Coping with sexual harassment: the experience of young working women in Italy
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The aims of this qualitative study were to describe sexual harassment (SH) as experienced by young Italian women in the workplace and to analyse their reactions and forms of resistance. A sample of 20 university students who mostly held casual jobs was recruited at one university and interviewed in 2017–18; the transcriptions were analysed using a thematic method.
Respondents experienced multiple forms of SH, from sexual comments and requests to physical contacts, carried out by male employers, co-workers and customers. Often SH had a pronounced pornographic nature, and occasionally women were treated as ‘prostitutes’; dress-code implied ‘dressing sexily’, and becomes a form of SH.
All women evaluated these behaviours as inappropriate, but no one considered making a formal complaint. They reported confusion, attempts to minimise, going along with a smile, asking the help of colleagues, and using the boyfriend as a protector. Few took direct actions such as confronting the harassers, retaliating or complaining to the employer. Notwithstanding the hostility and humiliation experienced, the young women interviewed retained a strong sense of their dignity as workers, which can count as another form of resistance to a system that consistently tries to objectify them and disqualify them as workers.
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