Sexual Harassment and Coercion in German Academia: A large-Scale Survey Study
Autor/in:
Hoebel, Merle; Durglishvili, Ana; Reinold, Johanna; Leising, Daniel
Quelle: Sexual Offending: Theory, Research, and Prevention, (2022) 17
Inhalt: We surveyed a large sample (N = 6,217) of students and employees at a German university
regarding their experiences as (potential) targets of sexual harassment and/or coercion (SH/C).
Participants were asked specific questions depending on whether they had been targets of SH/C
themselves, knew someone who had been affected or said they had no such experiences. Pre-
registered analyses showed that women were assumed to become targets more often, and actually
did become targets much more often (26.7%) than did males (4.7%; odds ratio: 7.45). Men more often
had no first- or second-hand knowledge of any SH/C incidents (odds ratio: 1.75). Contrary to what
participants assumed they would do if they became targets, only a very small percentage of such
experiences were actually reported using the available channels. Most participants who
experienced but did not report SH/C said they did not expect that doing so would lead to any
consequences. Greater offence severity was associated with a stronger wish to avoid emotional
distress by not reporting. Furthermore, reporting often times did not lead to any significant
consequences in the majority of cases. Complaint systems against sexual harassment and coercion
in academia may be largely dysfunctional. Practical implications are discussed.
Schlagwörter:binary; sexual harassment; university
Using Mixed Methods Integration to Evaluate the Structure of Help-Seeking Barriers Scale: A Survivor-Centered Approach
Autor/in:
Thorvaldsdottir, Karen Birna; Halldorsdottir, Sigridur; Saint Arnault, Denise M.
Quelle: International journal of environmental research and public health, 19 (2022) 7
Inhalt: Despite the high prevalence of adverse health and trauma-related outcomes associated with intimate partner violence (IPV), help-seeking and service utilization among survivors is low. This study is part of a larger mixed-methods and survivor-centered validation study on the Icelandic Barriers to Help-Seeking for Trauma (BHS-TR) scale, a new barriers measure focused on trauma recovery. A mixed-methods legitimation strategy of integration was employed to evaluate the BHS-TR structure in samples of IPV survivors. The merging of qualitative (n = 17) and quantitative (n = 137) data through a joint display analysis revealed mainly complementarity findings, strengthening the scale's overall trustworthiness and validity evidence. Divergent findings involved items about mistrust, perceived rejection, stigmatization, fearing vulnerability, and safeguarding efforts that were significant help-seeking barriers in the survivors' narratives, whereas factor analysis indicated their removal. These BHS-TR items were critically evaluated in an iterative spiraling process that supported the barriers' influence, illuminated core issues, and guided potential refinements. This work contributes to the growing field of mixed methods instrument validation placing equal status on qualitative and quantitative methods and emphasizing integration to provide more complete insights. Moreover, the study's findings highlight the added value of further exploring divergence between two sets of data and the importance of giving attention to the voices of the target population throughout the validation process.
Schlagwörter:Beschwerdestelle; disclosure; GBV; Gewalt gegen Frauen; Intervention; Maßnahmen; Opfer; scale; Skala; trauma; Validität; validity; victimization; violence; violence against women
Inhalt: The normalization of gender-based violence (GBV) consists of all those cultural beliefs and values that sustain, justify, or minimize GBV perpetration. Acknowledging the lack of instruments addressing the normalization of GBV and its constitutive sociocultural dimensions, this article presents the conceptual development and initial validation of the Normalization of gender-based violence against women scale. This 18-item instrument could be used to assess the normalization of violence against women in GBV survivors of various cultural contexts. The scale has been developed through a sizeable mixed-methods study. This paper reports the qualitative portion of the study that allowed the development of the instrument and assessment of its content and face validity. In particular, the method section details the process by which the assessed scale’s domain has been identified through an expert panel workshop, the analysis of GBV survivor’s interviews, and the review of existing scales. The assessment of face and content validity, trough expert judges’ evaluation and Cognitive Interviewing, is presented. This instrument is the first normalization scale developed by a multicultural team for use with violence survivors. The techniques used to construct this scale aimed to capture cultural aspects of normalization that might be shared across women from diverse groups. Therefore, its use could enable social or health care providers worldwide to program or evaluate the effectiveness of interventions to contrast GBV by promoting a clearer understanding of cultural and social norms that sustain the acceptance and normalization of violence.
