The Malaysian Insight

ALL Women’s Action Society (Awam) and Centre for Governance and Political Studies (Cent-GPS) say their sexual harassment survey is not intended to tarnish the reputation of any particular group of people or profession. 

The groups said this in response to the National Union of The Teaching Profession (NUTP) statement today, which rubbished the results of their survey that found that 44% of the 1,056 women respondents had heard teachers cracking sexist jokes, calling it an unscientific study. 

The union’s secretary-general, Wang Heng Suan, described the survey and those who carried it out as “unfair and irresponsible”.  

He said the percentage of those surveyed was only 0.003% of the Malaysian population and, thus, the findings were not only inaccurate but also wrong. 

“It is unfortunate that NUTP is taking this stance of refuting the survey,” Awam and Cent-GPS told The Malaysian Insight. 

“The aim of the survey is not to tarnish the reputation of any particular group of people or profession, but rather to continue our work on highlighting that sexual harassment is happening and is not being addressed properly.”  

They said contrary to the survey being ‘inaccurate and wrong’ due to the ‘unfair and irresponsible’ respondent sample as commented by Wang, it abided by the scientific benchmark of 1,000 respondents for survey samples that are representative of the population surveyed. 

Furthermore, they said, the sample size provided adequate representation of the 16-million sub-population of Malaysian women in light of a confidence level of 95% and margin error of 3%. 

“We would also like to clarify that our preliminary survey targeted Malaysian women specifically from 18 to 30 years old and not the entire Malaysian population, hence the quoted percentage of 0.003% is inaccurate,” they said. 

“Even if only a few women are complaining of sexual harassment, we cannot brush those complaints aside. Rather, we must investigate properly and take proper action to ensure that the situation does not repeat itself.”  

The organisations said the aim of the survey is to show that there is a systemic culture of sexual harassment in the country to the point that women do not feel safe in public places.  

“This is not the Malaysia that we want. We want a Malaysia that is safe for all women and men,” they said. 

Therefore, they said, the need is high for a sexual harassment law that is survivor-centric, which ensures quick, safe and easy access to justice as well as legally mandates all institutions to establish effective preventive and redress mechanisms to address sexual harassment. 

Awam and Cent-GPS said it must be noted that the survey results did not note that 44% of teachers make sexually provocative jokes.  

They said the results stated that 44% of the surveyed 1,056 women aged 18 to 30 have witnessed sexually provocative jokes from teachers.

“The survey, thus, sampled young women aged 18 to 30, not teachers. Those are two very different things, with different sample sizes and population size,” they said. 

“We are open to communicating directly with Wang to present our survey findings to ensure that he has an accurate idea of the survey findings and their implications. 

“Furthermore, we are also open to working with NUTP on providing training on sexual harassment awareness and prevention for the aforementioned purpose of empowering teachers to be more capable in handling sexual harassment and creating sexual harassment-free school spaces for all students in Malaysia.” – September 24, 2021.