Conservative Beliefs and Sexual Harrassment in a Higher Education Institution in the South East of México

Sexual harrassment is considered a form of gender violence which is rarely reported, denounced or even recognized by the people who suffers it. In this paper the perception of sexual harrassment is analyzed taking into account the influence of the victims beliefs about cultural stereotypes. The voluntary sample consisted of 647 university students (male and women) from a university of the south east of México. Students were visited in their classrooms and were invited to participate in an on line annonious questionaire which had items concerning some traditional or concervative ideas of the mexican culture ( Diaz Guerrero 2002) and their experiences on different levels of sexual harrassment (INMUJERES, 2010). The t test revealed significant effects of beliefx over the perception of certain levels of harrassment. Specially subjets with non conservative beliefs pereived low leves of sexual harrassment. Findings are discussed through the sociocultural theory