Written submission from Professor Vanita Sundaram (SPP0059)

 

Understanding the causes, forms and impact of sexual harassment in public places (with a focus on schools and universities)

 

Introduction

I am currently a Professor in Education at the University of York. My research expertise lies in gender and education broadly, focusing more specifically on gender-based harassment and violence among young people, violence prevention work in schools, sex and relationships education, and most recently, ‘lad culture’ in higher education. I have published widely on these issues, including the recent books, Preventing youth violence: rethinking the role of gender and schools (2014) and Global debates and key perspectives on sex and relationships education: Addressing issues of gender, sexuality, plurality and power (2016). My research shows that sexual harassment in public places, including in schools and universities, is a prevalent experience for young women in particular, and that it impacts negatively on their mental well-being, self-esteem, their understandings of gender norms and their own performances of gender and sexuality. It is imperative that we draw on the growing and robust body of evidence available from the UK to recognize and address the prevalence and impact of sexual harassment and abuse in public spaces, which include educational settings.

 

Executive summary

This submission presents evidence from three separate research projects with young people to illustrate the forms and impact of sexual harassment in young women’s lives, in particular. These are: Staff perspectives on ‘lad culture’ in higher education (Jackson & Sundaram, 2014-15); Youth-led sex and relationships education (Sundaram, 2013-2014); Preventing youth violence (Sundaram, 2011-2012). The evidence presented covers sexual and physical harassment and abuse experienced by young people and adults, sometimes in schools and universities themselves, and covers the following questions posed by the inquiry:

 

1. What is the impact of sexual harassment on the lives of women and girls?

2. What are the factors (including social and cultural factors) that lead to sexual harassment of women and girls in public places?

3. How do men and boys learn what is acceptable behaviour? 

4. What evidence is there of links between harmful attitudes that men and boys have towards women and girls and sexual harassment? 

 

The submission makes the following points:

 

Submission

  1. Sexual harassment, sexual abuse and violence directed towards young people is increasingly recognised as a widespread phenomenon. The recent issue of ‘lad culture’ in universities has focused on the prevalence and impact of sexist values, attitudes and practices, including sexual harassment and rape culture, on the student experience. Following recent NUS research on the gendered impact of ‘lad culture’ (NUS, 2010, 2013, 2014) there are growing calls for universities to create environments that promote gender equality and respect and that challenge all forms of gender-based harassment and violence.

 

  1. Most of the available evidence on ‘lad culture’ in the UK has been conducted on and from the student perspective. This research shows that women students, in particular, experience a range of forms of sexual harassment and abuse. These include sexual harassment and bullying through social and digital media; groping and unwanted touching; cat-calling, sexually harassing chanting or shouting and objectifying and degrading jokes and comments directed at them in public spaces (NUS, 2010, 2013, 2014).

 

  1. Recent research by Jackson and Sundaram (2015) as well as in the European Universities Supporting Survivors of Sexual Violence project has focused on staff experiences and understandings of ‘lad culture’. This work, conducted across twelve different institutions in the UK across the two projects, has found that many university staff have witnessed examples of sexual harassment and abuse in social spaces, as well as in university classrooms and halls of residence. These behaviours included rape supportive jokes and degrading and abuse language used in university bars, on public transportation, and in social venues in university towns; the objectification of women in online spaces and in promotional materials for different events which were displayed in public spaces; and unwanted touching, online sharing of pictures that have been taken without consent and/or that are sexually objectifying or taken with the purpose of degrading or humiliating the women in question. University staff were also targets of demeaning and sexist language, including sexualised comments made about their appearance in online and offline spaces. The 1752 Group has also shown the widespread extent of sexual harassment and violence perpetrated by university staff on students and other staff (as highlighted by recent Guardian reports on this issue).

    3. Sexual harassment and abuse was thought to be linked primarily to social contexts in higher education, revolving around sports, nights out and excessive drinking. Our findings do suggest that much sexual harassment and abuse occurs in social settings on and off university campuses.

 

 

‘Groups of lads standing in corridors in buildings and making comments about young girls as they go past, staff as well as students’

 

‘Sending each other pictures of their conquests, either mid shag, or sometimes without them knowing which is very concerning […] blokes circulating pictures of unconscious or just women who are not dressed at all, completely naked, who are not aware of the fact that a picture’s been sent and it will be circulated around men.  And what’s really worrying is how acceptable that is amongst other men, completely acceptable.’

