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We’ve come to an end of our annual 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence Blogathon, running between the International Day to End Violence Against Women and International Human Rights Day today. Our blogathon this year focused on the theme of sexual harassment and sexual violence in higher education institutions and is a continued collaboration between GENDER.ED at the University of Edinburgh, the Gendered Violence Research Network at the University of New South Wales and the Centre for Publishing at Dr B R Ambedkar University Delhi. This year we were joined by guest curators from Margherita von Brentano Center at Freie Universität Berlin, for the Una Europa Gender Equality Network (UGEN). Our blogathon brought together voices from research, student activism, and institutional perspectives to raise awareness of the #16DaysofActivism Against Gender Based Violence global campaign.

While our annual blogathons typically span transnational contexts, this year we chose to focus on the country-specific and institutionally-distinct contexts that our curators were writing from. Our introductory blog historicised demands for institutional change from Australia, the UK, and India, with our curators noting how campus screenings of the documentary The Hunting Ground acted as a catalyst spurring action around addressing sexual violence. Landmark national surveys were undertaken in Australia, and the question of sexual violence was understood as one that affects staff and students. In the UK, similar surveys found a widespread culture of toxic masculinity prompting the question of what relationship University systems had with wider criminal justice procedures. Student activism has shifted the calculations that Universities make so that it is now seen as institutionally risky and disreputable to be seen as not acting. In India, institutions have responded in the context of wider conversations around sexual violence, government committees, and feminist activism around gender-based violence.

This year we curated our blogs to move through three stages: an interrogation of concepts; the process of addressing violence prevalent in institutional settings; and the challenges and registers of institutional activism.

We began with asking what kind of concept violence is. Drawing on her work on domestic abuse, Catherine Donovan wrote about a “public story” of violence that “doesn’t just describe a problem, it creates a problem with particular contours in our minds.” Donovan suggests we think about violence as it emerges through structures of power and “relationship rules” that need to be unhooked from their cis-gendered and heterosexist binaries. Ngozi Anyadike-Danes wrote next on the tricky idea of consent. While it is often presented as a direct question of “yes” or “no,” she reminds us that consent is embedded in cultural and social assumptions and contexts. From violence and consent on to questions of form: where is sexual violence in institutions visible and how do we understand it? Mahima Kaul challenged distinctions between online and offline forms of violence in an increasingly interconnected world.

The next block of blogs entered institutional life to ask what tussles and challenges emerge when sexual harassment and sexual violence are taken up here. From Australia, Jan Breckenridge traced a brief history of work on this issue raising the question of who is regarded as susceptible to such violence; Breckenridge’s piece importantly centers both staff and student experiences. Given the important changes that Breckenridge writes about, why does it seem as though so little progress has been made in addressing sexual violence in HEIs? Allison Henry stays with Australia to show that legislative and regulatory levers need not only to exist: they need to be activated, and she gives us examples of how this has happened. Angela Griffin turns to institutions from a student’s perspective exploring how they are perceived and drawing on her research to indicate what needs to change.

Representatives from #MeTooEdiUni, Amy Life and Sharessa Naidoo, take up this question from the context of the UK, showing how their active campaign allowed them the proverbial “seat at the table” where they felt they were being allowed to speak without actually being listened to. Bill Flack, our next blogger, offered some insights into why this might be so, showing that administrators and researchers need to always catch up with changing sexual cultures. “Some of the major challenges in this work are trying to ask the right questions in the right ways, being as inclusive as possible with regard to those groups who are targets of harassment and violence and to the types and contexts of harassment and violence, and the lack of support for – and often backlash to – doing this work,” Flack said.

Our final set of blogs show the challenges of addressing sexual harassment and sexual violence in higher education institutions. From Germany, Wendy Stollberg elaborated on the (im)possibilities of feminist institutional change, focusing on the figure of the Gender Equality Officer in Germany who might be highly motivated to address questions of violence but also to find themselves structurally constrained.

