Employee sexual harassment policies and Kuwait transnational higher education
Date
2014Author
Fusilier, Marcelline
Denny, Marcia
Type
Journal Article
Peer-Reviewed
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Transnational higher education providers based in the West are
increasingly partnering with newer institutions in the Middle East. The present
study investigates the extent to which workplace sexual harassment prevention
policies are prevalent across the Western universities’ home country campuses
and their partner institutions in Kuwait. Policies were collected from Kuwait
and their foreign partner institutions’ websites followed up by e-mailed and
telephoned requests. The policies were coded for characteristics such as
procedures for investigation of sexual harassment complaints, training for
sexual harassment prevention, sanctions, etc. Results suggest that foreign
partner schools appear more likely to make policies available (58%) than
campuses based in Kuwait (40%). The foreign institutions’ policies tend to
have more of the prevention characteristics than those for Kuwait schools.
Development of workplace sexual harassment policies is becoming essential
for human resources management in the Middle East as the workforce grows in
gender diversity.