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As prior research has indicated, women who experience behaviors that fall under the accepted definitions of sexual harassment, do not label, acknowledge, or claim these behaviors as such. The purpose of this paper is to explore an alternative explanation for this non-labeling by arguing that apprehension in expressing sexuality, stemming from apparent subjugation of sex and sexuality by society, posited in a culturally value laden backdrop, leads to Sri Lankan women not labeling or acknowledging sexual harassment.

Employing grounded theory, in-depth, one-on-one interviews were conducted with 40 working women.

It was revealed that social construction of gender and sexuality in Sri Lankan society, with its instilled moralistic beliefs and norms such as respectability, sexual innocence, chastity, and purity among women, suppress and govern their sexuality in the workplace. The resultant self-surveillance and self-discipline lead to women evading expressing and using vocabulary denoting sexuality – including the term “sexual harassment” – mainly for fear of social censorship, self-blame, and victim blame.

The study shows how policies and procedures of sexual harassment must heed the gendered everyday realities of women in workplaces and questions the capacity and utilization of these laws and policies that employ the label “sexual” in addressing the issue.

This paper advances knowledge on sexual harassment by providing new insights on how cultural values and norms leading to social construction of gender and sexuality play an important role in non-labeling of sexual harassment. Moving further, this paper illustrates how Foucault’s treatise of “sexuality and power,” and “social construction of reality” can be employed to theorize non-labeling.

The health promoting school model is rarely implemented in relation to sexuality education. This paper reports on data collected as part of a five-year project designed to implement a health promoting and whole school approach to sexuality education in a five campus year 1-12 college in regional Victoria, Australia. Using a community engagement focus involving local and regional stakeholders and with a strong research into practice component, the project is primarily concerned with questions of capacity building, impact and sustainability as part of whole school change. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

Using an action research design, data were collected from parents, students, teachers and key community stakeholders using a mixed methods approach involving surveys, interviews, document analysis and participant observation.

Sexuality education has become a key school policy and has been implemented from years 1 to 9. Teachers and key support staff have engaged in professional learning, a mentor program has been set up, a community engagement/parent liaison position has been created, and parent forums have been conducted on all five campuses.

The translation of research into practice can be judged by the impact it has on teacher capacity and the students’ experience. Classroom observation and more longitudinal research would shed light on whether the espoused changes are happening in reality.

This paper reports on lessons learned and the key enabling factors that have built capacity to ensure that sexuality education within a health promoting, whole school approach will remain sustainable into the future. These findings will be relevant to others interested in building capacity in sexuality education and health promotion more generally.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the key barriers to the delivery of school-based HIV and sexuality education in selected countries in Asia.

A review of published literature on barriers to school-based HIV and sexuality in countries in Asia was conducted, with a focus on research carried out after 1990. The paper also draws on recently undertaken national situation analyses of HIV and sexuality education conducted by the second author with support from UNESCO, as well as more general Asia-Pacific regional assessments undertaken by others.

Four key barriers to the delivery of good quality, school-based HIV and sexuality education are identified: cultural and contextual factors, policy factors, resource constraints and school-level factors.

The paper maps these four barriers as key areas in which action needs to occur in order to improve the delivery of school-based HIV and sexuality education. Potential levers for success are highlighted.

The aim of this paper is to critically evaluate sexuality and sexual symbolism within the organisational culture of an accounting firm to explore how it is implicated in processes of gendering identities of employees within the firm.

The paper uses a reflexive autoethnographical approach, including short vignettes, to analyse the inter‐relationships between gender, sexuality and power.

By exploring the symbolic role of artefacts, images, language, behaviours and buildings in creating and maintaining gendered relations, male sexual cultures and female sexual countercultures, the paper finds that sexual symbolism in this accounting firm entwines gendered power and domination, practice and resistance, in complex cultural codes and behaviours. It draws out implications for organisations and accounting research.

The paper extends current conceptualisation of gendered constructs in accounting to include sexuality; applies organisational and feminist theory to autoethnographical experience in accounting; and contributes a seldom‐seen insight into the organisational symbolism and culture of a small accounting firm, rather than the oft‐seen focus on large firms.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how school-based sexuality education has had a long and troubled history of exclusionary pedagogical practices that have negatively affected such populations as lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer (LGBTQ) individuals, people of color, and the disabled. The social ecological model is introduced as a way of offering sexuality educators and school administrators a way of thinking more broadly about how to achieve sexual health through sexuality education efforts inside and outside of the school environment.

