaffar

The American University in Cairo, New Cairo, Egypt

Abstract

Purpose –To understand the position of female academics in public universities in Egypt, the authors of this

paper aim to answer the question of what comes between victims breaking their silence about workplace sexual

harassment (WSH).

Design/methodology/approach –A qualitative research method is employed, and semi-structured interviews

were conducted with 40 female academics from four public universities selected from among 26 public institutions

of higher education in Egypt. Thematic analysis was used to extract main ideas from the transcripts.

Findings –At the macro level in Egypt, stipulating an anti-harassment law and harsher penalties were found

to be a motivator for female academics to speak up against WSH. At the meso organizational level, establishing

anti-harassment units in universities is perceived as an effective mechanism for empowering female academics

to respond to, expose and seek punitive action against WSH perpetrators. What was found to be a real

challenge to reporting perpetrators is the assumption of some female academics that they will never be heard

because of socio-cultural norms that hold university professors as honourable and impeccable. Another

challenge is that female academics are poorly represented at both professorial levels and in senior

administrative positions in Egyptian academic contexts. Sadly, challenges faced by women in academic

contexts, such as WSH, are not being prioritized on the agenda of their universities. Although organizational

behaviours and country-specific culture challenge female academics’proactive stance against WSH, new anti-

harassment laws and university policies are changing this scenario.

Originality/value –This paper contributes by filling a gap in human resource (HR) management, higher

education and public administration in which empirical studies of WSH in academic contexts have been

limited so far.

Keywords Workplace sexual harassment (WSH), Female academics, Emancipation theory,

Universities, Egypt

Paper type Research paper

1. Introduction

Over the past two decades, sexual harassment has been prioritized on the agenda of

workplace human rights (Grosser and Tyler, 2021;Harvey et al., 2009) as organizational

phenomenon that is considered a form of employment-related discrimination (Settles et al.,

2014;Bell et al., 2002,2014;McDonald, 2012;McDonald et al., 2015). Unfortunately, workplace

sexual harassment (WSH) has become a perturbing workplace epidemic despite

governmental and organizational efforts to fight it and mitigate the long-lasting trauma

and psychological disorders victims experience (Wood et al., 2021;Tenbrunsel et al., 2019).

What comes as a disturbing fact is the marginal effect of laws, regulations and policies

undertaken by parliaments, corporate directors and human rights activists to alleviate WSH

in some countries and/or contexts regardless of how harsh potential punishments are

(Marshall et al., 2014;Bondestam and Lundqvist, 2020).

WSH has been referred to as the “unwanted imposition of sexual requirement in the

context of a relationship of unequal power. Central to the concept is the use of power derived

Coping with

sexual

harassment in

Egypt

907

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:

https://www.emerald.com/insight/2040-7149.htm

Received 31 October 2021

Revised 5 February 2022

Accepted 31 March 2022

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion:

An International Journal

Vol. 41 No. 6, 2022

pp. 907-926

© Emerald Publishing Limited

2040-7149

DOI 10.1108/EDI-10-2021-0281

from one social sphere to level benefits or impose deprivations in another”. It is defined as

“unwanted sex-related behaviour at work that is appraised by the recipient as offensive,

exceeding her resources, or threatening her well-being”(Fitzgerald et al., 1997a, p. 15).

Fitzgerald et al. (1995a,b,1997a,b) identified three types of WSH: (1) Gender Harassment (or

negative behaviour, which is not essentially sexual, such as sexist jokes or remarks,

comments, gestures or sexually degrading imagery), (2) Unwanted Sexual Attention (or non-

consensual staring, offensive touching, or persistent and repetitive pressure for dates or sex)

and (3) Sexual Coercion (or explicit and implicit demands for sexual favours by threats of job-

related negative consequences or promises of job-related rewards); however, they found this

to be the rarest form of WSH. The key antecedents of WSH were found to be organizational

climate, male dominant workplace (McDonald, 2012;Fitzgerald et al., 1997b), and when

associated with female vulnerability, WSH led to detrimental consequences on the

individual’s psychological, physical and occupational well-being (Fitzgerald et al., 1997b).

However, authors (e.g. Cortina and Areguin, 2021;Mitchell et al., 2015;Peirce et al., 1998;

Glomb et al., 1997) assert that in most organizations, WSH is ignored, muted, hidden and

indirectly supported, even though it causes profound and lasting harm that extend beyond

the victims to the organizations and society (Stockdale et al., 2019;McLaughlin et al., 2017;

Loy and Stewart, 1984). To date, many scholars in the fields of organizational behaviour and

psychology contend that WSH remains under-reported (Gavin et al., 2021;Harsey and Freyd,

2020;Stader and Williams-Cunningham, 2017). And although many countries include

legislation that provides protection against WSH under both civil and criminal law, such

legislation varies by country and there are no adequate policies against sexual harassment in

many contexts, such as schools and higher education institutions (Bondestam and Lundqvist,

2020;Marshall et al., 2014).

The field of academia has not been spared from WSH, which remains relatively common

and traumatic for female academics (Rosenthal et al., 2016). The organizational structure in

academia accommodates complicated relationships and power hierarchies coupled with

mandatory participation in non-formal activities such as student-mentoring and conference

office hours, social events and online interactions that may be a breeding ground for

infringements of boundaries and WSH (Bloom et al., 2021). Female academics reportedly face

higher rates of all kinds of victimization and especially sexual harassment by faculty or staff

and feel significantly less safe on campus than men (Rosenthal et al., 2016;Fedina et al., 2018).

Male-dominated faculties, such as engineering, medicine and the sciences are said to have

higher instances of WSH (Fitzgerald and Cortina, 2018;Kabat-Farr and Cortina, 2014). Even

when the representation of women drops by one unit, the possibility of women experiencing

gender harassment increases 1.2 times (Kabat-Farr and Cortina, 2014). Additionally, the

sexual harassment experienced by female students on or around campus was found to be

more traumatic and prevalent when the perpetrators are university staff or faculty than any

other category, such as colleagues or other students (Bondestam and Lundqvist, 2020). Even

when female academics perceive a relatively low-level hostile environment, created by “sexist

put-downs and offensive sexual remarks”, they may still suffer negative psychological

impacts (Schneider et al., 1997).

WSH at the university is hard to prove as it involves isolated incidents and implicit

behaviours (Ngwane, 2018;Fitzgerald et al., 1997a;Loy and Stewart, 1984). For example,

Rosenthal et al. (2016, p. 370) found that most faculty harassment included sexist language,

sexually offensive gestures or images (59.1%), unwanted sexual attention (6.4%), unwanted

touching (4.7%), and explicit or subtle threats or bribes (3.5%), and an insignificant number

of victims reported the incident (6.4%). Gender harassment, the milder form of WSH, is more

prevalent than the other two types of harassment, which rarely occur without the former

(Rosenthal et al., 2016;Schneider et al., 1997). Moreover, WSH notably prevails in universities

with an institutional culture and climate that conditions the silencing of victims by indirect or

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