361. Sexual Harassment and Domestic Violence in the Middle East and North Africa
- Author:
- Donia Smaali Bouhlila
- Publication Date:
- 12-2019
- Content Type:
- Special Report
- Institution:
- Arab Barometer
- Abstract:
- Arab Barometer wave V survey aims at investigating two types of sexual harassment in public places in 12 Arab countries : verbal sexual harassment and physical sexual harassment. Public places are meant to be streets, public transportation and shopping malls. The questionnaire included a question on the frequency of the verbal sexual harassment and a question on the frequency of physical sexual harassment. The verbal sexual harassment is all the unwanted sexual remarks, whistling or gestures in public places. However, sexual harassment is the unwanted sexual advances, like being touched in public places. People were asked how often they have personally experienced this behavior in the past 12 months. Dierent responses were suggested for the respondent: never, rarely, sometimes and often. We investigate first how common is verbal and physical sexual harassment among the population surveyed. Then, we created a binary variable for sexual harassment combining both verbal and physical sexual harassment. This variable takes the value 1 if the respondent has been exposed either rarely, sometimes or often to both verbal and physical sexual harassment, and zero if not . Most of the surveyed people across the participating countries reported that they “rarely” experienced verbal and physical sexual harassment in the past 12 months. Regarding verbal sexual harassment, from 2 percent to 12 percent of the surveyed people declared being “sometimes” exposed to verbal sexual harassment. The highest proportions are observed in Egypt (10 percent), Iraq (10 percent) and Morocco (11 percent). The lowest proportion which is around 2 percent is observed in Tunisia. For the category “often”, around 2 percent of the respondents declared that they are often victims of verbal sexual harassment in Palestine against 7 percent in Morocco.
- Topic:
- Gender Issues, Public Opinion, Women, Gender Based Violence, Sexual Violence, and Public Policy
- Political Geography:
- Middle East and North Africa