"We should focus on violence prevention"

My name is Joëlle Kivits and I am a teacher, sociologist and public health researcher at the Université Paris Cité (UPCité), where I have been working since 2021. I am also working in a public health research Unit of Clinical Epidemiology and Economic Evaluation Applied to Vulnerable Populations called ECEVE (FR), and I am a member of the Cité du Genre (FR). My main research area is health promotion and prevention where I focus on the development and evaluation of health complex intervention. When I arrived at UPCité in 2021, I integrated the question of gender in health prevention. Since last year, I have been a vice-president of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion. Before this position, violence was not among my research topics. But as one of the first task as Vice-President for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion was the implementation of a reporting unit for violence – including sexual violence, discrimination and harassment – naturally I have been focusing on the topic of violence since then.

These are actually two distinct things. On one hand, there is the gender equality plan that we are revising at the moment at Université Paris Cité, as we need to have a new one for next year, and the report unit is one of the four axes of the equality plan. On the other hand, the fact is that it is also a regulatory obligation from 2019 that we must possess this kind of unit. In fact, all public institutions must have that. And at UPCité we have also decided to create a special unit dealing with violence, discrimination and harassment, both for students and also the staff. 

What I really would like to promote is the end of violence through prevention. That is what I would like to focus on, both as a Vice-President and also as a researcher. I was asked to take part in the SAFEDUC project due to my position as VP for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion, in order to be able to make the link between the project and the university management. I would say the project is important because it is the first step of a very complex process. Thanks to SAFEDUC, we will be able to describe what kind of violence, sexual violence or gender-based violence, occurs in our universities. And on this basis, we will be able to develop interventions and preventive interventions to deal with this violence. In fact, in the university, we take care of victims. We can refer the victims towards appropriate services: medical doctors, psychologists, jurists and so on. But we are not yet strong enough to put forward  a preventive plan against this violence. And for me that is the role of the SAFEDUC project. Of course, we focus on sensitization and education, but it is not always based on facts. We need to have more specific information about contexts, about the victims’ trajectories, about the places where violence emerges, the people in the relationships and so on. This survey will be able to describe that, and from that point, we will be stronger to develop preventive interventions.

Yes, and we know that experiencing violence can have a significant impact on health. I think that health promotion and health prevention need to come before violence occurs. We often talk about  wellness and how to eat, how to move, and how we should not smoke, whatsoever. I think that dealing with violence needs to be one of the topics of this kind of overall health prevention.

It has an impact on victims, of course in various areas of their lives: there is a direct impact on health, but also on studies. I also think that there is  an individual and a collective dimension. Such an event can impact the relationships between students, teachers or departments. Gender-based violence is everywhere, but if the academic environment can show how it deals with this kind of violence and to be exemplary to society at large, that will be an upper objective, and I think as professionals and researchers we have the means to do that.

Yes, we train future professionals. So if we are able to deal with violence, able to prevent, to talk about it, to take appropriate actions, we can imagine that these future professionals – victims or not – will then have this kind of knowledge and understanding. We have the resources to deal with the problem. And I think that we need to give this kind of support to the students and also the teachers, actually the whole community. 

Yes, I am a researcher, so of course, I have been supportive of SAFEDUC from the beginning. Thanks to my other position I am able to talk to the University President and advocate for the project, to stress the fact that it will bring us data we actually need. The other thing that is complementary is that I will be able to advocate for follow-up measures. We can create data-based policies, but we also need to evaluate what we will implement. That is not something that is done systematically. We do put measures into place, but how do they work? Are they effective? What are the impacts? We do not know that. And I have to say that research methods and research tools coming from public health research can be really helpful to evaluate this kind of intervention. 

I am surprised by all the regulatory obstacles we had to face, and I know Victor and Clara already mentioned it in their interview. This project involves a lot of actors – presidential team, legal department, communication department and so on – as the topic of sexual violence among students requires lots of care. For me it is not just a research project. It is more than that  because it will have an impact on everybody, not only the students that will answer the survey, but the entire community. We will also see how students and teachers react to the results. This project also demonstrates how many people must be involved when dealing with such a difficult topic, it shows its complexity and need for care and a sensitive approach.