“Same roots, different experience: Visibilising and measuring intersectional effects on Gender-Related Violence within the neoliberal university” IGSRC
On May 28, 2021 our colleagues Barbara Biglia (Universitat Rovira I Virgili), Itziar Gandaria (Univerisad de Deusto), Pilar Parra Contreras (Universidad Compultense de Madrid) and Luz María Martínez Martínez (Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona) presented their conference “Same roots, different experience: Visibilising and measuring intersectional effects on Gender-Related Violence within the neoliberal university” at the online event GENDER AND SEXUALITY IN THE NEOLIBERAL UNIVERSITY organized by Interdisciplinary Gender and Sexuality Research Cluster – DMU.
On this occasion, our colleagues denounced some of the dynamics of the processes of neoliberalization of universities. One of these dynamics is precisely the opacity of the processes of knowledge creation and its results. That is why, from SeGREVUni we want to share with you the video of the presentation (in English) as well as the abstract.
As always, the video is available on our Youtube channel.
Abstract:
The trend towards neoliberalism in higher education has resulted in an approach to Sexual and gender-related violence focusing more on protecting institutions from possible legal challenge than on clearly committing to the creation of a climate of respect and mutual support within and outside of these institutions. As we disclose in the analysis performed in the framework of the research project SeGReVUni: Visibilizing and measuring the scale and scope of sexual and gender-related violence in universities ).), many surveys designed in order to detect this kind of violences only visibilise particular experiences, obscuring others. This limited understanding of SGRV in data collection instruments contributes greatly to feelings of helplessness amongst minoritised collectives, such as LGBTIQ people. Assuming a feminist intersectional definition of GRV, we acknowledge that if the different forms of GRV share the same roots, they are not equivalent. Therefore, in the detection of GRV we have to be aware that, on the one hand, the same act/experience may be extremely distinct for subjects situated in unequal social positions. On the other hand, the power position of the ‘offender’ can be determinant, for example, in transforming an allegedly innocent joke into an act of violence. In our presentation, we would like to introduce some of the preliminary proposals to define data collection instruments more sensitive to these complexities. On the one hand, these are based on best practices identified through the survey analysis and, on the other hand, through debates with different university community members to produce collective knowledge. Our goal is to generate a new instrument that will provide statistical data useful in demonstrating the scale and nuance of SGRV and, to force the neoliberal university to assume their social responsibility.
