'Grade for Sex?' How Does Staff-Student Sexual Violence in UK Higher Education Institutions Threaten the Security of Women Students?
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Manchester
Department Name: Social Sciences
Abstract
Overview
While there exists extensive analysis of student-student sexual violence across Higher Education (HE), there has been little investigation into staff-student abuse. The Guardian (2017) highlights that in the last 4 years 169 cases of staff-student sexual abuse have been reported at UK universities. The actual figure is likely significantly higher. In the vast majority of cases, the alleged perpetrators have been male academic staff, the victims female students (Westmarland, 2017).
Many argue that mainstream security discourse marginalises questions of gender and gendered violence; this can be explored as an extension of public-private divisions that categorise gendered violence as 'private', shifting it out of the public sphere of international security, into the private sphere of domestic politics. Similarly, within national politics, gendered violence is constructed as a private issue that is irrelevant to discourses of national security (Tickner, 1997, 2005; Blanchard, 2003).
Relatedly, university structures construct staff-student sexual violence as a private issue, eschewing their responsibility to provide security for students from gendered violence. At the international, national and institutional level, analytical moves are employed to remove questions of gender from the agenda. The practices of gendered violence are removed from interrogation, both rendering gendered violence invisible within mainstream discourses on security, and normalising it.
The UK 1752 group has been set up as a task-force against sexual misconduct at universities, working alongside the NUS to push this 'private' issue into political agenda. My research explores the relationship between those institutions that construct issues of gendered violence as private, and feminist activists who politicise their everyday experiences of gendered insecurity.
Research Contribution
Security Studies
This will be the first attempt at exploring staff-student sexual violence at UK universities as an everyday threat to women's security, providing a radical revisioning of the relevance of the everyday to security. Critical security scholarship has not yet broadened to interrogate gendered violence that falls outside of established themes in security. My research will therefore move beyond the current thematic schema of security, locating sexual violence at UK HE Institutions as a threat to the security of women in and of itself.
Feminist Activism
The research will show how feminist activist groups respond to gendered violence at UK universities, including how they navigate university policy and investigatory procedures. This will allow the research to move beyond an account of women as only victims of staff-student abuse, but women as actors in the struggle for their own security (McLeod, 2010).
Higher Education Institutions
Universities in the UK have made recent efforts to tackle gender inequality and violence at universities. However, the prevalence of staff-student sexual violence shows universities have not yet succeeded in combating gendered inequalities. This research will provide critical insight into ways that universities fail to meet their institutional responsibilities to redress gendered inequalities and provide security to their students. The research will also provide recommendations for alternative university policy, and therefore will simultaneously offer a framework for change.
Research Design and Methodology
A discourse analysis of university policy at 10 UK HE institutions, including staff-student relationship policies, as well as complaints and investigatory procedures. This will be corroborated with research and data from the NUS and 1752 group on the experience of victims who have navigated these policies. To explore the ways in which feminist activist groups practice resistance, I will conduct ethnographic research with feminist activist groups.
While there exists extensive analysis of student-student sexual violence across Higher Education (HE), there has been little investigation into staff-student abuse. The Guardian (2017) highlights that in the last 4 years 169 cases of staff-student sexual abuse have been reported at UK universities. The actual figure is likely significantly higher. In the vast majority of cases, the alleged perpetrators have been male academic staff, the victims female students (Westmarland, 2017).
Many argue that mainstream security discourse marginalises questions of gender and gendered violence; this can be explored as an extension of public-private divisions that categorise gendered violence as 'private', shifting it out of the public sphere of international security, into the private sphere of domestic politics. Similarly, within national politics, gendered violence is constructed as a private issue that is irrelevant to discourses of national security (Tickner, 1997, 2005; Blanchard, 2003).
Relatedly, university structures construct staff-student sexual violence as a private issue, eschewing their responsibility to provide security for students from gendered violence. At the international, national and institutional level, analytical moves are employed to remove questions of gender from the agenda. The practices of gendered violence are removed from interrogation, both rendering gendered violence invisible within mainstream discourses on security, and normalising it.
The UK 1752 group has been set up as a task-force against sexual misconduct at universities, working alongside the NUS to push this 'private' issue into political agenda. My research explores the relationship between those institutions that construct issues of gendered violence as private, and feminist activists who politicise their everyday experiences of gendered insecurity.
Research Contribution
Security Studies
This will be the first attempt at exploring staff-student sexual violence at UK universities as an everyday threat to women's security, providing a radical revisioning of the relevance of the everyday to security. Critical security scholarship has not yet broadened to interrogate gendered violence that falls outside of established themes in security. My research will therefore move beyond the current thematic schema of security, locating sexual violence at UK HE Institutions as a threat to the security of women in and of itself.
Feminist Activism
The research will show how feminist activist groups respond to gendered violence at UK universities, including how they navigate university policy and investigatory procedures. This will allow the research to move beyond an account of women as only victims of staff-student abuse, but women as actors in the struggle for their own security (McLeod, 2010).
Higher Education Institutions
Universities in the UK have made recent efforts to tackle gender inequality and violence at universities. However, the prevalence of staff-student sexual violence shows universities have not yet succeeded in combating gendered inequalities. This research will provide critical insight into ways that universities fail to meet their institutional responsibilities to redress gendered inequalities and provide security to their students. The research will also provide recommendations for alternative university policy, and therefore will simultaneously offer a framework for change.
Research Design and Methodology
A discourse analysis of university policy at 10 UK HE institutions, including staff-student relationship policies, as well as complaints and investigatory procedures. This will be corroborated with research and data from the NUS and 1752 group on the experience of victims who have navigated these policies. To explore the ways in which feminist activist groups practice resistance, I will conduct ethnographic research with feminist activist groups.