What are some of the structural constraints to institutional change in India? Our next blog outlined concerns related to the current functioning of the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013 (PoSH-Act). Perhaps the change needs to be effected in concert with wider institutional changes: Lora Prabhu showed how her NGO’s efforts in encouraging gendered participation in sports shifted how young women approach public and institutional spaces. From the University of Hyderabad context, Aparna Rayaprol wrote about the successes of student-led sensitisation efforts on campus. These efforts might be in-person, but students have also turned to online platforms as Adrija Dey writes, indicating their lack of faith in the “due process” of law that did not fulfil students’ ideas and imaginations of justice. Given the wealth of experience, knowledge, and research in these posts, where do we go from here? We end with an important reminder: activism on sexual violence in higher education institutions requires a different temporality and horizon. Anna Bull from the 1752 group writes crucially about “slow activism” that creates space to name the existence of a problem.

The 2023 curators:

University of Edinburgh: Dr Hemangini Gupta (Assoc Director and 2023 Blogathon Co-Lead), Prof. Fiona Mackay (GENDER.ED Governance Lead and 2023 Blogathon Co-Lead) and Rhea Gandhi (PhD web and editorial assistant) from GENDER.ED.

Dr B R Ambedkar University Delhi: Prof. Rukmini Sen, Dr Rachna Mehra. 

University of New South Wales: Prof. Jan Breckenridge (Co-Convenor), Mailin Suchting (Manager) and Georgia Lyons (Research Assistant) for the Gendered Violence Research Network.

Guest curators: Dr. Heike Pantelmann (Managing Director) and Dr. Sabina García Peter (Associate), Margherita von Brentano Center at Freie Universität Berlin, for the Una Europa Gender Equality Network (UGEN).

Anna Bull

‘From an outsider[‘s perspective], I was saying ‘yes’ to doing certain things with him, which, for all intents and purposes, would have counted as consent, but what you don’t see is the internal conflict and the invisible power structure where he could make me say ‘yes’.[…] He knew the right thing to ask and how to ask it in the right way in which it was pretty much impossible … I felt it was impossible for me to say ‘no’.’

These words are from a Master’s student who I interviewed about her experience of sexual harassment from an academic member of staff who was teaching her. ‘Andrea’ participated in a study of students’ experiences of sexual harassment and violence from higher education staff/faculty, published in the report ‘Silencing Students’ in 2018.

The situation that Andrea describes here – which she experienced as a form of ‘grooming’ – was one that has become familiar to me over seven years working on research and activism on the issue of staff/faculty sexual misconduct in higher education. In 2016, along with Tiffany Page, Chryssa Sdrolia and Heidi Hasbrouck, I co-founded The 1752 Group, a campaigning and research organisation aiming to address sexual misconduct in higher education. We understand ‘sexual misconduct’ broadly, to include both rape, sexual assault, intimate partner abuse, and sexual harassment, but also ‘grooming’ behaviours as well as consensual relationships between staff and students that later cause harm to students involved in them.

Our origin story

The 1752 Group was formed after my co-founders Tiffany, Chryssa and Heidi, had been involved in fighting our institution (Goldsmiths, University of London) to address a longstanding culture of sexual harassment of students by staff. Our name refers to the amount of money (£1752) that Goldsmiths was willing to put into addressing this issue at the time. 

A few months after this, Professor Sara Ahmed – who had supported Tiffany, Chryssa and Heidi with their complaint – resigned in protest of Goldsmiths’ failure to address this issue, and this resignation gained international media attention. Our name is therefore a reminder that small sums of money and sticking plaster solutions are not sufficient to address a complex and widespread issue. 

Making the issue visible

In the first two or three years, we were mainly trying to make this issue visible. One of the ways we did this was by partnering with the National Union of Students to carry out a national survey of staff-student sexual misconduct, Power in the Academy. We also asked respondents about how comfortable they felt about various types of interactions with staff/faculty, and found that around 80% were uncomfortable with staff having sexual or romantic relationships with students – a finding that I have replicated in a later study carried out within one UK institution.

Both Power in the Academy, and the qualitative study I led on that followed this, confirmed the experiences from our activism that reporting process for staff-student sexual misconduct was traumatising, exhausting and ineffective for students. As a result, we partnered with equalities lawyer Georgina Calvert-Lee to produce guidance to help universities improve their complaints and disciplinary processes in this area (with input from two of our co-directors at the time, Emma Chapman and Antonia Bevan).

