Sexual harassment in government offices a knowledge, attitude and practices survey of staff working in male’

Abstract

Till now, there is no published study done in Maldives to assess directly about the current status of sexual harassment based on Maldivians. In this research I will look in to the knowledge, attitude and practices of sexual harassment therefore it is very important to know about the current situation in the Maldives. According to a news report in Haveeru Daily based on a survey conducted jointly by the Human Rights Commission and UNDP, publicized that almost one third of the female population in Maldives is victims of sexual harassment and that 26.7 percent of women in workplaces had been verbally abused also, 7.3 percent of women had been physically harassed in a sexual manner (Haveeru Online, 2006). This research is mainly focused on identifying the knowledge, attitudes and practices towards sexual harassment among the staff of government offices in Male‟.185 staff were selected randomly from 14 ministries as the sample from the target population. The sampling technique used was simple random sampling. A self-administered questionnaire was used to collect data. The data was analyzed using SPSS version 17.0 where the mean, mode, median, Standard deviation, frequencies and percentage analysis was done. The research was built with maintaining validity and reliability including pre-testing and clear ethical consideration. The whole research was based on Social Cognitive Theory in order to keep the focus of the research. The results of this study has shown that most of the staff of government Offices in Male‟ has high knowledge and negative attitude along with lack of appropriate behavior and practices towards sexual harassment among the staff. Finally it was found that sexual harassment could be stopped by having a good interaction within the colleagues in the organization, good rules and regulations in the organizations and implementing them also by respecting each other in the work environment and applying strict religious rules, and giving strict punishment for harassers.