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

  1. Pilinkaite Sotirovic, Vilana 1
  2. Lipinsky, Anke 4
  3. Struzińska, Katarzyna 2
  4. Ranea-Triviño, Beatriz 3
  1. 1 Institute of Sociology, Lithuanian Centre for Social Sciences, 01108 Vilnius, Lithuania
  2. 2 Department of Sociology of Law, Faculty of Law and Administration, Jagiellonian University in Kraków, 31-007 Cracow, Poland
  3. 3 Department of Applied Sociology, Faculty of Information Science, Complutense University of Madrid, 28040 Madrid, Spain
  4. 4 Center of Excellence Women and Science (CEWS), Department Data and Research on Society, GESIS Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, 50667 Cologne, Germany
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Revista:
Social Sciences

ISSN: 2076-0760

Año de publicación: 2024

Volumen: 13

Número: 4

Páginas: 199

Tipo: Artículo

DOI: 10.3390/SOCSCI13040199 GOOGLE SCHOLAR lock_openAcceso abierto editor

Otras publicaciones en: Social Sciences

Resumen

first_pagesettingsOrder Article ReprintsOpen AccessArticleYou Can Knock on the Doors and Windows of the University, but Nobody Will Care: How Universities Benefit from Network Silence around Gender-Based Violenceby Vilana Pilinkaite Sotirovic 1,*ORCID,Anke Lipinsky 2ORCID,Katarzyna Struzińska 3ORCID andBeatriz Ranea-Triviño 4ORCID1Institute of Sociology, Lithuanian Centre for Social Sciences, 01108 Vilnius, Lithuania2Center of Excellence Women and Science (CEWS), Department Data and Research on Society, GESIS Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences, 50667 Cologne, Germany3Department of Sociology of Law, Faculty of Law and Administration, Jagiellonian University in Kraków, 31-007 Cracow, Poland4Department of Applied Sociology, Faculty of Information Science, Complutense University of Madrid, 28040 Madrid, Spain*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.Soc. Sci. 2024, 13(4), 199; https://doi.org/10.3390/socsci13040199Submission received: 17 January 2024 / Revised: 15 March 2024 / Accepted: 28 March 2024 / Published: 2 April 2024(This article belongs to the Special Issue The Social Power of Gender-Based Violence and Abuse in the Workplace)Downloadkeyboard_arrow_down Versions NotesAbstractThis 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.

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Financiadores

  • European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme
    • 101006261

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