In Ethiopia, the criminal code proclamation prohibits SH, prescribes simple imprisonment for the perpetrator [28], and considered it as a prohibited act of workplace [29]. However, in line with other studies conducted in the hospitality industries [8, 44], this study suggested that SH was widespread among women working in hospitality workplaces. It also reported that there was an inadequate understanding of women towards SH. All participants agreed that women working in hospitality workplaces face a variety of forms of WSH, including verbal, nonverbal, physical, and gender-related SH. The study also acknowledged multiple factors that must be addressed to bring practice change in hospitality workplaces in Ethiopia. Furthermore, it identified the related effects of SH, reproductive health effects in particular.
Consistent with previous research [45], some participants in this study had a fair idea and concept of sexual harassment. However, the majority of the respondents were unaware of SH and failed to differentiate SH, harmless flirting, and general friendliness. They also expressed their confusion about how to differentiate SH, ambient harassment, and violence. Likewise, consistent with the Zimbabwean study [46], women in this study had inadequate awareness or training about SH before or during their employment process. It also indicates that the recruitment of women employees in hospitality workplaces was not merit-based. Women hospitality workers are required to have awareness and skills in managing SH beyond the hospitality workplaces. Besides, the lack of exposure to different sexual and reproductive health-related training, including SH, women hospitality employees in Ethiopia often fail to differentiate SH from other forms of violence. Thus, to aware of SH in hospitality workplaces, a set of unique approaches and system reforms are required to introduce to enhance the knowledge and working capacity of women employees. These approaches must aim to introduce training for women employees that can help in increasing confidence in preventing SH at their workplaces. This training on SH prevention should be on a regular base in the form of pre-service education, in-service training, and professional development. The pre-service training should be curricula based and accredited by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education (MoSHE) of Ethiopia. The in-service and professional development training should also include induction or orientation training, foundation training, on the job training, refresher or maintenance training, and career training. Further, awareness should be created to both the victims and perpetrators using different behavioral change communication (BCC) and information, education, and communication (IEC) approaches. In the IEC/BCC approach, posters that can create awareness for the service users could be useful.
Similarly, consistent with previous studies conducted in hospitality workplaces of South Africa [47] and Australia [48], participants responded that they had experienced verbal, physical, visual, and gender-related forms of SH. The verbal forms of SH include comments about physical attributes, lustful calls, threats in exchange for sexual favors, tips & promises in exchange for sexual favors, dirty sexual jokes/stories, sexual solicitations, sexual intimidations, flirting, whistling, frequent requests for dates, verbal insult by the perpetrators targeting their sexual orientation, targeted for rumors of sexual promiscuity, and offering money in exchange for sexual favors. Additionally, the physical forms of SH were touching, unwanted kissing, forceful sexual acts (rape, holding hands and clothes, hugging), staring at breasts and hips, fondling, and cornered or placed in a position that was difficult to get out. The visual forms of SH were also included seeing perpetrators watching pornographic pictures, receiving a love letter, gesture requests of sex (i.e., winking, kissing, prodding, gazing, leering, ogling, staring), and witnessing SH around the customers' bedrooms. Furthermore, gender-related demands were discouraging because of being a female, unfair treatment, forcing to provide sexual services like sitting beside the perpetrators and wear uniforms that provoke the sexual desire of the customers. Also, the perpetrators initiated the women to sexual advances in exchange for job employment, recommendations, and promotion for a better job position. As a result, like a study conducted among Mexican Indigenous Farmworker Women in Oregon [49], women in this study reported that these experiences made the hospitality workplaces feel unsafe and unfair.
Consistent with the findings of quantitative studies conducted in Zimbabwe [46] and the USA [8], the perpetrators in this study were customers, coworkers, and immediate bosses (supervisors/managers/owners). However, unlike other studies, the participants in this study emphasized that some women and agents (brokers) were also responsible for the act. This finding supports the statement that emphasizes the more considerable influence of peers than management on labor sexualization [50].
A quantitative study conducted in Cameroon [51] revealed that women bar workers were exposed to male customers and engaged in risky sexual practices, including transactional sex practice. Other studies also underline the reasons for transactional sex practice [51, 52]. These reasons were to fulfill basic needs and to improve social status. Likewise, some women in the current study practiced transactional sex because of the low wages. These women showed attention-seeking behaviors and displayed an interest in creating a relationship with service users. These attention-seeking and relationship creation practices include accepting invitations, calling customers with a nickname, chewing gum in front of the customers, different walking styles, touching customers, and eating from customers' hands. Therefore, these practices of some women created a perceptual experience that all the women working in hospitality workplaces have the desire. Thus, in line with a study conducted among university students in Ethiopia [53], transactional sex practice is considered as a risk factor for SH in hospitality workplaces. Besides, exposure to transactional sex practice and engaging in commercial sex work in this study were the reported reproductive health effects of SH. Studies also revealed that there is an association between transactional sex and HIV/STIs [54–59]. Participants in this study also mentioned STIs as the effects of SH, and it could be due to the risky nature of this practice. This finding implies that some women's practice of transactional sex was either a risk factor or an effect of SH in hospitality workplaces. It also indicates that there were indirect sex workers that did not get attention from health authorities and could be reasons for STIs, including HIV/AIDS. Thus, there is a necessity to study the magnitude and plan schemes to reject or dilute the problem.
