Perpetrators of Sexual Harassment among Rural School Going Adolescent Girls

Sexual harassment has been and is used as a tool to perpetuate the subordination of women. Sometimes sexual harassers are very blunt and outspoken, and will use jokes, pictures, or sexual anecdotes quiet openly to embarrass or intimidate their victims. They may circulate lewd sexual emails, m the full knowledge that such content could be embarrassing and upsetting. They may pass comments on a person's figure in a loud or disrespectful way. The present study to identify the perpetrators of sexual harassment among rural school going adolescent girls was taken up in one block of Ludhiana district of Punjab state. The sample consisted of 200 respondents who were in the age range of 16-18 years and the data were collected using a self-structured questionnaire relating to various aspects of sexual harassment. Strangers from the adjoining villages (63.84%) were reported to be the perpetrators of sexual harassment followed by boys from victim's village (63.27%), roadside philanderer/flirts (56.49%), relatives (41.80%). Adolescents (55.36%) disclosed that they received proposals for friendship by the perpetrators whereas very few of them (7.34%) got marriage proposals. Significant differences were observed in the proposals received by the adolescents; older adolescents received more friendship proposals compared to the younger adolescents.