Sexual harassment is a negative social phenomenon that impacts both the life and well-being of individuals, as well as cohesion and the economic standard of the whole society.In the West Europe, sexual harassment has been theorized as well as researched both in relation to the labor market and the education. However, in the East European and Central European context, sexual harassment has been seriously understudied. Accordingly, there is only a limited research evidence, theoretical development and public awareness about the phenomenon.

Corr & Jackson (2001) define sexual harassment as a behavior that creates a hostile environment and leads to intimidation or derogation and that is related to the fact that a person is woman or men. Paludi (2006) adds that it is a behavior which is related to sexuality and/or gender and that is for the harassed person unwelcomed and hurtful. The gender dichotomy is held in place by a number of social institutions, which ensure its operation on the level of interpersonal interactions and individual identities, including schools and universities (Bourdieu 2000; Kimmel 2000). Fitzgerald (1995) categorizes sexual harrasment as: sexual coercion,unwanted sexual attention, using gender stereotypes.

In 2008, we studied sexual harassment at universities using a survey (832 respondents) and in-depth semi-structured interviews (40 respondents). We found out that almost two thirds of students have had some experience with teacher’s transgressions of limits of usual pedagogical relationship. Later some changes referring to gender equality and sexual harrasment occured in the Czech society and specifically at universities. That is why we were interested whether student´s experience with sexual harassment at universities has changed in last ten years, or not. In 2018, we conducted a new survey. The data collected over time  were compared.

In 2008, we conducted the first sexual-harassment study among Czech university students. Our approach was inspired by Fitzgerald´s Sexual Experience Questionnaire (1995) and also included model scenarios covering various aspects of sexual harassment. The results (N=832) indicated that 78% of students had an experience with teacher behaviour that could be characterised as sexual harassment. However, only 3% of them said explicitly that they had been sexually harassed. One of the reasons for this contradiction was relatively low awareness about sexual harassment in the Czech society. In 2018, we replicated original study to find out whether the prevalence of experience with sexual harassment among university students has changed in the last decade (N=946).

We identified several changes which took place during the last ten years (2008-2018) in public, media and academic awareness of sexual harassment. We compare these changes with former and actual prevalence of sexual harassment. Despite of these changes, the prevalence of sexual harassment has not changed over ten years. Data analysis showed that there were no major changes in the total rate of students who experienced sexual harassment by their teachers compared to the previous study in 2008. The results indicated that about 3/4 of students in the both studies had an experience with teacher behavior that could be characterized as sexual harassment. However, only 3-5% of them said explicitly that they had been sexually harassed. The reasons for this contradiction was relatively low awareness about sexual harassment in the Czech society - despite of public discussions and educational projects addressing harassing behavior in last ten years. In the paper, the surveys´ results in the context of social and educational changes will be discussed.

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