Schlagwörter:GBV; Gewalt gegen Frauen; Island; Messkonzept; Normalisierung; normalization; sexual assault; Skala; survivor experience; Validität; validity
Researching Students’ Experiences of Sexual and Gender-Based Violence and Harassment: Reflections and Recommendations from Surveys of Three UK HEIs
Autor/in:
Bull, Anna; Duggan, Marian; Livesey, Louise
Quelle: Social Sciences, 11 (2022) 8, 373 S
Inhalt: In the US, ‘campus climate surveys’ are an established measure of the prevalence of, and students’ awareness of and attitudes to sexual and gender-based violence and harassment (SGBVH). They are regularly carried out by universities to assist SGBVH prevention and responses. Such surveys have only recently started to be carried out within UK higher education institutions (HEIs) and the three authors of this article all independently undertook such surveys in different HEIs. Comparing our experiences of undertaking these surveys across three HEIs allows us to explore similarities and differences in our experiences of this type of research, in particular the challenges which arose in carrying out such research in three very different types of HEI. This article presents reflections on the methodological and political challenges of such work. We discuss our rationales for initiating these projects, the methodological approaches we employed, the governance structures navigated in pursuing the research and the difficulties that arose in conducting and reporting on the research. This article will be of interest to academics, activists, and policy-makers—domestically and internationally—who wish to carry out such research. By comparing approaches, we draw attention to issues and potential impediments of relevance to others wanting to embark on similar work within their own HEI.
Schlagwörter:campus; climate survey; ethical issues in surveys; GBV; higher education; sexual harassment; student; survey research; violence
Queer Positionality and Researching University Lad Culture
Autor/in:
Stenson, Annis Elizabeth
Quelle: Social Sciences, 11 (2022) 12, 562 S
Inhalt: This paper reflects on my experiences as a queer researcher investigating the relationship between university lad culture and gender-related violence. Gender-related violence is analysed as a useful conceptual tool for considering lad culture, owing to the relationship between lad culture and sexual violence, LGBT-phobia and the privileging of white, young, heterosexual men within lad culture. Using reflections from my doctoral case study research, in which I collected data from self-identified ‘lads’ (5 in-depth interviews), I will consider the challenges and benefits of my researcher position in relation the research methodology. Then, using a re-analysis of interviews, I will argue that my researcher position led to certain presentations of lad culture from my participants. Self-Identified Lad (SIL) participants presented themselves as distant from lad culture, showed queerness/hid homophobia within lad culture and were willing to discuss sexual violence. While the case study yielded only a small sample of SILs, a benefit of my researcher position is that this project was the first to conduct interviews with LGB lads and one female lad. My queer feminist position has therefore produced a unique insight into lads who identify with lad culture but discursively position themselves as fringe members. This contributes to theorisations of a laddish continuum, and allows us to consider why some self-identified lads are on the fringes, and what this tells us about lad culture
Safeguarding and Agency: Methodological Tensions in Conducting Research with Survivors of Sexual Violence in Universities
Autor/in:
Shannon, Erin R.
Quelle: Social Sciences, 11 (2022) 8, 350 S
Inhalt: This paper examines the tension between safeguarding measures and participant agency in conducting feminist interviews with survivors of sexual violence in universities. There is a core contradiction inherent in feminist research of gender-related violence, including sexual violence, because participants have been traumatized: Research with survivors of violence must enact appropriate safeguarding measures to ensure their emotional wellbeing, yet in designing these safeguarding measures, researchers must also ensure that survivor participants can exert agency within the research process. These phenomena are often at odds as safeguarding—the work of protecting participants through limiting their exposure to upsetting stimuli—appears to circumscribe participant agency, or a participant’s ability to make informed choices for themselves that respond to and change the structures in which they are situated. Using part of my doctoral thesis research’s methodology, I detail the safeguarding measures I implemented for participants as well as highlight how and where I attempted to build in agential engagement for survivor participants, and whether, or how often, survivors took up these options. The article concludes by suggesting ways gender-related violence research more broadly can reflect on and continue to interrogate how researchers balance safeguarding requirements while enabling survivors to assert their agency in the research process.