This paper uses critical analysis of current and historical school-based sexuality education methods and curricula used in the USA. Authors use both academic journals and their own expertise/experience teaching sexuality education in the USA to analyze and critique the sources of sexuality education information and curricula used in schools.

Historically, sexuality education in school settings in the USA has been biased and has generally not offered an educational experience fostering sexual health for all students. There are now welcome signs of reform and movement toward a more inclusive and progressive approach, but there is still some way to go. Sexuality education programs in schools need to be further and fundamentally reformed to do more to foster sexual health particularly for LGBTQ individuals, students of color, and people with disabilities.

This paper offers sexuality educators ways of addressing structural issues within the sexuality education curriculum to better serve all students to increase the quality of their sexual health. Integrating critical pedagogy and anti-oppressive education can increase students’ sexual health along physical, social, emotional, intellectual, and spiritual dimensions.

This paper provides historical analysis along with the identification of structural difficulties in the sexuality education curriculum and proposes both critical pedagogy and anti-oppressive education as ways of addressing sex and relationships education.

Parents are sometimes perceived as barriers to providing comprehensive and inclusive sexuality education to young people. However, little is known about parents’ actual attitudes towards providing such broad information to young people. The purpose of this paper is to examine two different approaches to measuring parents’ attitudes towards sexuality information, a programme title approach and a topic-centred approach.

Illinois parents of adolescents (n=301) indicated their knowledge about and attitudes towards sexuality education programmes and 18 sexual health topics via online survey. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to examine whether parents’ attitudes were more consistent with a programme-centred (i.e. abstinence-only, comprehensive) or a topic-centred (i.e. physical health, sexual and gender identity, pleasure, and relationships) approach.

Parents were uncertain about what form of sexuality education was offered but most were equally comfortable with both abstinence-only and comprehensive programmes. Parents’ ratings of topics grouped significantly better by the topic-centred than the programme-centred approach. Parents rated all four subjects as important, with the highest mean ratings given to physical health topics. Further, parents’ ratings of importance by subject matter were largely independent of their reported programming preference. Together these findings provide evidence that parents believe it is important for their children to have access to a broad range of sexual health education information.

This study is one of the first to document parents’ support for information for young people that goes beyond being comprehensive to include topics such as identities and pleasure. In addition, parents’ lack of knowledge about sexuality education programming may obscure their support for sexual health information. Measuring support by specific topics, however, can help to overcome issues due to parents’ lack of knowledge about programming.

The purpose of this paper is to map and discuss the overall characteristics of international research on school-based sexuality education, published in academic journals, with a particular focus on the framing of non-conservative approaches including sexuality education research targeting young pupils 6-12 years of age.

The paper draws upon the methodology of systematic research mapping and presents a broad overview of research on sexuality education in a school setting for pupils aged 6-16. The authors searched the leading bibliographic databases in the field, i.e., ERIC, PsycINFO, PubMed, Scopus, Australian Education Index, British Education Index and Education Research Complete, using the search terms “sexuality education” and “school” and “children” or “adolescents.” The mapping focused on articles published in peer-reviewed journals in English, German, Danish, Swedish or Norwegian, in the period 2000-2016.

Out of 3,769 papers identified in the search process, a total of 576 papers were found to meet the inclusion criteria of the mapping. The mapping portrays a research landscape that is diverse and nuanced in terms of contextual, theoretical and methodological approaches, but also characterized by limitations. The findings point to the clear dominance of research on schools in English-speaking countries, conceptual research is scarce, and school-based sexuality education aimed at the youngest children seems to be neglected. The mapping identifies gaps in the literature that justify a call for more research from diverse sociocultural, political and geographical contexts, more conceptual research using social theory, and more research focusing on the potentials and challenges linked to sexuality education for younger pupils.

This paper offers a rare, if not the first, comprehensive overview of research on school-based sexuality education including a focus on younger school children 6-12 years of age.

This paper aims to investigate the unique issues childhood burn survivors experience in relation to sex education and sexual development.

