Revisiting lower secondary schools in the 1990s : Reflections on and interpretations of sexual and gender-based harassment

Results from national school health surveys suggest that girls’ experiences of sexual harassment have increased dramatically between the years 2017 and 2019 (Ikonen & Helakorpi, 2019). The most obvious explanation for the increase, however, is growing awareness among young women after #MeToo, rather than substantial actual changes. In the 1990s, issues related to harassment were not included into main educational documents, and even the terms were fairly unfamiliar to teachers (Lahelma, Palmu & Gordon, 2000). My aim in this chapter is to reflect on continuities and changes in sexual and gender-based harassment in schools from the late 1990s to the present day. I will especially explore experiences reported by young people and teachers, and interpretations by researchers regarding the theme in the 1990s. My method for revisiting the 1990s is first to reproduce the main parts of my earlier article Gendered Conflicts in Secondary School: Fun or enactment of power? (Lahelma, 2002a), which was published in the journal Gender and Education. In order to keep the interpretations authentic, I will, in the section Looking back to the 1990s, present the text as I originally wrote it, with some cuts and light editing, but without adding new references. In this article, I analysed the fine line between playing, which is ‘just fun’ and behaviour that is experienced as harassment.In the following section, Revisiting the analysis after 20 years, I will give an overview of the changes in the political and cultural environment, education and theoretical thinking that are relevant for understanding this theme now. Therefore, I will present some more current Finnish and international research, documents and statistics, although other chapters in this book also offer studies that analyse the current situation. Finally, I combine my earlier conclusions with new findings and reflect on what has changed and what has remained the same in young people’s experiences of and reflections on sexual and gender-based harassment in schools, and in teachers’ responses.Peer reviewe