Peer Sexual Harassment: A Barrier to the Health of Adolescent Females?

Abstract

Despite increasing societal concern about sexual harassment in the workplace and in academia, to date sexual harassment has been neglected by nurses as a health issue among adolescents. Sexual harassment includes a wide range of unwelcome sexually oriented and gender-offensive behaviours that contribute to a hostile environment. Although the research is limited and lacking in rigour, early findings, along with evidence abstracted from the workplace-harassment and stress and coping literature, suggest that peer sexual harassment may adversely affect young women's mental and physical health, health-related behaviours, and future relationships. The author makes recommendations for further sexual-harassment research, specific to the adolescent population, based on a conceptual framework derived from the transactional stress and coping literature.