As Sara Ahmed describes it, we had to become ‘institutional mechanics’ to try and excavate the processes through which complaints processes in this area were failing to be effective. This was also the aim of my ESRC-funded research project, Higher Education After MeToo (2021-2), which I worked on alongside postdoctoral researcher Erin Shannon. We explored complaints and disciplinary processes for tackling gender-based violence in UK higher education more widely, across student-student, staff-staff, and staff-student reporting – an area in which there is a surprising dearth of academic research.

‘Slow activism’

When we founded The 1752 Group – which is now directed by myself, Tiffany Page and Adrija Dey – we would have been horrified to think that seven years later, we were still fighting the same battles. Unfortunately, as our inbox testifies, as well as media reporting, and indeed my ongoing research, despite some progress on tackling student-student sexual violence, sexual misconduct from staff/faculty is still not being adequately address in many UK higher education institutions. Internationally, as our 2019 conference in the US demonstrated, this issue is also a huge challenge elsewhere in the world. 

In line with our hands-on approach to try and support higher education institutions to improve their responses in this area, we have developed training for HR staff and others handling such cases in higher education institutions, as well as workshops on professional boundaries and awareness of sexual harassment for postgraduate researchers and supervisors (which we are currently working to evaluate). 

But we have realised that the framing of ‘slow activism’ —coined by my 1752 Group co-director Tiffany Page— which we used to describe our work in the early days, is even more apt than we realised at the time. I’ve realised that one of the ways we have made a difference is simply by existing and naming the problem. For those who are struggling to label their experiences and to figure out how to raise their concerns safely and effectively within their institutions, we hope that our work serves to validate their experience and give them tools to help them try to attain justice and safety.

Author bio

Dr Anna Bull is a Senior Lecturer in Education and Social Justice at the University of York, and co-director of The 1752 Group, a research and campaigning organisation working to address staff sexual misconduct in higher education. As well as multiple academic and public-facing publications on sexual misconduct in HE, Anna was an academic advisor to the National Union of Students for their report Power in the Academy: staff sexual misconduct in UK higher education. She sits on advisory boards to address gender-based violence in education in the UK and Ireland. She co-authored The 1752 Group and McAllister Olivarius’ Sector Guidance to address staff sexual misconduct in UK higher education. She has also carried out research into inequalities in classical music education, and industry and sexual harassment in the film and television industry.

Featured image source: Wikimedia Commons

Adrija Dey

In October 2017, Raya Sarkar, a 24-year-old law student from India, published a crowdsourced list (“The List”) on Facebook containing the names of male Indian academics who were alleged to have harassed women. This marked the beginning of the #MeToo movement in India, with universities becoming key sites for discussions, debates, and activism. Due to the failures of both the criminal justice system and the inherently capitalist, patriarchal, casteist structures of Indian academia, following the release of the list hundreds of survivors who experienced sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) at universities in India came forward online, disclosing their stories of harassment and abuse leading to critical conversations, reflections, and debates. 

Here it is important to note that universities in India do have existing processes to deal with SGBV. In many cases, these were created by the concerted efforts of feminists, activists, lawyers, and students coming together. Yet, despite these processes, the list challenged the notion of ‘due process.’ So, why did survivors turn to online platforms to share their experiences of SGBV and publicly identify alleged perpetrators?

