Understanding of Sexual Harassment among Year 6 and Year 12 Students in Jakarta, West Java, West Nusa Tenggara and South Sulawesi

This paper is based from the 2011 Indonesian Gender and Reproductive Health Survey of Year 6 and Year 12 students, teachers and school principals (N=8972). The aim is to evaluate students’ and teachers’ understanding and reporting of sexual harassment. In Indonesia sexual harassment has started to be introduced in Year 5 in Sport and Healthy Living education. Our bivariate and logistic regression analysis showed female teachers were more likely to classify behaviour as sexual harassment comparing to male teachers. There are some provincial differences where teachers in South Sulawesi were the least likely to classify any behaviour as constituting sexual behaviour compared to teachers in other provinces. Teachers in religious schools were significantly more likely to classify behaviour such as being touched, touching in the genital area, being forced to touch another’s genitals, forced to be naked, rape and being treated as a sexual object as sexual harassment compared to teachers in non-religious schools. Among students, if harassed, girls were more likely to report and take action compared to boys. Year 6 students were more likely to report harassment to parents, police or teachers and school principals while Year 12 students will handle the matter themselves.