RT Article
T1 You Can Knock on the Doors and Windows of the University, but Nobody Will Care: How Universities Benefit from Network Silence around Gender-Based Violence
JF Social Sciences
VO 13
IS 4
A1 Pilinkaite Sotirovic, Vilana
A2 Lipinsky, Anke
A2 Struzińska, Katarzyna
A2 Ranea-Triviño, Beatriz
LA English
YR 2024
UL https://krimdok.uni-tuebingen.de/Record/1929264712
AB This paper exposes the role of universities in creating silence around gender-based violence in higher education, drawing on narratives from 39 qualitative interviews with victims/survivors and bystanders about reporting incidents and experiences. In this paper, we extend concept of ‘network silence’ around sexual harassment to other forms of gender-based violence. Our research applies three components of the theoretical model of network silence, namely, self-silencing by victims/survivors, silencing, and not hearing by others, and analyses their contextual manifestations through the reporting experiences of victims/survivors and bystanders. This helps to identify the traits of the informal organisational structures and power dynamics, gendered attitudes, actors, and factors which facilitate silencing. The intersectional approach in our analysis of organisational contextual traits contributes to the research on inequality regimes in universities. The findings suggest that universities are making limited efforts to address silence around gender-based violence. We conclude that shared beliefs among the leadership about the reputation and prestige of the university facilitate the endurance of silence in universities. Our findings indicate reasons why universities fail to create spaces that are safe from gender-based violence.
K1 silencing
K1 network silence
K1 Reporting
K1 Sexual Harassment
K1 Higher Education
K1 institutional practices
K1 Qualitative Analysis
K1 inequality regime
K1 Intersectionality
DO 10.3390/socsci13040199