In China, sexual harassment (hereafter SH) has become an emerging buzzword in news reports about higher education, but there is a dearth of academic research on this phenomenon. SH refers to the constellation of behaviors which range from degrading remarks and unwanted sexual advances to extreme cases of violent sexual assault. Incidents reported on campuses overwhelmingly involve younger female students being sexually harassed by older male professors. This significant social problem has historically been under-counted due to a culture of silence, where female students face power inequities, hierarchy, and patriarchy which still exist in many educational institutions.

This proposed project will apply the concept of Bourdieuian symbolic power to examine SH in higher education. Symbolic power is exercised among individuals and groups in a hierarchy who are controlled through measures of ideological and operational marginalization. Specifically, how SH occurs in Chinese universities where embedded symbolic power tends to produce institutionalized gender discrimination practices involving female students. In China, the apprenticeship system (shimen 師門) casts teachers and students as akin to parent–child relationships, marking sexual relationships between professors and students as incestuous. Higher education institutions in China have tried to be more sensitive by appointing a Party secretary to the campus as well as asking professors to sign moral agreements. Some universities have even started working on morality and ethics training (師德師風訓練) for faculty and students.

To understand how symbolic power operates with SH, the study will employ ethnography to collect information from female students and administrators at multisites in Beijing, Jinan, and Hong Kong. A summer 2021 pilot study in Beijing, Jinan, and Hong Kong confirmed the significance and feasibility of the proposed project. The pilot study revealed four broad types of responses by students experiencing SH from their professors: 1) passively stay silent; 2) actively speak out; or 3) “cut and run” to escape and avoid confrontation; 4) collaborate with the professors to find way out. The pilot study also suggested that wealthy urban students may be more likely to speak out than middle-class rural counterparts. Interior and rural areas are noted for tighter control and more rigid authority than urban centers.

The proposed study will encompass the spectrum of female students across disciplines at both undergraduate and graduate levels. Ethnographic data will be collected in Beijing, Jinan (Shandong Province), and Hong Kong. A planned sample of 60 students and 20 administrators and professors with knowledge of SH complaints at their universities in northern China will be recruited.

This proposed project involves at least three levels of analysis. The first level examines the nature and pathways of SH in higher education within a Chinese context to identify ways to help female university students combat SH. Second, the data will help generate SH prevention policies such as raising awareness about SH in high school and China’s higher education. Third, this project can help guide NGOs, state actors, universities, professors, administrators, and the public with practical suggestions for raising awareness about SH throughout higher education and empower more female students to speak out.

Keywords: Sexual harassment, higher education, symbolic power, patriarchy, apprenticeship, China