Investigating the Causes of Harassment of Women in the Afghan Workplace Case Study of Loghman Hakim Hospital in Herat

Violence against women is not a new phenomenon, but has existed for a long time in human societies, especially in patriarchal societies (1). Harassment in the workplace is one of the examples of violence against women that has become especially important today with the increasing number of working women and their involvement in social activities (2). For this reason, the issue of harassment of women in the workplace has been considered by public and private organizations (3). By definition, harassment of women in the workplace refers to the harassment that women suffer in the workplace. In this sense, women in the workplace can be harassed by their boss, co-workers, and client (4). Persecution has the same meaning in the word and has the same examples and meaning in criminal terms; However, some jurists believe that harassment is more severe than harassment (5). Harassment includes physical contact, illicit intent, verbal, non-verbal harassment or any act that causes psychological, physical or insult to a woman's human dignity (6). In a comprehensive typology, the most important examples of harassment of women can include the following behaviors: 1. Illegal desire: A man's request from a woman to perform an act that is sexually motivated. 2. Physical contact: Touching a woman's body with the intention of harming or superficially injuring a woman's body. 3. Verbal harassment: The use of immoral words, sentences, jokes and satire is a description of the body, behavior or clothing and telephone harassment that harms the harassment and psychological security of the woman. 4. Non-verbal harassment: displaying offensive images or content related to sexual issues on social media and networks or emailing, taking photos, publishing or broadcasting videos or pictures of women, or any behavior that causes harm to a female character and deprivation Be his mental health (7). H arassment of women in the Afghan workplace has always been a hidden challenge, but due to the traditional and patriarchal structures of Afghan society and the institutionalization of harassment, women often choose the policy of silence and silent harassment. Are tolerated; Because revealing the issue and formal complaint causes shame and questioning the dignity and chastity of women in the Afghan workplace. At the same time, the way people justify their views on women who are being persecuted is another important reason for the escalation of these behaviors; Because the mental stereotypes of men in Afghan society in these cases, women are the main culprit. Thus, the tolerance of harassment by women and the institutionalization of violence against women in the workplace in Afghan society has created many challenges in the working life of Afghan women, including deprivation of individual liberty, violation of women's fundamental rights, and abuse. Noted use and rape. Although women make up half of Afghanistan's population, until a few decades ago, their presence in the workplace was severely restricted, but over time, women increased their presence in the workplace. Political, economic, social, cultural, legal and administrative, they have gradually entered the workplace, have participated in important managerial jobs in public and private organizations and have had valuable activities. However, given the traditional structure of Afghan society and the growing presence of women in various public and private occupations, this study seeks to investigate the most important factors affecting the harassment of women in Hakim Loghman Hospital in Herat. Accordingly, the main question of this research is to what extent the administrative, political, social, cultural, economic and legal structure of Loghman Hakim Hospital is involved in the harassment of women in the workplace? Accordingly, it is hypothesized that the above six variables are effective in the incidence of harassment of women in Loghman Hakim Hospital. METHODOLOGY The research method in this research is applied in terms of purpose and descriptive-survey in terms of method. The statistical population of this study is the employees of Loghman Hakim Hospital in Herat. Out of 250 employees of this hospital, 151 people were selected as the final sample volume using random stratified sampling according to the size of the members of the statistical population and in the light of Cochran's sample size formula. The measure used in this research is a researcher-made questionnaire. After collecting information and mastering the theoretical foundations, the initial version of the questionnaire was designed with emphasis on six variables of administrative, economic, social, cultural, political and legal tyranny. In face validity, two methods were used: quantitative and qualitative. Qualitative face validity was determined in a specialized panel of ten experts to find the level of difficulty, inconsistency, ambiguity of expressions or the existence of inadequacies in the meanings of words whose opinions were applied as minor changes in the questionnaire. For quantitative face validity, the Impact score of each question was