Sexual harassment in higher education institutions: the law and the practice

Kebkab-Sirgew-GelawAuthor: Kebkab Sirgew Gelaw
International Human Rights Lawyer

Sexual harassment has been a fact of life ever since humans inhabited the earth.[1] Despite its existence, it has been ignored and the tradition has made women keep quite concerning the act as if nothing went wrong. It is hard to unthink what you know, but there was a time when the facts that amount to sexual harassment did not amount to sexual harassment, the facts amounting to the harm did not socially “exist,” had no shape, no cognitive coherence; far less did they state a legal claim.[2]

Sexual harassment is a manifestation of the male domination and has clearly indicated that the domination extended socially, economically, and politically. Women were socially expected to be passive about many activities, which the society believed to be challenging, and those challenges were passed on to men to be handled.

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Marital rape as a human rights violation of women in Ethiopia: a case study of Alumni association of the faculty of law of Addis Ababa University and Ethiopian Women Lawyers Association (EWLA)

Kebkab-Sirgew-GelawAuthor: Kebkab Sirgew Gelaw
International Human Rights Lawyer

The concept of rape of a woman by her husband in marriage was not a transgression at all because a man was allowed to treat ‘his chattel as he deemed appropriate’; thus, women who were forced to have sex in their marriage did not even have the option of seeking criminal prosecution.[1] The first marital rape case to reach the US court system took place in 1978 in New Jersey, when Daniel Morrison was found guilty of raping his estranged wife. Six months later, in Oregon, John Rideout became the first husband charged with rape while living with his wife.[2]  Rideout was acquitted and brought attention to the concept that rape can exist within the context of marriage.

Many states in the US including Minnesota at that time defended forced sexual intercourse committed by a man against a woman and not his wife; though there have been subsequent prosecutions of marital rape, but in general, the cases were charged to win, primary because the question of consent is clouded by societal beliefs about marriage.[3]

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