"Gender-based violence is related to power"

My name is Marta Domínguez, I am a sociologist and I work on family issues and the division of work within the family and gender inequalities. I am not an expert on violence, but I learned a lot about it in the end because I teach classes on gender and the topic of violence is, of course, very important when you think about gender inequalities in society. So I started learning about that mostly through preparations for teaching, but also because I have supervised master dissertations and PhD students who are focusing on these topics. Some years ago, we also had a working group about what to do, of which I was not part of, but Hélène Périvier, who is coordinating the project, was. And so we talked among researchers about what we could do and we realised that with our research skills we could contribute to this discussion through research. In the end, Hélène contacted me one day to say she had found a way to fund this project and asked me to collaborate, and I was happy to participate!

From a sociologist's perspective, violence has to do with power and with power relations. We can find it also in theories about the State, for instance, and what is the role of violence there. So gender-based violence is also related to power and it contributes to the reproduction of social hierarchies, in this case, gender hierarchies. I think that everyone, of course, can be a victim of violence, but we know that some groups – in this case, women and gender non-conforming or non-binary, LGBTQI+ people – are more vulnerable than others. For instance, we see that women mention the risk of violence when they try to explain why they decide not to go to some places, or when they decide not to engage in certain activities, or when they are thinking about their professional careers; the topic of unsafety might play a role. The risk of violence is there for them more often or this is what we know from research. When violence is used by the groups that have a higher position against the groups that have a lower position, then this is contributing to reproducing this kind of social order. And very importantly, this happens not only around what we think are the most extreme forms of violence. We usually think about sexual abuse or physical violence, but there are also more socially accepted forms of violence, like sexist remarks or things like that, which are perceived to be less extreme, but they can be very present and they can be very insidious. So I would say that gender-based violence is a sign of social inequalities, but it is also reproducing those social inequalities. 

I think so. One of the means of social control is violence. Taking into account that there are many different types of violence, such as the more socially accepted ones which we may find more often and that are kind of part of our everyday lives. 

Academia is a social institution and therefore there are also power imbalances, there are hierarchies, and gender-based violence is of course also present. If we think about students, who are the focus of our project, I think academia is a place that has interesting characteristics, although it also depends on where the students are. So if we think of examples, for instance first-year students who arrive at university, in many cases they find themselves in a new environment, where social control might be lower than it was in high school, mostly because there are lots of people you do not know. You have to make a new social network for yourself and at the same time many things are at stake. Maybe your parents have invested or you have a scholarship, and this is very important for your future. So you find yourself in this new place where you can be vulnerable and you can also feel very lonely if you do not get to have a strong support network. So if something happens, for instance, gender-based violence among students, it might be very difficult to say what is happening, because there is a lot of social relations at stake for you. The violence can also come from someone who is in a higher position in the hierarchy than you as a student. For instance, if it comes from a teacher, or a PhD supervisor, or someone who is  supervising your internship, or things like that. There you also have this power imbalance that makes it very difficult for the victim to articulate what is happening and to report.

I think we can draw an analogy with the labour market: it might be easier to quit a job or a violent situation in the labour market than it is in academia, because many students cannot afford to lose one year, change institutions and so on. Well, this is the student situation, but we could think of other people. I also think that we need to take into account that different academic institutions might play different roles. If you are, for instance, in a very small campus where social control might be higher, this might be a good thing: if people agree that consent is important and that sexist remarks should not be tolerated, this social control can help keep these norms working. But at the same time, when something happens, then it can be much more difficult for you to break the silence because of this higher social control. We can think of other scenarios, for instance specific programs which are very gender segregated. This can create hostile environments for those who are in a gender minority. So, yes, academia has specific conditions for gender-based violence to occur, but also specific institutional settings within academia need to be taken into account.

I think it is exactly the same mechanisms I mentioned, but they are just more visible, or more extreme in the case of newcomers. But if you think about PhD students, there is, for example, the relationship with a supervisor that can be very problematic in many respects. It is a very important relationship for your future, lots of things will depend afterward on this relationship; getting a recommendation letter, introducing you to the social networks that will allow you to get to a position, internships, projects, and so on. So people want to have a good relationship with their supervisors, not only PhD students, but interns too. So it is not easy to bypass that if something bad happens. It takes a lot of courage to do that and it is quite unfair to always put this responsibility on the victims.

In terms of violence happening among students, of course, older students are also within the same situation. Even though as an older student you might already have a solid social group, your social relations are more stable, you also might have more resources and know the university better, this still might happen to you. The costs of labelling something as violence and reporting it, and seeing this person again in class the next day are there for the older students too. And I think it is interesting what you said about that we are all adults and the ability to say no. We know we are not equal in our ability to say no. Social situations are very complex and many things are at stake. Qualitative research has shown that the whole thought process that goes on when people feel that maybe they have provided consent without realising it, and that now it is too late to say no because it is going to have negative consequences, creates a very difficult situation.

Yes, we are doing a prevalence study and I think that a really important issue about gender-based violence is that we really do not have good data about what is going on, in fact, we do not know. We always use this metaphor of the tip of the iceberg but we know there is more going on than what we see. And I think it is important to put some numbers on it or to be able to quantify, and to be able to say that this amount of violence is happening, that it is mostly this type or the other and so on. Some people are more vulnerable than others and we need to know who these people are. This is important and necessary, it is the first step, even if it is very difficult. We know that there are lots of issues, methodological issues on how we measure violence, so this is a necessary first step also to make institutions aware of what is happening. Simply put: we really need that. We have some surveys carried out for the whole population, we also had one survey on the student population in France in general, but I think it is important to have data on specific institutions because, as I said before, every institution has specific characteristics, the population is different, and if we want to develop policies, it is important that they are evidence-based.

However, this quantitative approach, of course, is missing important aspects of the experiences of the people involved. So I hope we will be able to estimate how much of what kind of violence is happening, but we do not know how people experience this; whether it was difficult for them to label it as violence or not, or as one type of violence or not, what were the consequences for them, how they dealt with it. That information, I think, we can only have if we take a qualitative approach as well. If we do, for instance, interviews with people and we discuss these things. We do not have that in this project. That is a disadvantage, but we have a limited budget so we needed to make decisions. It is also important to note that if we want to do qualitative research on this, we really need to plan ahead, because it is an extremely complex thing to do. There are lots of ethical issues involved, in terms of keeping people's anonymity, making sure that they consent, taking care of them if they have gone through difficult experiences and taking care of the researchers and the people doing the interviews too. This requires a lot of preparation and planning and resources, but it would be great to have that in the future. And finally, another thing that we could think about in this project is that we are following the usual strategy that if we want to quantify violence, we are doing a prevalence victimisation survey. So we are asking people whether they have experienced violence, and that is, of course, very important. But it would be also interesting, at some point, to have the other side of the story, to ask people who have been agents of violence themselves.

I am learning a lot within this project. I already had some experience in developing questionnaires. So the experience of having to drop some very important questions and always feeling a bit frustrated and unsatisfied, was something I had anticipated. What I had not anticipated was all of the issues about anonymity and legal and ethical concerns that we faced at some point in the project, as well as the institutional contexts at play. Those have really surprised me and continue to amaze me.

I am also excited to be able to do this and am really interested in knowing what the results will be, but also a bit afraid. This might create a lot of debate as it raises really difficult issues for a lot of people. I do not know if after the survey, some people will think they want to report or whether this might also create conflict, so I am also a bit afraid of this part. But that is also part of doing research. That we work with people and that there are always feelings and people's situations and experiences are always involved and that is difficult to deal with. But if we want to know and potentially help and contribute to create  better policies for this issue, then we need to go through this stage.