calculated. After completing the questionnaire by the target group, the face validity was calculated using the formula of the item effect method. In a qualitative review of the content validity, seven experts were asked to present their corrective views in writing after careful study of the instrument. After collecting the opinions of experts, the necessary changes in the tool were considered. Then to quantify the content validity and to ensure that the most important and correct content is selected, the content validity ratio and to ensure that the tool questions were best designed to measure content, the content validity index was used. To determine the content validity of the questionnaire, questions were sent to eight experts and they were asked to evaluate the quality of questionnaire using the CVI questionnaire in the form of four statements: “necessary”, “not necessary”, “necessary with minor corrections” and “necessary with general corrections”. The answers were calculated according to the CVR Lawshe’s formula. Numbers higher than 1.29 were accepted. After determining and calculating the CVR, the CVI review was performed based on the Waltz and Basel’s content validity index. For this purpose, a questionnaire was sent to five experts to specify the criteria of relevance, simplicity and clarity. The amount of CVI calculated for all items was calculated 0.814. For evaluating the construct validity of the questionnaire, Confirmatory factor analysis using Amos software was used. Finally, Cronbach's alpha coefficient, which is one of the internal consistency methods, was used. The reliability of questionnaire was assessed by Cronbach's alpha method and calculated 0.81. RESULTS In this section, the average of questions related to variables is used to calculate the index score. Due to the fact that the sample size is more than 30 cases, according to the central limit theorem, a univariate t-test is used to examine the significance of the variables. In this test, the mean of the variables is compared to a fixed number of 3 as the mean of the options. If the probability value of this test is less than 0.05 (error level of the first type), it can be concluded that the mean of the variables is significantly higher than 3 and is significant in the term. The results of univariate t-test show that all research variables including administrative, political, economic, cultural, legal and social variables are significantly greater than 3. Considering that the probability value for all variables is less than 0.05 (p-value <0.05), it can be said that all six variables have a direct and significant relationship with harassment of women in the workplace.   Table 1. One-Sample Statistics   N Mean Std. Deviation Std. Error Mean Administrative 151 3.5205 .74156 .06035 Political 151 3.3974 .65848 .05359 Economic 151 3.3325 .55324 .04502 Cultural 151 3.5245 .55749 .04537 Legal 151 3.4901 .51417 .04184 Social 151 3.3907 .49603 .04037   Table 2. One-Sample Test   Test Value = 3 t df Sig. (2-tailed) Mean Difference 95% Confidence Interval of the Difference Lower Upper Administrative 8.626 150 .000 .52053 .4013 .6398 Political 7.415 150 .000 .39735 .2915 .5032 Economic 7.384 150 .000 .33245 .2435 .4214 Cultural 11.561 150 .000 .52450 .4349 .6141 Legal 11.712 150 .000 .49007 .4074 .5727 Social 9.680 150 .000 .39073 .3110 .4705     Friedman test was used to rank the research variables. The ranking basis in this method is based on the average rankings of the values ​​related to each variable. A variable with a higher average rank is ranked higher. The results of this test showed that the legal variable with an average of 3.78 in the first rank, the cultural variable with an average of 3.76 in the second rank, the administrative variable with an average of 3.63 in the third rank, the social variable with an average of 3.39 in the rank Fourth, the political variable with an average of 3.29 is in the fifth rank and the economic variable with an average of 3.14 is in the last rank. The value of chi-square statistic in Friedman test is equal to 16.188 which is significant at the error level of five percent (p-value = 0.006 <0.05). This means that the ranking of research variables is significant for the respondents and they have different rankings from the questionnaire items.             Table 3. Friedman Test   Mean Rank Administrative 3.63 Political 3.29 Economic 3.14 Cultural 3.76 Legal 3.78 Social 3.39       CONCLUSION   Afghanistan can be considered one of the few countries whose rulers and politicians have always struggled with the issue of the status of women. Gender inequalities between men and women in the political, economic, cultural and legal spheres are among the hallmarks of Afghan society. Although in the applicable laws of Afghanistan, men and women can equally participate in the work activities and play a practical role, but the structure of society for various reasons such as masculine attitude, crisis of awareness, gender inequality, ethnicity, lack of meritocracy and ... There has always been a lot of discrimination and injustice between men and women. Afghanistan, therefore, is part of the "classical patriarchy belt" in which men enjoy the broad support of social