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The Situation of the Harassment Prevention in the Japanese Universities
In January 2012, the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare publicly announced the definition of workplace harassment. They also recommended that each industry should have their own collective view on the definition of the harassment. However according to Kawabata(2015), 40% of 396 Japanese university respondents out of 1137 universities surveyed in the complete count survey in 2013 answered that they had no guidelines for harassment prevention. And according to Naruse et.al. (2015) , the number of the types of harassment and that of the terminologies of their definitions of the harassment diverse among the Japanese universities. It is difficult to perform a national survey to get the right picture of the situation of harassment prevention in Japan.
It is necessary that the universities as the major institutions of higher education should have a collective view on the definition of the workplace harassment to prevent it. For example, all the UK universities have “Human Resources” and full-time qualified staff for the “Dignity and Diversity” office. According to Kawabata (2015), the UK universities have the collective view on the conceptual definitions of the harassment and their efforts of the harassment prevention is successful. The practice led by the central government in the UK could be one example to be taken into consideration.
References
Tomoko Kawabata, 2015, the Efforts of the UK universities on the prevention of the harassment, the 88th Japan Sociological Association Conference, June 28th , Waseda University.
Mayu Naruse, Tomoko Kawabata, Ito Shina, 2015, the Analysis of the classification of the harassment by the Japanese universities, the 63rd Hokkaido Sociological Association Conference, September 19th , Asahikawa University.
Granted by the Japanese government. KAKEN“Basic Studies C” No.25380682.