Beginning teachers' perceptions and experiences of sexual harassment in Ghanaian teacher training institutions

The study explores trainee teachers' perceptions and experiences of sexual harassment in Teacher Training Institutions in Ghana. Guided by the research literature on sexual harassment and a feminist framework, the study seeks to understand how sexual harassment and its subtleties are experienced by trainee teachers in Ghana. It particularly throws light on the coping strategies of these trainee teachers in different sexual harassment scenarios. The study also seeks to increase awareness of sexual harassment in the Teacher Training Institutions and the population at large. This study is also a contribution to the scanty literature in the area of sexual harassment in Africa and has recommended options available to enlighten educational and policy planners on areas of priorities for action and to ensure a more effective response to sexual harassment in the Ghanaian society.Extensive review of the pertinent literature on sexual harassment was undertaken to support a critical analysis of the expressed perceptions and experiences of these students. Methods such as focus group discussions were employed with semi-structured interviews (open-ended questions) and memory writing as qualitative data gathering techniques to conduct group interviews and individual sessions with a random sample of 40 participants from two teacher training institutions of the country, the University College of Education in Winneba and Bagabaga Training College in Tamale. Female participants were engaged individually in memory writing using procedural guidelines.The study found out that the main factors predisposing trainee teachers to sexual harassment in Ghanaian Teacher Training Institutions are Institutional practices by both teachers and students and the Institutional environment created from inadequate or complete absence of physical structures aimed at preventing sexual harassment and assaults. The lack of explicit policies to check sexual abuse, including sexual harassment, work in concert with the aforementioned institutional characteristics to create conditions that facilitate sexual harassment of female trainee teachers in the Ghanaian context. All these accumulate into an apparent institutional framework of sexual harassment that supports a regime of blatant disregard of the safety concerns of female trainee teachers.Based on the testimonies of the students, it would appear that the problem of sexual harassment perpetrated by people in positions of authority is widespread in Ghana. Female student teachers are regularly exposed to a range of sexually motivated abuses within the learning environment, and these abuses are often carried out by tutors, professors, administrative staff and senior students. These three categories of agents of sexual harassment take advantage of available or perceived institutional power to abuse vulnerable female students. Also, perpetrators of sexual harassment against female students are not held accountable for their acts, thus perpetuating these abuses. By their very nature, the institutions of learning in Ghana are very hierarchically structured, such that power, might and right are often easily accorded to tutors over students, administrative staff over students and senior students over their junior counterparts. Most often they abuse the power and influence of their positions with threats of reprisals when the females refuse to consent to their sexual demands. The victimized females suffer untold consequences, which are minimized at every step in this structured power system