Sexual Harassment at Universities in North Macedonia: Victimization, Strain, and Negative Emotions

Abstract

Universities being autonomous should be able to guarantee free speech, and everyone should feel safe from any type of harm there. But as every area of social life, also academia is not immune to criminal acts, including sexual harassment. During 2021 and 2022 the authors have conducted research about sexual harassment at Macedonian universities. This paper discusses the third part (victimization and negative emotions) of that research. The research included 330 students from public and private universities in North Macedonia. The goal of the research was to analyze whether students know what sexual harassment is, whether they can recognize it, and if and how often sexual harassment happens at Macedonian universities. The results have shown that sexual harassment is happening at Macedonian universities, victims choose not to report it to authorities, but they talk about their experience to their parents or friends. And that in most cases has happened in professors’ offices and in the lecture halls.