Using a phenomenological approach, participants described their lived experiences with regards to sex education and the sexuality issues they encountered as child burn survivors. One‐to‐one semi‐structured interviews and a focus group were used to gather data, which were analyzed using a constant comparison method.

Results provide educators with better insight into the experiences of burn survivors as well as strategies for approaching sex education. Findings centered around five areas: exposure, sex education content, timing of sex education, characteristics of the educator and most appropriate methods of delivery.

Sexuality is a value‐laden topic that has the potential to increase apprehension and decrease willingness to discuss. As a result, the sample may not be wholly representative across age groups, concerns or social attitudes regarding sexuality present within this population. Additional limitations are also noted. Future studies, which utilize a mixed method approach with a larger sample of both adolescent and adult burn survivors, would increase the value and generalizability of the findings.

Research findings confirm that persons living with childhood burn injuries experience similar feelings and concerns regarding their sexuality as their able‐bodied peers which contradict social views. However, mainstream sex education falls short of addressing their unique needs and as such this study's findings provide strategies to allow for appropriate knowledge acquisition to ease the transition from childhood to adulthood.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the perceived personality of brands featuring different levels of sexuality in advertisements of luxury fashion brands.

To determine the identity of the company a “personality traits” scale by Geurens et al. (2015) was used with 25 brand personalities: conscientiousness/responsibility, extraversion/activity, emotional stability/emotionality, agreeableness/aggressiveness, and openness/simplicity. The final survey was then made available on Amazon Turk for two weeks. Each participant assessed one photograph at a level of sexuality given the gender they identified with the most.

There were 1,266 participants including 701 females and 565 females. Statistical analysis of the responses revealed that the degree of sexuality in the advertisements impacted brand perceptions. Among both genders, the greater degree of sexuality in the advertisement, the more the brand was considered less conscientious and responsible. The results also suggested that men and women view levels of sexuality differently. They varied most in the area of openness and simplicity, with men viewing advertisements of male models that had greater sexuality as simple. Men felt less sexuality was more emotional and romantic, while women viewed mid-level degree of sexuality in this manner.

Limited research has examined how level of sexuality influences perceived brand personality. The results contribute to theories pertaining to motivations to identify with a luxury fashion brand and provide strategies for luxury fashion brands to enhance their intended brand image.

Sexuality education is a controversial and contested issue that has evoked wide debate on the question of its aims, contents, methods, pedagogy and desired outcomes. This editorial aims to provide a brief commentary, positioning the contributions to this Special Issue of Health Education within the research landscape concerning sexuality education in schools internationally.

The idea for this Special Issue was born in Odense, Denmark, in October 2012, during the 4th European Conference of Health Promoting Schools. The Conference Programme and the debates during the sessions demonstrated the need for a wider discussion of sexuality education, particularly within the framework of the health-promoting school. There was recognition of the need to endorse positive and wide socio-ecological views of health, including sexual health and a critical educational approach to sexuality education. The conference delegates and the members of the Schools for Health in Europe Research Network were invited to submit a paper for the Special Issue, and the invitation was also sent through other networks and research communities globally. The invitation resulted in papers being submitted beyond Europe and the Special Issue took an interesting global turn. This networking process also resulted in the identification of a number of key international subject-specific experts who took on the role of independent reviewers.

Following the review and editorial process six papers were accepted for the Special Issue. The papers highlight contrasts, tensions, potentials and barriers embedded in the ways sexuality education is delivered to children and young people internationally. Examples are drawn from Russia, Wales, China and the USA; they identify historical and structural issues related to the implementation of comprehensive progressive approaches. Topics discussed include the importance of appropriate content, theoretical/conceptual frameworks, modes of delivery, timing, attitudes from key stakeholders and the need for comprehensive evaluation of innovative approaches to the delivery of sexual education.

The Special Issue provides a unique blend of evaluations of practical examples of pioneering programmes, research using qualitative, quantitative and mixed method designs, and critical conceptual discussions related to sexuality education and factors that influence it. The Special Issue addresses sexuality education from a life course perspective; some of the individual papers focus on young children and some on lifelong learning. All the papers point to the importance of understanding structural, socio-historical, political and cultural factors influencing sexuality education.