Sexual harassment of higher education female students in Afghanistan: A case study

Sayeed Naqibullah Orfan, Frestha Ibrahimi and Abdul Qawi Noori
Takhar University, Afghanistan

This study investigates what behaviours female students considered harassing and to what extent they experienced them. It also explores perpetrators and locations of harassment, effects on students, coping strategies, and reasons for not reporting harassment. A questionnaire was used to collect data from 317 female students at Takhar University. The findings showed that female students experienced a wide range of harassing acts to varying extent. A stranger, taxi driver and students other than classmates were reported to be the most frequent harassers. Female students were frequently harassed on online platforms, corridors, walkways and on the way to and from university. Harassment had a variety of effects on female students, and they used passive and self-centred strategies (e.g., intentionally wearing dresses thought to draw less attention of perpetrators) to deal with harassment. Moreover, they did not report their harassment experiences for various reasons. The study suggests revisiting the existing policy on harassment and prescribing sanctions against perpetrators.
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Authors: Sayeed Naqibullah Orfan is a senior lecturer in the Department of English at Takhar University, Afghanistan. He has a Masters degree in applied linguistics from Montclair State University, New Jersey, USA. He is a Fulbright scholar and an advocate for gender equality in Afghanistan. His areas of research are language and gender, learning in higher education, and outcomes-based education. Email: sayeed.naqibullah@fulbrightmail.org Freshta Ibrahimi has a bachelor's degree in English language and literature from Takhar University, Afghanistan. She is an activist and advocate of gender equality. Her research interests are gender-based violence, gender and language, and gender inequality. Email: freshta.ibrahimi28@gmail.com Abdul Qawi Noori is a senior lecturer in the Department of English at Takhar University, Afghanistan. He has a Masters degree in education from the University of Technology Malaysia. His research interests are higher education, school climate, teaching and learning and data driven decision-making processes. He carries out research on and off campus. Email: abdulqawi.noory@gmail.com Please cite as: Orfan, S. N., Ibrahimi, F. & Noori, A. Q. (2022). Sexual harassment of higher education female students in Afghanistan: A case study. Issues in Educational Research, 32(2), 659-680. http://www.iier.org.au/iier32/orfan.pdf