A ‘TOUCHY’ SUBJECT: INVESTIGATING SEXUAL HARASSMENT IN SINGAPORE’S UNIVERSITIES

Abstract

Following the development of feminism and the modern feminist movement, much interest has been directed to comprehending women’s experiences of victimisation and violence through consciousness-raising attempts. As a form of violence against women, sexual harassment has been extensively documented and analysed in multiple contexts, such as the universities, the military and the workplace. Recently, the ‘MeToo’ movement has seen many individuals explicating their experiences with sexual harassment online and spurred even greater condemnation of violence against women. Most academic studies on sexual harassment have, however, focused on examining harassment as it occurs in the context of formal power relationships. Furthermore, literature on sexual harassment in Singapore is sparse, indicating a booming silence on this topic. This thesis is thus an exploratory study on sexual harassment of university students. I aim to find out the prevalence of sexual harassment in Singapore’s universities, students’ attitudes towards and understandings of sexual harassment and most importantly, what their interpretations and experiences reveal about gender and power dynamics. Through an examination of my empirical data, I argue that peer sexual harassment in Singapore’s universities is a gendered exercise of power underscored by students’ subscriptions to particular assumptions of femininity and masculinity and reiterated through social practices of the objectification of women and sexual coercion. Ultimately, peer sexual harassment cannot be divorced from the broader macro-societal gender inequality fundamental to Singapore society