Schlagwörter:ethical issues in surveys; feminist approach; sexual abuse; survivor experience; university
“The ethos expected from a management professor forces us to act straight”: Heterosexist harassment against gay professors in Brazil
Autor/in:
Freitas Oleto, Alice de; Palhares, José Vitor
Quelle: Gend Work Organ (Gender, Work and Organization), (2022)
Inhalt: This study aims to analyze how gay Brazilian professors experience heterosexist harassment and the implications of this type of violence for the interpersonal relationships of these professors and for the teaching-learning process in the academic environment. To this end, we conducted an exploratory study with a qualitative approach. The data were collected through an online survey using the Google Forms platform based on cases reported by 13 gay Brazilian professors working in a technological or higher education institution at the time of the harassment. Our data suggest that most respondents suffered heterosexist harassment in the workplace with violence being more explicit when the professor is more effeminate. Furthermore, we found that the naturalization of games considered harmless and homophobic jokes in the workplace can compromise the fight against heterosexist harassment in organizations. As a result, respondents report behavioral and workplace changes to fit into social norms and to be socially accepted, physical and psychological problems, professional and interpersonal relationships, adversely affecting educational experiences.
Harassment as a consequence and cause of inequality in academia: A narrative review
Autor/in:
Täuber, Susanne; Loyens, Kim; Oertelt-Prigione, Sabine; Kubbe, Ina
Quelle: eClinicalMedicine, 49 (2022) , 101486 S
Inhalt: A growing body of literature suggests that over the past 30 years, policies aimed at tackling harassment in academia have had little discernable effect. How can this impasse be overcome to make the higher education sector a safe space for everyone? We combine the areas of harassment and inequality, intersectionality, policy-practice gaps, gender sensitive medicine, as well as corruption and whistleblower processes to identify lacunae and offer recommendations for how to apply our recommendations in practice. We have been searching the most influential, relevant, and recent literature on harassment and inequality in our respective fields of expertise. By studying conceptual overlaps between the different fields, we were able to create insights that go beyond the insights of the most recent reviews. Our synthesis results in three concrete recommendations. First, harassment and inequality are mutually reinforcing. Failure to adequately tackle harassment contributes to perpetuating and reproducing inequality. Further, the intersectional nature of inequality has to be acknowledged and acted upon. Second, enforcing anti-harassment policies should be a top priority for universities, funders, and policymakers. Third, sexual harassment should be treated as institutional-level integrity failure. The higher education sector should now focus on enforcing existing anti-harassment policies by holding universities accountable for their effective implementation - or risk being complicit in maintaining and reproducing inequality.
Student violence towards teaching assistants in UK schools: a case of gender-based violence
Autor/in:
Holt, Amanda; Birchall, Jenny
Quelle: Gender and Education, (2022) , S 1–16
Inhalt: In recent years significant research attention has focused on the problem of student violence in schools and, to a lesser extent, on its relationship to gender-based violence. However, student violence towards teaching assistants has not been studied, despite evidence suggesting that teaching assistants are at significantly more risk from student violence than other staff members. In this article, we draw on data from 16 in-depth interviews with teaching assistants who have experienced student violence. We conclude that violence towards teaching assistants is ignored, in both research and in schools, precisely because of the feminized and under-valued nature of the role, and argue that the continual victimization of teaching assistants diminishes their status further. We highlight its parallels with gender-based violence and argue that applying such a framework is key to recognizing the personal and social harms that this violence causes and the organizational responses that leaves teaching assistants particularly vulnerable.
"I Felt Powerful and Confident": Women's Use of What They Learned in Feminist Sexual Assault Resistance Education
Autor/in:
Crann, Sara E.; Senn, Charlene Y.; Radtke, H. Lorraine; Hobden, Karen L.
Quelle: Psychology of Women Quarterly, 46 (2022) 2, S 147–161
Inhalt: Research on women's response and resistance to sexual assault risk has informed the development of interventions to improve women's ability to effectively resist sexual assault. However, little is known about how women anticipate, navigate, and respond to risk following participation in sexual assault risk reduction/resistance education programs. In this study, we examined the information and skills used by university women who had recently completed the effective Enhanced Assess, Acknowledge, Act (EAAA) sexual assault resistance program. We analyzed responses from 445 women using descriptive statistics and content and thematic analysis. Just under half (42%) of women used at least one EAAA strategy in the following 2 years. Most women reported that their efforts were successful in stopping an attack. Women's responses included strategies both to preempt sexual assault threat (e.g., avoiding men who display danger cues, communicating assertively about wanted and unwanted sex) and to interrupt or avoid an imminent threat (e.g., yelling, hitting, and kicking). Women's use of resistance strategies worked to subvert gendered social norms and socialization. The results suggest that counter to criticisms that risk reduction/resistance programs blame women or make them responsible for stopping men's violence, women who took EAAA typically positioned themselves as agentic and empowered in their resistance.
Schlagwörter:empowerment; Intervention; resistance; sexual assault; university; women