Women's fightback: Tackling sexual violence on campus

Submitted by AWL on 11 January, 2022 - 3:19 Author: Katy Dollar
On campus

Sexual violence is endemic in the UK’s university and college workplaces and employers must do more to tackle it, according to a report by the University and College Union (UCU).

The report found that over the past five years:

• 12% of women and 5% of men had directly experienced workplace sexual violence

• 52% of those who directly experienced sexual violence did not disclose or report it to their employer

• 70% of those who directly experienced sexual violence experienced it as an ongoing pattern of behaviour rather than a one-off incident

• Staff on non-permanent contracts were 1.3 times more likely to experience direct sexual violence than those in permanent roles

• Staff on insecure contracts, those with disabilities, those who are trans or non binary, those in racialised minorities and those with a sexual orientation other than heterosexual are all at significantly greater risk of sexual violence

Responses to the survey revealed how complainants felt discredited, victimised, targeted through spreading rumours, blamed, and not believed. One, who didn’t report the incident, said:

“This was a member of the senior leadership team with a reputation of being untouchable due [to] his charm and charisma [...] The main issue in my experience is how problems with sexual violence are typically dealt with according to the status in the institution of the alleged abuser, i.e. if they are a prof with a large grant record, you may as well forget it”.

The report authors also describe how UCU’s own practices have fallen short and call on the union to change the way it addresses the issue of sexual violence.

The union has already begun a review into its own process for members reporting sexual violence.

Following the report, UCU is pledging to:

• Train more representatives who can act as specialists in the area of sexual violence

• Review practices around the support the union makes available to alleged perpetrators, including ending the negotiation of Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs)

• Introduce a specially drafted sexual violence policy to ensure that UCU as an employer is at the forefront of best practice in dealing with sexual violence complaints

The report has received mixed responses from activists. A UCU activist told Solidarity:

“It’s important this report was done. In particular to have the data on casual and precarious workers, to have that to take to management. But there are big issues. The quantitative data from the survey has a good sample size (4,000 people responded to the survey), but only 16 of those went on to give interviews. The process to be interviewed involved emailing a generic email, with no idea who was on the Task Group, who was reading this email. After all that we were told we’d only be interviewed if the group had capacity. This isn’t a trauma-informed sensitive approach to people who may be survivors of sexual assault.

“The report refers to one of the motions that passed at Congress 2020 (from Sheffield), but two others are ignored (from Leeds and Exeter). This means the What Next section has no reference to work the union has already committed to, including the establishment of an elected gender-based violence commission which should have reported to Congress 2021.”

The UCU have started important work, looking at sexual assault and harassment in their workplaces. Now they must carry out the instruction on Congress to create an elected gender-based violence commission which will report to Congress.

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