Sexual harassment in the workplace in the government sector in the United Arab Emirates

[Truncated abstract] The participation of women in the workplace has increased in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) due to economic development over the last three decades. This increasing involvement of women in the public sphere raises the question as to whether women, being the primary target, in UAE government workforce may be experiencing sexual harassment given that the research in many other countries has shown it to be a significant problem in each one of the countries in which research has occurred. Sexual harassment impacts negatively on the victims’ career, their mental and physical health, as well as the organization’s productivity. While there has been substantial research on workplace sexual harassment conducted primarily within workplaces in Western countries, few studies have investigated workplace sexual harassment in Muslim Arab countries. This research explores the nature of sexual harassment in UAE government workplace. The research addresses the following questions: what evidence is there that sexual harassment is occurring in the UAE government workplace? What factors contribute to the occurrence of sexual harassment? And finally, in what ways do Islam and Arab traditions influence the nature of sexual harassment in the workplace? This project employed three integrated research methods. The first phase involved investigating official government records to reveal statistical data documenting sexual harassment cases. The second phase was to interview twenty-eight civil servants in senior managerial positions. Drawing on the data generated from the interviews, the third research phase utilized a questionnaire which was administered to three hundred and three civil servants working under senior management. The responses to the questionnaire were analyzed using the Statistical Package for the Social Science (SPSS) data analysis software...