SEXUAL HARASSMENT. GIVING A VOICE TO WOMEN SILENCED BY SCIENCE

With the purpose of making visible the hidden reality of sexual harassment in women silenced by science, an investigation was carried out based on the postpositivist-interpretive paradigm, with a qualitative gender approach and under the hermeneutic method. The setting was the School of Medicine of a university in Venezuela and the study subjects were female medical students who were victims of sexual harassment in the university environment and the key informants were a psychologist, a lawyer from the Casa de la Mujer and a professor at the School of Medicine. An in-depth interview was used and the information was interpreted through discourse analysis. Five categories emerged from the testimonies: peer shielding; improper boarding; hierarchical injustice; voluntary complicity; consequences of a silent act. Later, sexual harassment emerged as a theoretical construct beyond the simple expression of a sordid act. A university environment transversalized by the patriarchal system was revealed, fostered by the abuse of power that converges in physical, mental, academic and professional harm, where it was demonstrated that sexual harassment towards medical students is present on this university campus. A reality hidden by the power of the professional teacher harasser and masked by the practice of teaching it is perpetuated in the classrooms; acts that are maintained in time-space due to ignorance of the law and the lack of help lines, which limit the punishability of the act.