Prevalence of Sexual Harassment: A Cross-Sectional Study in Uttarakhand

Abstract

Sexual harassment is a pervasive social issue that affects individuals’ physical, physiological, and social well-being, among other aspects of their lives. Various kinds of sexual harassment, especially unwanted attention and approaches, may occur anywhere in society, such as at home, the workplace, public spaces, educational institutions, and transportation systems. Larger impacts have been observed on individuals at personal, institutional, and organizational levels. The purpose of this study is to determine the prevalence of sexual harassment among the female population and to investigate various sociodemographic variables associated with harassment. This research is part of another big research project and was carried out by employing a cross-sectional survey with 311 women who were 18 years of age or older. A sexual harassment scale and several binary questions were used to gather data. Independent sample Man Witney U and independent sample Kruskal-Wallis tests were employed to evaluate the data. The findings of the study state that the prevalence rate of sexual harassment significantly differs among different age groups, marital status, qualifications, employment status, familiarity with the harasser, locality of the harasser, and confrontation.