Resilience in Women - Strategies Female Students Employ to Deal with Online Sexual Harassment

Female students have been vulnerable to sexual harassment for many years. Today, sexual harrasment has twisted its shape to include online sexual harrassment. This study explored the coping strategies employed by female students who experienced online sexual harassment at a selected Institution of Higher Learning (IHL) in South Africa. In adressing this objective, a qualitative exploratory design was adopted, and this gave leeway for the victims' experiences to be understood through their eyes. Semi-structured interviews were used to collect data from twenty female participants. To identify these participants at the IHL who had experienced online sexual harassment, purposive and critical case sampling were employed. The main strategies of coping with online sexual harassment were blocking of harassers and complete disregard of the harassers.