The Sustainability Issue
Discussing Interdisciplinary Strategies for Reducing Violence Against Women
Universities are working to tackle the rise in violence against women.
By Julie Hoeflinger
Bournemoth University hosted its first conference centered on reducing sexual violence after recent data suggested prevalence continued to soar despite current efforts. The conference brought together scholar and experts from various backgrounds across the UK to discuss violence against women and girls with a focus on prevention.
A report recently published by the UN revealed that every 10 minutes, a woman or girl is killed by a partner or family member. In the UK alone, recorded cases of violence against women and girls increased by 37 percent between 2018 and 2023, reaching such high levels that police declared it a ‘national emergency’ in England and Wales and that it should be treated as seriously as terrorism. The UK National Police Chief’s council data found that nearly 2 million women a year are victims of male violence.
“Universities should prioritise researching, funding and devising more proactive approaches to reducing violence against women and girls, especially considering that sexual violence is argued to be structurally and institutionally embedded into higher education culture."
Kari Davies, principal academic in psychology at Bournemouth University, helped organise the conference and presented findings from her group’s research on sexual violence. “It’s a group that I founded a couple of years ago because when I joined the university, I found that there were quite a lot of us working in sexual violence, but from lots of different disciplines, lots of different perspectives,” Davies explains. “So, we've got loads of expertise in health, we've got some in psychology, criminology, sociology, and we're all working on related topics but just coming at it from a slightly different disciplinary perspective.”
Davies believes that bringing together experts from different fields is a more productive way to address this unrelenting issue. “I really wanted to create a space for us where we could come together and share our research because often these problems are better solved when we attack it from an interdisciplinary perspective,” Davies shares. “I think we need these spaces. I think sometimes it's quite difficult to have these conversations because it's a difficult topic to talk about and it's difficult to research. It also really fosters trust between people who are often working in fields that don't have any time and don't have any resources and under huge amounts of pressure.”
Universities should prioritise researching, funding and devising more proactive approaches to reducing violence against women and girls, especially considering that sexual violence is argued to be structurally and institutionally embedded into higher education culture. The UK Office Of National Statistics found that of any occupational group, students were the most likely to experience sexual assault. Other studies reveal that those who experience sexual violence often suspend their studies or even drop out altogether. A report published by King’s College London found that, in the past five years, not enough was being done by universities to research this kind of gendered violence. This has been attributed to the fact that universities feel a detached sense of responsibility while simultaneously minimising and tolerating the behaviour of perpetrators.
Other universities have taken new steps to address growing gender-based offences. In October, Open University opened a women’s centre devoted to protecting women from violence after receiving £7,730,000 from Research England. This grant came after the university published findings from the largest-ever survey conducted about online violence against women and girls last year, revealing that one in ten women in England have experienced online violence and one in eight have experienced violence online that eventually progressed to in-person violence. This was a huge advancement for UK higher education, especially considering that Open University is the largest university in the UK with over 140,000 students.
The keynote speaker at the official opening of the women’s centre was ElsaMarie D’Silva, founder of the Red Dot Foundation (India) and President of Red Dot Foundation Global (USA), who launched a crowd map app called Safe City that allows people to anonymously document sexual and gender-based violence. D’Silva explains that the online world has been a growing space for attacks against women and girls to occur.
She emphasises that this kind of crime is growing and yet much of it is still underreported. “90 percent of our reportees have said that they have not gone to the police and will not go to the police. So, it is a pandemic proportion,” D’Silva explains. “[What happens] online doesn't happen in a silo. It moves between the physical and the digital world. And the way that [the women’s centre] is approaching the topic is very holistic, because they're looking at it from various perspectives.”
Following the recognition of the scale of the issue, research and resources in this area need more funding. “Two percent of all development aid goes to women's rights. And women's rights is a very broad category under which sexual violence is one category. So, we need more funding. And that's why this research grant that the centre received is substantial.”
Furthermore, she highlights that men need to be more involved in discussing and decreasing this violence. “The third [step] is engaging men and boys because they don't actually talk about it. They often don't show up for these events, and they don't think it's their responsibility,” D’Silva explains. She applauded Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London, for launching the ‘Mate’ campaign in 2023, which encourages young men to talk to other men about preventing violence against women and to hold each other accountable for misogynistic behaviour that can ultimately lead to violence.
Opening centeres dedicated to tackling gender-based violence along with hosting conferences where experts from all backgrounds can explore interdisciplinary approaches to prevention are urgent measures that all universities should invest in to reduce the surging crimes against women and girls.
In reflecting on the current progress being made, D’Silva believes that we’re on the right track. “I think all of this - the research, the conversations, the laws, the policy - will drive the social change to take place. Because really, we have to challenge the culture. And we cannot wait for 200 years or 100 years for it to change.”