structures for the domination of women. The development of gender-oriented attitudes and efforts to realize women's rights are important issues that are addressed in feminist criminology. One of the most important issues emphasized in feminist criminology is the harassment of women in the workplace. According to the findings, one of the most important challenges in ensuring women's gender security in the workplace is the patriarchal attitude outside the moral and human framework in the light of which men always outperform women. This is more the product of traditional social structures than of political attitudes. Social structure evaluates social relations as two-way models by studying cultural and normative patterns. Therefore, the structure refers to a kind of social order in which individuals are active actors and have no role in shaping it. Thus, in the structuralist approach, the underlying structures determine the actions and reciprocally the actions reproduce and maintain the structures. In such a state, human beings in the social structure become helpless individuals whose actions are not only the product of choice and decision-making, but also stem from the structure of the thought base or thought logic. The pattern of social structure consists of cultural or normative models that, on the one hand, determine the expected behaviors of actors from each other and, on the other hand, organize the enduring values ​​between them. Accordingly, social structure as patterns of two-way communication determines the interdependence between actors, their actions and situations. Given that the social structure of gender relations must be analyzed in the context of social relations. For this reason, the social structure emphasizes mechanisms in which social relations contribute to inequality and sexual dominance. Therefore, the unequal social structure in the relations between the two sexes is the result of the voluntary behaviors of individuals and part of their mental structure. For this reason, the social configuration of gender conflict goes back to the history of the application of masculine approaches in different societies. Thus, the configuration of the social structure of gender relations is one of the important reasons for the harassment of women in the workplace. Because of this, women are exposed to harassment in the workplace because of their gender. Occupational insecurities for some working women, is not a new phenomenon. However, the lack of definition of women's job security in the workplace has created a dangerous situation in some workplaces. Today, some women and girls in Afghan society face the pervasive problem of harassment in the workplace; because in the workplace, on the one hand, power is in the hands of men and, on the other hand, there is no strict monitoring of work harassment. Therefore, harassment of women in private and public work environments, feeling of fear in the social arena, lack of confidence in the work environment, lack of peace of mind, limited culture and tribal prejudices, ideology of feminism and secularism and extremism in the world. Harassment of women in the workplace has provided. In this context, endangering the security of women in the workplace, not only preventing them from achieving higher needs such as self-fulfillment and self-reliance, knowledge and understanding, invention and innovation, has created a new role in the field. .      Although some programs have been adopted by the Afghan government, civil society organizations, human rights organizations, and especially the international community on women's gender security in the workplace since 2001, some strategies are not available, but some are not. The reason for ethnic-cultural sensitivities has also led to some disorders. Because of this, women's rights defenders and activists in Afghanistan face many challenges. Patriarchal culture and tradition, weak government with the influence of patriarchal forces and lack of comprehensive implementation of laws are among the serious problems facing women in the workplace. However, the Government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan has enacted some criminal laws, such as the Law on the Elimination of Violence against Women and the Law on the Elimination of Harassment of Women and Children. However, existing Acts has failed to prevent harassment of women in the workplace. To solve of this problem, it seems that the first step is to change the patriarchal discourse in society. Therefore, culture-building is essential for the formation of a non-discriminatory attitude towards women and cultural and executive efforts to eliminate male-dominated and authoritarian attitudes in various fields. In other words, a society that seeks its own health and survival must consider gender justice and strive to achieve it in various ways. In this context, social institutions such as family, school, media, local institutions, universities, etc. can play a role in shaping the flow based on gender justice. Next, independent criminalization of harassment of women in the workplace is another appropriate strategy that can help control these behaviors through deterrence and criminal prevention measures.