Topic Title: Research proposal on “Sexual Harassment at workplace”

Course Title: Business Research Methodology

Course Code: MBA 511

Section: 02

Submitted to: Zakir Hossain Bhuiyan, PhD.

Submitted by:

Name ID
Bany Ahmed 2021-1-95-101
Sadia Tahsin 2021-1-95-089
Omeka Islam 2019-2-95-050
 Research Proposal on “Sexual Harassment at
Workplace in Bangladesh”
Our research proposal is about sexual harassment at workplace. Sexual harassment happens when the victim
is faced with unwanted and non-consensual behavior based on his or her sex. Such behavior can be verbal,
non-verbal, visual, or any kind of physical demands or requests for sexual favors. This creates an
uncomfortable, threatening and adverse working and learning environment. It also violates human rights to
equality in workplace. It is indeed very remarkable to know that such an issue is still happening in our
country in an uncontrolled manner nowadays.

Problem statement:

It is a matter of sorrow that occupation or profession is not safe from sexual harassment in these days. It is
alarming that now sexual harassment is a usual issue in workplaces. This severity express how common
this issue is becoming in our country and how urgent it is to eliminate this problem.

Different studies shows that women trends to be more sexually harassed than men at workplace. In the
recent times, Women are more towards equality and empowerment. So, there is an increasing number of
women in the workplace. This gives more reasons to solve this problem so that we can create a better
working environment to this group and encourage them to start working with open mind.

There is another problem that most of the victim does not have proper orientation about sexual harassment.
Most of them do not know about their personal right. Sometimes, people feel uncomfortable with some
behavior of their colleague but they think this a gesture of openness among them. So, they try to remain
silent on this issue. Sometimes, they also feel shy about this topic. They think people will mock about the
victim if they raise their voice. Even if they try to report this issue, they do not have proper knowledge
whom or where to report this. So, we want to highlight this things to people so that they can have a clear
idea about this problem.

While collecting secondary data, we have seen that there is lots of research on this topic. But we have found
that there is only a few research done in context of Bangladesh where Bangladesh is a developing country
and this problem is very acute in our country. So, we thought to work on this topic in context of Bangladesh.

Objective of Study:

Long ago, women were considered as second class citizens. They were victims of gender discrimination
and domination by males at all levels. They were regarded as burdened and loaded with insecurities in the
male dominated societies. Other than this they were not conscious of their rights to equality. Consequently,
they were sexually harassed in orally like dirty language and jokes imposed on them while doing work.
Deprived from the light of education women had to bear these harassment without taking any steps. They
did not know about their rights and the relevant laws of harassment.

But it is alarming for us that now women are becoming highly educated but they cannot protect themselves
from this problem. Availability of internet, pornography, lack of sex education are the reasons for the
problem. Cultural beliefs can be another reason for this because some culture beliefs that man has the
ultimate power over women. But the problem arises when female victims choose to remain silent assuming
that they will never get justice and also thinking about the social respect of their family.

However there is another fact that women are not only the victim of this issue. Maybe very small in number
but men are also being sexually harassed at work place. Again person in a powerful position uses the
position to harass others in lower position. Sexual harassment harm an individual’s productivity and
performance because of insecure work environment. Victim’s life becomes full of frustration, lack of trust
and various problems they may face like insomnia, depression and loss of interest in the family. Again
suicidal case is also happening for this problem.

The general purpose of this research is to identify the level of sexual harassment is occurred at different
Organization within the corporate industry and how this issue is impacting the operation of business. We
also want to portray how this issue is effecting the mental and physical health of the victims and how we
can control this issue by increasing awareness.

The objectives that we would like to achieve by conducting the research are:

• Identifying the current situation of Sexual harassment in different organization of Bangladesh.

Methodology:
This research will be conducted mainly based on Qualitative data. We would try to visit different
organization to collect primary data. The perception and experience of employees will be used to make a
judgment about the research objectives. We will assess how participants see sexual harassment in different
organizations and how this is impacting on their job performance and mental health.

For secondary data, we will use different source of journals, books, article, News and other publications.
New can be a good source of historical data about workplace harassment. But as there are less secondary
data based on Bangladeshi contact, we have to rely much on primary data. We will take help from previous
survey and quantitative data to understand the global situation but we will not be able to go for quantitative
approach for primary data collection as it is difficult to collect fully quantitative data in this topic.

The methods we will use in our research and the required outcome from these methods are given below:
Questionnaire:
For the purpose of our research we will develop a questionnaire for our primary data. It is really helpful
for getting comprehensive information for this method. This is a quick and less expensive way of
collecting data. We will do questionnaire on 10 people. The questionnaire will include both open ended
and closed ended question. With this two type of question, we can have a better understanding about the
judgment of the employees as well as collect the specific data regarding the issue. Open ended question
can add new dimension to this research as this gives understanding about specific topics.

Survey:
We will do survey on the employees of different types of organizations. We will try to understand which
types of harassment they face more, how they handle the situation, what approaches the company have to
control this, how this impact their mental health.

We will do the survey on 50 employees. We might not be able to take more the 50 people for survey due
to the limitation of organization and the confidentiality of the problem.so, we can hope to get a proper
idea by taking 50 samples.

We will take the sample from different type of organization. We will collect data from the employees
with more than 1 year of service. 35 female employees and 15 male employees will be requested to
answer the questions. We wanted to survey on employees of 1+ years’ experience so that they can share
the full scenario about their organization.

Observational trials:
We intent to observe the behavior of group of co-workers of our organizations. Observation can give
many information which we cannot get from survey or question because employees might want to
disclose the information. So, we will try to observe if any co- workers in facing any type of harassment,
how they are reacting and other objective of our research. This method require more time to get any
information. So we might do it for six months’ time period.

Depth Interview:
We will do a depth interview on 10 Legal identity to understand the laws of Bangladesh on sexual
harassment specifically for workplace. We can also question about how many reports they get on sexual
harassment at work place, what type of harassments is common, which age group is mostly victim and
their suggestion on this issue.

We also want to interview 5 HR manager from different organizations. We will try to get the idea about
how serious they are on this issue, are they maintaining any guidelines to stop this problem, how much
they are encouraging their employees to raise voice against this crime.

In all the data collection we will try to maintain the confidentiality of the participant’s personal
information.
Financial Cost and Time required:
We are trying to keep the cost as minimum as possible. But it might require some expenses regarding the
transportation, survey and some other cost. So, we are allocating 7,000 taka budget for this research paper
and we want to conduct this research for 6 months. For that reason the cost is a bit higher in our research.
All the interview and observation need to be personally and confidentially handled as it is a sensitive issue.
That’s why this research require more time, effort and money.

RESEARCH COST
Stationery bill Travel expenses
Questionnaires Electricity and Internet costs
Interview
4%3% 14%
7%

72%

Conclusion:
In this era of equality, if we fail to ensure a harassment free working environment for both men and women
then we will leave out the potentiality of human resource. It is extremely important for employers as well as
other responsible persons or institutions to follow certain guidelines to ensure the prevention of sexual
harassment at work and to provide the procedure for the implementation of acts of sexual harassment by
taking all steps needed.

Government should also interfere in the job sector to control this unethical and illegal practice. If we all
consider this problem as a serious issue and try to raise voice against this crime, only then this will be
eliminated from our country.