Sexual harassment is one of the most serious problems in today’s society. It takes place in schools, at sporting events, and at businesses on a regular basis. Many corporations have now begun to adopt anti-harassment policies to protect their employees from this awful practice. Sexual harassment is defined as any unwanted or inappropriate sexual attention. It takes many forms, among them touching, looks, comments, and gestures. Key in describing an action as sexual harassment is that it is unwanted. Harassment can thus be defined as clearly different from romance and friendship, as both romance and friendship are mutual feelings where one person is not being mistreated by the other.
Sexual harassment victims often feel guilty over the harassment they are faced with because they feel that they have done something wrong to attract such attention, but it is essential that they avoid feeling guilty because sexual harassment is never the victims fault, but entirely the harasser’s.
Schools are a frequent site of sexual harassment, from elementary school all the way up to university level. Surveys conducted on college campuses have returned results showing that 40 to 70 percent of respondents had suffered some form of sexual harassment within the previous 12 months. Only two percent of sexual harassment cases on college campuses fall under the clichéd professor demanding sex from a student in exchange for a good grade in a class. The vast majority of sexual harassment cases on college campuses involve male and female students. Junior high and middle schools are the site of the most school sexual-harassment, thought to be because of their students’ immaturity and raging hormones.
Sexual harassment in sports has been on the rise in recent years, both between athletes and between athlete and coach. A survey of athletes found that 30 percent of them felt less than safe because of the potential for sexual harassm...