The Relationship between Demographic Factors and the Incidence of Sexual Harassment of Working Women

Background: Unlike other workplace hazards that are impersonal in nature, sexual harassment is one of the dangers that have personal nature. Women have always been exposed to sexual harassment. Most researches in sexual harassment often were concentrated on the characteristics of those who commit sexual harassment and often less focused on the predictors of sexual harassment in the workplace. Methods: The overall design of this study was cross-sectional. It deals with the relationship between demographic factors and the incidence of sexual harassment of working women. Participants of this study are working women between 21-40 years old who had been exposed to sexual harassment in the last 12 months in Tehran and the sample group was selected among 120 working women in this population by using purposive sampling. The subjects in this study completed the Sexual Experiences Questionnaire (SEQ, Fitzgerald, 1988) and the multi-choice questionnaire for demographic factors and then regression analysis and f-test were used to evaluate the research hypotheses. Results:  The results of the study showed that age (F= 2.29), income level (F= 1.219), occupational position (F= 0.59), work experience (F= 0.48), marital status (F= 0.68), and educational level (F= 0.39) form the variances associated with demographic data which all factors have a significant relationship with sexual harassment. Conclusion: It seems that having specific demographic factors will provide the tendency of sexual harassment occurrence.