To answer this question, seven survivors were interviewed, who had previously disclosed their testimonies online following the #MeToo movement. Some shared their stories on their individual Facebook pages, while others formed anonymous groups on platforms like Medium, where they collectively presented testimonies against specific perpetrators. It’s crucial to note that all interviewed survivors identified as cis-gender, heterosexual, Hindu women from upper-class, upper-caste backgrounds. Consequently, it’s essential to recognise the homogeneity and privileged position of the participants as a distinct drawback of both this research and India’s #MeToo movement as a whole. It is further evidence of the Brahmanical structures of Indian academia, underscoring the importance of remaining mindful of how power and privilege influence those whose experiences are acknowledged and recognised. Various authors have also addressed the lack of testimonies from people with marginalised identities in the #MeToo movement. Every participant spoke of having no faith in due process. The research showed that many of the students who fought to have due process implemented in their institutions were also supportive of The List. This lack of faith was not rooted in any opposition to the notion of ‘due process’ – rather it was a response to ‘due process’ not working the way it should because of power dynamics, hierarchies, and notions of shame attached to any form of SGBV. Survivors spoke of their insecurity about registering a formal complaint due to fear of being victim-blamed, lack of support from their peers, institutional backlash, and lack of mental health support. This fear was amplified in participants who came from marginalised backgrounds. Survivors also repeatedly mentioned that their idea of justice was not fulfilled by due process mechanisms which solely focused on criminalising individuals without centring healing, care, compassion, or accountability. When reflecting on how her perpetrator was fired after her allegations went public, one survivor shared:

I don’t feel very good about that because what I also know about this person is that he was doing these jobs because he had a lot of debt and I know his parents’ financial situation is not good. I know if he no longer has a job it would affect people other than him. So I don’t feel good about that either. 

While the common notion is that survivors chose to name and shame solely to punish or humiliate perpetrators, our survivors unanimously disagreed. Most survivors emphasised that they did not seek to end the perpetrator’s careers or sabotage their personal lives, contrary to the societal misconception that survivors are only motivated by revenge. They did not want anyone else to go through what they went through. They also articulated their hope that in being identified as a sexual predator, perpetrators could find help, support or therapy to overcome their abusive behaviours. 

These findings are relevant not only in the Indian context but in HE globally. In our work and activism, we’ve encountered similar stories and demands in countries worldwide. HE institutions, while encouraging students and staff to engage in due process, rarely consider survivors’ needs, the significant cost most survivors bear to ‘speak out’, or what constitutes ‘justice’ for survivors. 

Listening to and learning from survivor voices demonstrates an urgent need to ensure institutional policies, sector standards, editorial guidelines, training, and activism prioritise survivor needs and their ideas of justice. Meaningful changes in the sector must be survivor-centred, trauma-informed and have accountability at its core; only this can result in broader cultural and structural changes. Unless mechanisms are reformed so that survivors know support and alternative forms of justice are a possibility, it is perhaps unsurprising that survivors are turning to alternative platforms.

Author Bio

Dr Adrija Dey is a Senior Research Fellow at the School of Social Science and School of Media and Communication at the University of Westminster. She is the Principal Investigator on the UKRI-funded research project “FemIDEAS: Decolonising Sexual and Gender Based Violence in Higher Education“. Adrija conducts her research with a specific focus on the Global South and through a decolonial and intersectional feminist lens. She is the author of Nirbhaya: New Media and Digital Gender Activism. She has been a vocal campaigner against sexual misconduct in Higher Education and is currently the Director of International Knowledge Exchange at the 1752 group.

Featured image title and source: Flashdance at a  Gender Sensitisation program on the Uni of Had campus recently, courtesy Aparna Rayaprol

Aparna Rayaprol

It is now more than two decades since a woman student was sexually assaulted on the campus of University of Hyderabad by some ‘outsiders’. Faculty and students protested for five days and the atmosphere was turbulent. Women students were traumatised and felt it could easily have been one of them. Issues of security were discussed and there were attempts to put the onus of responsibility on the women students, restricting their movements, supposedly for their own safety. In a cultural context where conversations on sexuality and sexual crimes are often swept under the carpet, it was almost impossible to create an open, non-sexist discussion. However, the silver lining was that the campus community came together to discuss sexual violence and how to create a safe campus for its students. 

Institutional responses over time

With time, the faculty and students who were involved in gender sensitisation activities, tried to shift the focus from ‘protection’ of women students to creating a culture of trust. By 2001, the Committee against Sexual Harassment (CASH) was created and the Vishaka guidelines were being adapted to suit the needs of a central university with a diverse population. I was made a member of this Committee and we soon started to deal with a variety of cases. The Chair, a senior professor who was well-respected for her work on child rights in the country, could protect the Committee from undue influences from university authorities and political interests. We had many meetings to deliberate on a host of cases, including one of sexual harassment of a student by a professor which went on for a number of months.

