Sexual Harassment and Coping Strategies Used by Female Domestic Workers

The present research was designed to explore the relationship between sexual harassment and coping strategies used by domestic female workers. The research also aimed to explore the differences based on different demographic variables (i.e., age, marital status, working status of family, religion, and residence) in relation to variables. Respondents included 100 female domestic workers, from different slum areas of Islamabad and Rawalpindi. Age range of the domestic female workers was from 12-43 years (M = 23.43, SD = 5.85). Convenient sampling technique was used to collect data by using Sexual Harassment Experiences Questionnaire (Kamal & Tariq, 1997) and Coping Strategies with Harassment (Kamal & Tariq, 1997). Results indicated that gender harassment and unwanted sexual attention were the most common experienced types of sexual harassment. The results provided evidence of negative relationship of sexual harassment with internal coping strategies and positive relationship with avoidance as external coping strategy. Age was found to be negatively related to the internal focused coping strategies and positively related with the external focused coping strategies. Married female domestic workers were experiencing higher frequency of sexual harassment as compared to unmarried female domestic workers.