Perceiving sexual harassment and #metoo social media campaign among Chinese female college students

ABSTRACT

This study responds to the alarmingly frequent occurrence of sexual harassment (SH) in Chinese colleges by investigating female college students’ experience, tolerance of SH and evaluation of the #metoo social media campaign. Guided by the system justification theory, this study has confirmed the association between their tolerance of SH, the traditional gender role value and hostile sexism they hold. In total, 31% of variance of tolerance of SH can be explained by the variables of cultural values and sex information access. Hostile sexism is significantly predictive of tolerance of SH, but not of the evaluation of the #metoo campaign. As the first of its kind, this study has demonstrated the positive relationships between family sex communication, school sex education and the tolerance of SH in current China. Moreover, the respondents’ evaluation on the #metoo social media campaign is reversely related to their family sex communication. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Sexual harassment
• Chinese female college students
• tolerance of sexual harassment
• system justification theory
• sex education

Disclosure statement

There is no potential conflict of interests.

Notes

1. Nv Quan selected those cases based on three criteria: 1) The case was publicly exposed online; 2) The accuser revealed his/her real identity; 3) Even if the accuser was anonymous, the case was verified by other credible sources. Those criteria could partially explain the low number of cases given the large population of China. However, we believe the major reason was that many sexual harassment victims still chose to keep silence due to various reasons as discussed in the manuscript despite the heated Mi Tu movement.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Humanity and Social Science Youth Foundation of Ministry of Education of China under Grant no. 17YJCZH131.

Notes on contributors

Yi Mou

Yi Mou is a special researcher in the School of Media & Communication at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Her research interests include new media studies, human–machine communication, and health communication, such as employing new media tools to achieve health preventive objectives and investigating the effects of social cues of machines in interacting with humans.

Yuanye Cui

Yuanye Cui is a graduate student in the School of Media & Communication at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

Jilong Wang

Jilong Wang is Professor in the School of Media & Communication at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. His research interests include environmental communication and public health communication.

Yuheng Wu

Yuheng Wu is a doctoral student in the School of Media & Communication at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

Zhipeng Li

Zhipeng Li is a graduate student in the School of Media & Communication at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

Yingyan Wu

Yingyan Wu is a graduate student in the School of Media & Communication at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.