The agents, who introduce individual employees to an employer, also request sexual advances in exchange for the introduction of the women employees to the employer. Due to its indication of the hidden perpetrators of women in the employment process, it is one of the essential and unique findings in this study. This finding needs further empirical studies on the issue in different contexts and occupations. However, organizations should consider this group of individuals while they are giving orientation to their employees. Generally, this finding indicates that the perpetrators were either intra-organizational or extra-organizational, and sometimes the women themselves provoke the perpetrators. Therefore, for the future, researches should integrate these perspectives into one study and compare the effects of each category of perpetrators.
Another critical finding is the participants' perception of the organizations, the customers, the women working in the hospitality workplaces, and other factors like society, legal bodies, agents, culture, and corruption as risk factors for SH victimization. Consistent with a study conducted among restaurant workers in Canada [60], employer hiring practices and dress codes that emphasize physical attractiveness, the customer-service orientation of hospitality workplaces, and the involvement of customers paying workers with tips create an environment that exposes women to SH. In this study, organizations hire attractive and young women, failed to aware of their employees about SH, created sexually objectifying environments [18, 61, 62], tolerated SH, accepted that SH is inevitable, and perceived customers as kings. In addition to the creation of a transactional sexual relationship or considering as a commercial sex worker, the behavior of sexual perpetrators, including sex addiction, alcohol addiction, and marital relationships, expose women employees to SH. Similarly, perpetrators threaten to hurt relatives of the women, to fire from a job, demoted, as well as provide tips, money, and promises rewards, promotion, and work recommendations in exchange for sexual favors. These findings imply that there are multiple dimensions of risks for the occurrence of sexual harassment in the hospitality workplaces. Thus, future research should consider a multilevel study incorporating organizational perspectives such as power distance, workplace culture, job-gender context, and individual perspectives such as personal traits, personal characteristics, and socio-economic status.
Consistent with other studies [19, 63–66], the participants in this study experienced work-related effects, health-related effects (i.e., mental and behavioral health, physical health, and reproductive health) [67], economic effects [68], and family undermining [21, 69]. Previous studies of SH in hospitality workplaces revealed the peculiarities of the industry such as customer power [10, 50, 70], the sexualization of the workplaces [18, 62], workplace culture [71], and sociodemographic characteristics [72] of women as risk factors of SH. Other studies also uncover that the peculiarities mentioned above might end in different work-related consequences [6, 73]. Thus, in line with the findings mentioned above, in this study, the frequently stated work-related consequences include work withdrawal, job withdrawal, lack of motivation, job stress, and job dissatisfaction.
Furthermore, consistent with studies in hospitality workplaces [19, 43, 47], participants reported that SH affects their general well-being. The findings of depressive symptoms, anxiety, stress, and post-traumatic stress symptoms in this study are also in line with studies conducted among female university students [36] and female faculty and staff [37] in Ethiopia. Furthermore, in line with the finding of a meta-analytic review report [65], participants in this study reported that they had faced physical injury, headache, stomachache, and other physical complications.
However, unlike most of the others' study findings of the consequences of SH in the hospitality workplaces, the reproductive health-related effects other than transactional sex practice and engagement in commercial sex work, menstrual disorders, and acquiring STIs, including HIV/AIDS, was reported in this study. The issue of the menstrual disorder as an effect of SH is consistent with a quantitative study finding among female Italian university students [74]. This finding is unique and not well addresses in workplace sexual harassment literature. The Italian study confirms that these links were not affected by age, place of birth, or being in a couple of relationships or under hormone therapy, and sexual violence over the lifetime, depression, or having a specific gynecological diagnosis did not modify these associations. However, we support the argument that those mechanisms could include changes in ovarian hormone levels and neurotransmitters, activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, or increased sensitivity to its function. We also support the hypothesis mentioned in combination with the hypothesis that underlines the stress impact on the neurotransmitters (epinephrine, norepinephrine, and serotonin) affected by menstrual disorders. Also, stress may lead to increased sensitivity in the perception of menstrual symptoms [75], and the leading effect of stress in increasing the sensitivity of menstrual symptom perception. Therefore, future research should consider these links.
Furthermore, though the mental, behavioral, physical health and organizational effect relations with SH have been examined, studies did not show the relationship between the reproductive health effects of SH, such as transactional sex practice and menstrual disorder, with other effects, risks, and SH. Therefore, future studies should empirically test these relationships. A structural equation model incorporating the direct and indirect effects of the SH on the identified consequences, which in turn helps in the understanding of moderators of the relationship between sexually harassing behaviors and the effects identified in this study, and multivariate analysis of variance incorporating all effects could be promising approaches. Exploring the SH coping strategies of women employees could also give a complete picture of the issue in the hospitality workplaces.
While this study makes a substantial contribution to the international academic literature on sexual harassment in the workplace, some limitations should be recognized. First, this study was conducted in Bahir Dar city, Amhara Region, and may not reflect the experiences of workplace sexual harassment in hospitality workplaces in Ethiopia. Second, sexual harassment is a sensitive topic to discuss with different stakeholders (owners, supervisors, customers, cashiers, and women), and therefore, they may have underreported such experiences (social desirability bias). However, the research team was made of both public health professionals, health education, and behavioral science professionals, who were trained to explore and understand this multifaceted topic.