Sexual Harassment of the Adolescent Girls: A Sociological Study at Jessore District in Bangladesh

Sexual harassment, often known as eve teasing, is a regular occurrence for the women and girls of Bangladesh. Harassment can take a variety of forms and the perpetrators come from multiple walks of life, they are rich and poor, educated and uneducated, teenage boys, rickshaw pullers, bus drivers, street vendors, traffic police and often supervisors or colleagues of the working women. The study was conducted on 120 respondents through survey method. Data were collected from May 2011. The survey collected self-reported data on sexual harassment of 120 girls aged 13-19 years selected randomly. Results reveal that 65 percent of the girls facing sexual harassment everyday, unwanted sexual Offer in Love by 20.8 percent and sexual Threat 4.1 percent yielding prevalence of sexual harassment of any type 64.9 percent everyday. Most of the respondents blame the social system such as education, unemployment etc which are the basic causes of sexual harassment and the study recommended that the change of the social system is necessary for holdup of the immorality (sexual harassment) from the society.