Sexual Harassment and Its Degree of Impact on Female athletes Around the World

Sexual harassment and sexual abuse are just two sides of the same coin and can be described as an expression of greater power of one person on another. Moreover, when it comes to sports, women can certainly be quoted as a bigger victim of the sexual abuse as compared to men and the same lies in the history of the events occurred over the past few years in the same context.

As a result, many of them have decided to quit the sports they were indulged in rather than being a continuous victim of the constant harassment and abuse. Then there were those who still chose to tolerate the illicit behavior of their male coaches or peers out of fear of losing their career and ambitions in the hand of sheer agony and shame. It was only few days’ back when some of the Indian senior female athletes were presented with a message whilst they entered into the Kanteerava Stadium in Bangalore. "This is to inform you that, please do masturbating before practice", the message read. Same kinds of messages were seen through the entire washroom area and each of them counter-signed by the ‘sports authority’.

These type of instances have become quite common nowadays with the female athletes across all the parts of globe and isn’t just limited to the Indian Territory.Just a few months back, the football Hall of Famer Brett Favre in USA was fined by the National Football League (NFL) for $50,000 on the charges of his “failure to cooperate” during an investigation in regards to his involvement in a “sexting” scandal with New York Jets game day hostess -JennSterger. He was further accused for sexual harassment by two massage therapists of the NY jets during the 2008 season.

Criticism has flown from all the sections of society for such incidents and it’s been believed that strict actions must be taken against all the culprits in the same regards. Gautam Sharma, Chairman of Professional boxing Organisation India also emphasized on the same fact whilst saying,” It’s shameful that on one side we are joyous about the success of the PV Sindhus and the Sania Mirzas and then on the other side, we get to hear about all such shameful incidents in the same course.

This should be dealt with a“zero tolerance” approach and strict punishment must be imposed on all the culprits so as avoid the emergence of any future offenders in the same regards however there also needs to be a robust mechanism in place to weed out false & malicious complaints.