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Sexual harassment – a key challenge for schools

Pastoral issues Behaviour Safeguarding PSHE Pupil wellbeing
Technology and our sexualised society are causing a new crisis of sexual harassment among young people, normalising the objectification of women, blurring lines of consent and warping the understanding of what is ‘normal’. SecEd editor Pete Henshaw says the battleground is in our schools

We claim to be at the leading edge of gender equality in our country and yet, at times, I fear we are actually taking giant leaps backwards.

I fear that society is changing at such a pace that we are unable to control new threats to gender equality, not least when it comes to issues of sex and relationships.

The battleground is surely in our young people, where the manifestation of a seemingly new modern culture that so often serves to justify the sexual harassment, objectification and bullying of women can be seen.

I don’t pretend to imply that this has not been a problem in past generations, but new technologies and, to me, the nature of our increasingly object and money-driven (and celebrity and fame-obsessed society) seems to have taken us to a whole new level. Today, so much of life is about what you look like and I think this deeply affects our attitudes.

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