Does the Workplace Harassment Act Cater to Students? Perceptions and Awareness among University Students

Abstract

Harassment at workplace is prevalent across the globe and remains a major threat to work performance of workers. In this regard, Pakistan introduced “The Protection against Harassment of Women at the Workplace Act 2010”. The current study was aimed to explore the level of awareness and perceptions of the law among university students, The main question posed by this research was does workplace harassment act cater students? As the prevalent perception was that law was only catering faculty and staff. The study was qualitative in nature by following interpretive ontological and social constructivism epistemological stance. In-depth interviews were taken from twenty students of each gender from two universities of Lahore. Thematic analysis was used to analyze the data. The results reflected that majority of students were unaware of the legislation. Overall, universities have failed to play a constructive role in raising the awareness against harassment. Harassment committees were found to be ineffective. Finally, the universities are recommended to increase awareness through various steps especially information about the harassment committee along with focal persons contact numbers should be available on university website and hard copies of the information must be displayed in student common rooms, cafes, photocopier shop and university library.