A Narrative Literature Review on Sexual Harassment in Higher Education in the Middle East from a Feminist Framework Perspective

Abstract

In this narrative literature review, I aim to review the existing sexual harassment (SH) in higher education literature to understand the reasons behind its occurrence and determine the relationships between the different interplaying factors that facilitate its prevalence in the Middle East through the lens of the Feminist Framework Theory. This review will further highlight the need for scholars to focus their research interests on topics of SH and other related issues in the Arab world and in higher education, as it is highly prevalent and misunderstood. The review of the literature is important to understand how previous research tackled this topic, which theories they adopted, how people’s perceptions differ through the lens of each theory, and how societal factors contribute to such perceptions and manifest itself through policies and its implementation. This study reviews 24 articles based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria. These studies have targeted men and women in higher education in the Middle East, and focused on the perceptions of SH, reporting and culture across universities that may or may not have anti-harassment policies. The analysis that was carried out was based on the five core dimensions of the Feminist Framework Plus (FFP), in which the results were linked and correlated to these dimensions. The results yielded recommendations to managers to adopt a feminist perspective in developing policies by using the intersectionality perspective and reduce patriarchal perspectives as suggested by the FFP. This study aims to give a different perspective on the prevalence of SH and what needs to be done to prevent it using the FFP, and the urge for future research to examine the perpetrators’ profiles and take gender into consideration and gender minorities’ experiences to have a culturally sensitive environment in the Middle East.