Students and faculty were called to depose before the Committee. This was a new experience for members as well as the university community, and it certainly set the tone for a campus space that was not only safe, but also proactive in dealing with issues of sexual harassment. Procedures were put in place for lodging complaints and the process for examining them, and the learning was immense for all of us. The Committee had members from civil society organisations and those with legal experience, who brought in expertise from the field and the courtroom. There were cases of early stages of cybercrime, such as obscene emails, derogatory posters about women around Holi and public displays of love and proposals of marriage to women students by male students without their consent. The committee too had members who may believe in gender equality but continue to restrict the freedom of women.

Good Institutional Practices

A decade later the Committee became GSCASH as gender sensitisation became part of its proactive remit rather than just being a reactive body. Cries for the ‘freedom to wear what we please’ and candlelight marches to ‘take back the night’ were witnessed on the campus from time to time. Students became actively engaged and street plays about sexual violence and the gender spectrum evolved. Orientations for new students now have posters about ragging and sexual harassment as well as sessions to talk about these issues. Today, we have transgender students who are struggling to have gender neutral facilities and fighting toxic masculinity. A few years ago the GSCASH conducted a sensitisation session for administrative staff and  security, although it is yet to become an institutionalised practice.

Student-led sensitisation on our campus has been the most successful over the years. Faculty members have helped create spaces for discussions in and outside our classrooms wherever possible. After the ‘Me too’ campaign, a number of discussions took place on issues of power and hierarchy in academic institutions. The UGC Saksham team visited the campus and conducted an audit of the policies and practices over the years. The document showed that UoH had made considerable progress in creating an environment that respected social justice more broadly. While some institutions had no committees until recently when it became mandatory under UGC mandate, at the UoH gender equality has always been on the agenda. The awareness of diversity and the intersections of gender with caste, region, religion, and class have been quite high. The student representatives on the GSCASH are elected annually as part of the Students’ Union general elections. Today there are three elected representatives from different programmes on the committee. It is now called ICC as per the UGC guidelines and that results in ambiguity among students who have little idea about the meaning of complaints. 

Challenges

Every now and then, an incident of sexual violence and distrust among students makes one reflect on how new forms of patriarchy tend to replace older attitudes and behaviours, creating further fissures, especially when political groups off and on the campus seek to use gender for their own goals. There are discussions on who should not complain against whom and that other intersecting identities should be given greater precedence. The chair of committee and her ability to negotiate with the students and be firm with the administration is very crucial to the smooth functioning of the ICC.  The university authorities cannot influence the proceedings or outcomes of the complaint.   

Author bio

Aparna Rayaprol is a professor of Sociology at the University of Hyderabad in India. Her areas of academic interest include gender studies, diaspora, qualitative research methods and urban sociology. She is the author of Negotiating Identities: Women in the Indian Diaspora, New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 1997. Her PhD was from the University of Pittsburgh and she was at Princeton University at the Center for the Study of American Religion in 1998-99. She was a member of the GSCASH at the University of Hyderabad in its early years and continues to be actively involved in gender sensitisation programs on and off campus. She worked on gender training of school teachers in Hyderabad and co-authored a Gender Training manual for Teachers in 2022.

arayaprol@uohyd.ac.in

Meenakshi Gopinath & Rukmini Sen

‘SAKSHAM Measures for Ensuring the Safety of Women and Programmes for Gender Sensitization on Campuses’ was a report published by the University Grants Commission (the apex body in charge of monitoring Higher Educational Institutions in India) in 2013. 

Prof Rukmini Sen (RS), School of Liberal Studies, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar University Delhi had an interaction with Dr. Meenakshi Gopinath (MG), former Principal, Lady Shri Ram College, University of Delhi and Chairperson, The Task Force to Review the Measures for Ensuring the Safety of Women on Campuses and Programmes for Gender Sensitization on November 11, 2023. Excerpts from the interaction below.

RS: What was the context of SAKSHAM report? What were the reasons for the multiple methodologies that was adopted as a process of writing the report? 

