Home>"We should focus on violence prevention"
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24.04.2024
"We should focus on violence prevention"
Sciences Po and Université Paris Cité have come together to conduct a shared Excellence Initiative (IdEx) research study among their student population on the prevalence of sexual and gender-based violence. Titled SAFEDUC, the research is taking place under Sciences Po’s Gender Studies Programme, and aims to collect prevalence data in order to map the living experiences of university students. It is conducted via an anonymous online survey accessible to all students at both institutions from March 25th to May 19th, 2024. In this interview article you will get to know another member of the project, Joëlle Kivits, a professor in Sociology and Public Health, holder of the “Gender and prevention in health” Chair. Since September 2022, she is the Vice-President for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion at Université Paris Cité.
please introduce yourself, what is your position and connection to the project and the topic of gender-based violence?
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.
Is the reporting unit part of the gender equality plan’s requirements?
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.
Why is, from your perspective, the SAFEDUC project important?
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.
Thank you, I also think it is very important to put emphasis on prevention…
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.
You said that violence has an impact on health, could you please specify what kind of impacts it can have in the context of the academic environment?
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.
Apart from teaching and conducting research, this is also the third role of the university, right, to be of service to the public and to be a role model in public discussion…
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.
On one hand, you are a researcher and on the other hand, you have this very important institutional role of a Vice-President: how are these two roles connected?
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.
And what are you learning from this project? And is there anything that surprised you?
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.
This interview was conducted by Eva Oliva.
More
- Learn more about the SAFEDUC project and, if you are a student from Sciences Po or Université Paris Cité, take the survey.
- Joëlle Kivits is a professor in Sociology and Public Health, holder of the “Gender and prevention in health” Chair.
- Read other interviews on the SAFEDUC research project:
- With the research project's principal investigators Hélène Périvier and Virginie Bonnot.
- With researchers Clara Le Gallic-Ach and Victor Coutolleau explaining the challenges they faced and why all students should fill in the questionnaire.
- With sociologist Marta Domínguez Folgueras, an Associate Professor of Sociology working at Centre for Research on Social Inequalities at Sciences Po (CRIS) on the connections between violence, power and social hierarchies.
- with Eva Oliva, a staff member of the Institute of Sociology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, about her experience as an Erasmus+ intern within the research project