Sexual Harassment of Secondary School Students in Bangkok: A Study Regarding Offenders and Victims

Abstract

Sexual harassment is a human rights violation. No individual should perpetrate or be a victim of such acts. The aim of this article research was to study and compare the ratio of sexual harassment offenders and victim among a group of secondary school students separate by genders, sexuality and education level. The sample were 1,006 secondary school students living in Bangkok, Thailand providing their responses to uestionnaires via online system. The data were analyzed using frequency, percentage and Chi-square Homogeneity test with significant difference at .05.

The research results showed that the majority of sexual harassment behaviors were conducted by and to their friends. The main of sexual harassment behaviors conducted were making sex-related jokes, body-shaming by criticizing physical appearance and other people’s parts of body, and verbally harassing others with discussions on sex-related topics. When compare the ratio of sexual harassment behavior, it was found that male and female students appeared to result with significant difference at .05 and in terms of sexuality and education level no significant difference. In addition, it could be observed in the last aspect of findings that the ratio of sexual harassment victims among male and female students, heterosexual and LGBTQ+ students, and junior-high school and high school students resulted in significant difference at .05.

As could be observed here that the research findings have reflected the severity of sexual harassment among high school students. Family and educational institutions could be required to play a crucial role in raising students' awareness and understanding of how inappropriate sexual harassment behaviors are, as sexual harassment should neither be perpetrated nor experienced by anyone.