MG: The report was the aftermath of the gang rape in Delhi–the outrage that happened at the local, national and international level. There was a felt realisation to do something immediate, and the UGC set up this Task Force post the Justice Verma Committee Report. The latter proposed what I would call the Magna Carta for women’s rights in this country—its Bill of Rights. This report is not just a legal one, but builds the moral and ethical imperative for social structures to not just be humane but be gender just. The UGC felt that there was a need to understand how much gender sensitisation (or the lack of it) prevailed in HEIs in the country and constituted the Task Force. The members understood that sexual violence in campuses was both invisibilised as well as normalised.  The Task Force adopted a feminist methodology, building solidarities across the country. We therefore decided to go out in the field—rural, urban, tribal areas, de-bureaucratise the workings of a committee, holding Jan Sunwai’s or forums across campuses, sending out questionnaires to administration, holding workshops to sensitise people post the Taskforce report. 

RS: What were the main broad findings that the report highlighted? 

MG: Higher education institutions are heterogeneous spaces and several people with intersectional identities were exercising citizenship choices for the first time. Yet the culture of silence and the culture of impunity around sexual harassment was very evident. Many institutions had designated gates for men and women, toilets for women invariably would remain locked, leading to situations were women students would use the classroom for changing sanitary napkins. That was the extent in terms of safety, cleanliness and access to toilets. In addition, various parts of the campus were so dimly lit that women and LGBTQI students would be accosted by anti-social elements, who would either enter the campus from outside or team up with those inside. With very less gender sensitisation programmes, young men expressed their masculinity in not the most gender friendly ways, since they were unaware of any other form of expression. There was little to no understanding on what constituted consent. Both with women students as well as faculty a culture of unquestioned hostile work environment could naturally prevail. Most HEIs would be satisfied with the fact that there were no (reported) cases. It was also found out that all women’s colleges did not have the presence of gender sensitisation committees. Although Women’s Development Cells were mandated to be present in most HEIs, their role usually led to further ghettoization rather than mainstreaming of gender questions. The importance of getting all administrative staff gender trained is supreme. The Task Force always remembered that the University was not a conventional workplace but a transformative site and therefore the process related to gender based awareness, complaint on situations of transgressions and its resolution could not be merely punitive. The need for gender auditing of HEIs is extremely necessary, not just to see the gender parity among students, faculty and staff but also to assess precarity of contract labour on campus and their subsequent possible susceptibility to sexual harassment.  

RS: Vishaka to #MeToo, there has been a lot of change in the manner in which questions around sexual harassment in higher education institutions have been articulated over the years. What is the way ahead according to you, as the SAKSHAM report becomes a decade old? 

MG: The first thing that is needed is to understand the importance of de-ghettoising sexual harassment, it is not a woman’s issue but a gender concern. It is necessary to create and provide an alternative civic dispute resolution template, where the process transforms and chastises rather than stigmatise. The importance of HEI lies in its diversity, hence the need to build a sense of community which recognises this diversity is an important part of the HEI culture. While formal mechanisms of Internal Complaints Committees need to be in place, to ensure and provide confidence that all women have rights, a lot of resources needs to be invested in prevention of actual cases of sexual harassment from occurring through regular gender awareness programmes, conducting gender audits and addressing the gaps found in it. Identifying the problem, creating a response plan and having proper feminist methods in the response are the three necessary conditions in the way ahead for all HEIs. 

Notes: 

1. SAKSHAM report
2. #MeToo in Indian HEI

Author bio

Meenakshi Gopinath is an Indian educationist, political scientist, writer and a former principal of Lady Shri Ram College, New Delhi.She is the founder and incumbent director of the Women in Security Conflict Management and Peace (WISCOMP), a non governmental organization promoting peace and socio-political leadership among the women of South Asia and a former member of the National Security Advisory Board, the first woman to serve the Government of India agency. She has served as a member of the selection panel of the Lokpal, a legal body which has jurisdiction over the legislators and government officials of India. The Government of India awarded her the fourth highest civilian honour of the Padma Shri, in 2007, for her contributions to Indian educational sector. She is a co-editor of the International Feminist Journal of Politics, the leading journal of feminist international relations and global politics.