From mentor to monster: symbolic power and silence about sexual harassment in China’s ivory tower

Abstract Sexual harassment (hereafter SH) has emerged as a significant issue in Chinese higher education, particularly among graduate students. SH encompasses a range of behaviors from degrading remarks and unwanted sexual advances to violent sexual assault. It predominantly involves younger female students and older male professors. While existing studies often focus on workplace SH through surveys, the experiences and responses of college graduate students to SH by professors remain underexamined. Bourdieu’s concept of symbolic power is used to analyze SH within Chinese universities, where institutionalized gender discrimination is perpetuated through hierarchical structures. SH is particularly bad because the apprenticeship system ( shimen 师门) casts the teacher-student relationship as mentor–mentee, and even parent–child. The unequal power dynamic is inherently transactional and may border on the incestuous. Interviews with 71 students overall who said they experienced SH at schools in Beijing, Hong Kong, and Jinan, Shandong, resulted in 30 who admitted they remained silent about being sexually harassed. All 30 said their silence was due to marginalization, fear of stigmatization, and coercion. The findings aim to foster environments that empower students to speak out, thereby enhancing awareness and addressing SH in Chinese higher education.