Sexual Harassment of Women Faculties in the Korean Higher Education: Frequency, Perpetrators, and Consequences

Sexual harassment of women faculties in the Korean higher education has been scarcely researched. However, their experiences of sexual harassment are important in that they become an important criterion for judging the spread of a culture of gender equality in universities. The Sexual Experience Questionnaire (SEQ)(Fitzgerald et al. 1995) was conducted on 506 female faculty from 56 four-year universities. About 35% of the respondents experienced sexual harassment at least once in three stages of their career development. Among the eight perpetrator categories, male supervisors, male student seniors and juniors, and male fellow faculties were found to be the most frequent perpetrator groups. Binary logistic regression analysis showed that the majors and positions of female faculties had a significant influence on their experiences of sexual harassment. Lastly, the experience of sexual harassment after appointment until now had a statistically significant negative effect on job satisfaction of female faculties.