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The research discussed in this publication focuses on physical sexual harassment as mistreatment that threatens the realisation of full citizenship, safety, dignity and equality of girls and boys at school. The research indicates that physical sexual harassment is common in schools even in the northern peripheries of Europe in Northern Finland and Northwest Russia. One- fifth of the Finnish girls, and one fourth of the Russian girls, had experienced physical sexual harassment at school or on the way to school. Boy´s experiences of physical sexual harassment were rarer. A very clear difference between the Russian and Finnish children´s descriptions of physical sexual harassment was that for the Russian children it was clearly more difficult to write about the issue. The type of groping that was the most surprising was groping perpetrated by an adult towards a pupil, a boy or a girl: six Finnish and seven Russian pupils described their experiences of groping perpetrated by adults. Tolerance of sexual harassment proved to be critical in determining whether harassment will occur. The pupils very rarely reported the harassment to the teacher.

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Doc Vappu Sunnari is a University Lecturer in Women´s Studies, University of Oulu, Finland, and Professor in Pedagogy, Lule† University of Technology, Sweden. Since last ten years she leads research- and development projects on gendered and sexualised violence in educational settings and on preventing violence.

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