Evaluating the Role of Culture on Sexual Harassment: the Case of Nigerian Organisations

Among the prominent issues bothering the human resource departments in developing countries in the 21 century is sexual harassment. Few empirical studies have however been conducted in this area and fewer studies have discussed the role of culture on the disclosure of harassment. The reason for this is partly due to the fact that culture, within the African context tends to intimidate women and prevent them from reporting cases of harassment for fear of stigmatization and loss of their jobs. This paper is an empirical study which seeks to understand how culture affects the level of existence and disclosure of sexual harassment as well as punishment of the harassers among employees in Nigeria workplaces. The design of the study questionnaire was based on the assumptions by Thio (1997), Fetzgerald et al (1990) and Zeidenstein et al (1996). The main instruments for data collection were questionnaires and interviews. Canonical correlation was used to analyze the data collected using the questionnaires while interview responses provided more explanation on the outcomes of the questionnaire. The paper suggests that there is need to define sexual harassment within the Nigerian legal framework and the channels for its redress enumerated. In addition, suggestions are made for the human resource departments on how the conditions of Nigerian working women can be improved upon going by the negative implications of sexual harassment on workplace productivity.