Sexual Harassment of Women at Work in Cyprus

The study s aim is to examine the employees perceptions and experiences of sexual harassment at work, and the ignorance of them for the political and legal facets of sexual harassment, through a feminist methodological approach, by manipulating a sample of 54 women employees from three private companies. Both qualitative and quantitative methods were used. According to findings almost half of the participants were harassed in their workplace. However, through the participants and interviewee s responses, patriarchal attitudes prevailed and because of these attitudes most respondents reported that victims do not report their harassment. Therefore, the argument of this study is that patriarchy exists in the Cypriot society which influences people s perceptions of gender and work roles. Lastly, this study examines the participants perceptions of company s sexual harassment policies and Law. Unfortunately ignorance was revealed from all three companies with or without policies, indicating on one hand that policy procedures are important and need to be handled better in order to tackle sexual harassment, and on the other hand that patriarchy once again dismantles the policy s power.

Autorentext

Ms Christodoulou Panayiota owns a BA in Social Work (USA) and an MA in Social Research (UK). She is a PhD candidate at University of Bristol (UK) since 2009 researching women trafficking in Cyprus. Ms Christodoulou is a professional social worker since 2001 and an academic in the Social Work Department of Frederick University (Cyprus) since 2007.

Klappentext

The study s aim is to examine the employees perceptions and experiences of sexual harassment at work, and the ignorance of them for the political and legal facets of sexual harassment, through a feminist methodological approach, by manipulating a sample of 54 women employees from three private companies. Both qualitative and quantitative methods were used. According to findings almost half of the participants were harassed in their workplace. However, through the participants and interviewee s responses, patriarchal attitudes prevailed and because of these attitudes most respondents reported that victims do not report their harassment. Therefore, the argument of this study is that patriarchy exists in the Cypriot society which influences people s perceptions of gender and work roles. Lastly, this study examines the participants perceptions of company s sexual harassment policies and Law. Unfortunately ignorance was revealed from all three companies with or without policies, indicating on one hand that policy procedures are important and need to be handled better in order to tackle sexual harassment, and on the other hand that patriarchy once again dismantles the policy s power.