Sexual harassment of university faculty by colleagues and students

The focus of this research was on faculty members as victims of sexual harassment by colleagues (peer harassment) and students (contrapower harassment). A self-administered, mailed questionnaire was sent to a probability sample of faculty at a large, public Midwestern university and to the whole population of faculty at a small, public institution in the Western Mountain region. Several hypotheses were made based on conflict theory, role theory, and previous research. Results indicated that women faculty generally have more negative attitudes toward and broader definitions of sexual harassment than do male faculty. Moderate levels of sexual harassment of faculty by both colleagues and students were reported; minor and anonymous (course evaluations and obscene phone calls) forms were the most common. Female faculty were more likely to report harassment by colleagues; male faculty were more likely to report some potentially harassing behaviors by students. Incidents of sexual harassment were usually not reported to formal agents of social control.This research was funded, in part, through the Small Grant Program of the Office of Research and Sponsored Activities, Illinois State University. The author would like to thank Krista Moore for her assistance in data collection at the Colorado site, Nancy Uphoff for her assistance with the library research, Robyn Leech and Ann Marie Woods for coding and data entry, and Elizabeth Grauerholz and Susan Specher for their comments on an earlier draft of this paper.