The Banalization of Sexual Harassment That Produces Silencing in the Brazilian Academic Context of Management

Juliana Cristina Teixeira, Caroline Rodrigues Silva, Juliana Schneider Mesquita and Adriana Vinholi Rampazo

Gender, Work and Organization, 2026, vol. 33, issue 2, 300-314

Abstract: Sexual harassment remains a persistent and structural form of gendered violence in academic institutions. In this article, we investigate how its banalization operates as both a consequence and a mechanism of silencing in the Brazilian field of academic management. Drawing on six in‐depth interviews with women scholars and students, we employ coding‐based narrative analysis to explore how harassment is normalized, dismissed, and rendered invisible. We argue that banalization and silencing constitute a self‐reinforcing dynamic sustained by coloniality, which functions as an ontological structure. This triad: coloniality, banalization, and silencing, helps to explain how sexual harassment is normalized and rendered invisible within academic institutions. Our contribution includes a conceptual model that identifies four structural axes—symbolic‐cultural normalization, epistemological ambiguity, psychological internalization, and legal‐institutional voids—which mediate the trivialization of harassment. This paper calls for a shift from individualized understandings of violence to collective accountability and structural transformation, particularly in institutions historically shaped by colonial gendered norms.

Date: 2026
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/gwao.70022

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:gender:v:33:y:2026:i:2:p:300-314

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0968-6673

Access Statistics for this article

Gender, Work and Organization is currently edited by David Knights, Deborah Kerfoot and Ida Sabelis

More articles in Gender, Work and Organization from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().