‘I mean we’ve had instances where people have either been verbally abused or the cat whistle which obviously tends to be the lower end of harassment.  To the extreme where there’s actually, it results in inappropriate touching, to physical harm or unwanted behaviour.’

 

‘There is a kind of steady stream of cases of reported sexual violence on campus.  It’s maybe one or two a term and in pretty much every case, they come to nothing [because of insufficient evidence or unwillingness to report].’

 

(All quotes above are from Jackson & Sundaram, 2015)

 

  1.    However, sexual harassment is not confined to social spaces in which alcohol might be attributed as the cause of risky or boundary-pushing behaviour. A number of staff in our research gave examples of ‘laddish’ behaviour in teaching and learning contexts and in the academy itself. Female lecturers were seen as particularly vulnerable to gender-based harassment, intimidation and humiliation.

 

‘Sexualised feedback regarding lecturers, for example, MILF’

 

‘A colleague of mine who was giving an interactive lecture on India and she said, does anyone know how many women are in the [parliament], and there was a cry from the back from somebody of, ‘too many’.  I encounter a lot of misogyny and this sort of jokes about feminism, about women, about all these sorts of things.  It’s really prevalent.’

 

‘So the comments that are made about women, their appearance and sometimes I think there’s a higher level of intimidation around women lecturers, are not what are levelled against men.’

 

(All quotes above are from Jackson & Sundaram, 2015)

 

  1. However, not all staff in this study appeared to understand the roots of ‘laddish’ behaviour as a gendered phenomenon, in terms of its perpetration and impact. Rather, ‘lad culture’, characterised as sexual harassment and abuse, tended to be explained as stemming from excessive drinking, irresponsible behaviour, a lack of responsibility and immaturity. I argue that this understanding of gender-based harassment suggests a lack of awareness of the origins of such behaviours and a casting of perpetrators of such behaviours as a ‘few bad apples’ in the bunch. The systemic inequalities that frame and produce such behaviours are very rarely recognised. We suggest that an analysis of these behaviours as they manifest earlier in the educational lifecourse aid an understanding that these behaviours are not ‘new’ and cannot be simplistically attributed to a particular age group or to drunken or irresponsible behaviour. Sexual harassment was trivialised and dismissed as ‘misunderstandings’ or as ‘rare’ by staff working in universities, contributing to a culture in which victims of sexual harassment are dismissed and silenced and such practices are excused and perpetuated.

 

‘I wouldn’t say for a moment that it’s predominant in any way … I’ve had female students come and report unwanted attention or assaults or non-consensual, but I’ve never had the feeling this was a massive problem or there were dozens of these cases.’

 

‘Some of them didn’t even realise it was sexual harassment, they just thought it was boys being boys […] it was actually quite surprising that this ‘sexy banter’ is actually harassment.’

 

‘One of the things about being male is that you just don’t … [know] low level comments just are … wrongly perceived.’

 

(All quotes above are from Sundaram, 2018)

 

  1. A robust body of evidence has shown that many young people are accepting of some of the behaviours that we now associate with ‘lad culture’ from a very young age. Research with 13-18 year olds suggests that young people trivialise and justify violence against women and girls (Sundaram, 2013, 2014; McCarry, 2010; Barter et al., 2009) view some forms of sexual harassment as normal and even inevitable (Barter et al. 2014) and excuse rape (Coy & Garner, 2012). Teenagers excuse sexual assault and rape in certain circumstances, including when girls/women are viewed as having behaved ‘inappropriately’ in relation to a male friend, acquaintance, partner or ex-partner (Coy et al., 2016).

 

  1. While international evidence suggests that young people in different geographical locations explain, justify and rationalise harassment and violence against women and girls (Barter et al. 2014, Sundaram, 2014, Prospero, 2006), we have a less developed understanding of why this might be the case. Gender-based harassment and violence can be conceptualised as existing on a continuum of multiple forms of abuse (Kelly, 1988). Multiple forms of harassment and abuse e.g. sexual name-calling, groping, sexual coercion, physical violence and rape can co-occur, occur to the same person at different times, and need not follow a linear progression (whereby rape must be preceded by sexual name-calling, for example). However, the continuum concept is useful for being able to theorise the factors underpinning these forms of harassment and abuse.

 

  1. Recent research shows that gender expectations and norms underpin young people’s understandings of what constitutes acceptable behaviour, and how boys and girls might be expected to behave in relation to each other (Sundaram, 2014a, 2014b; Sundaram & Sauntson, 2016). Young people’s views on ‘appropriate’ gender behaviour form the basis from which they explain, justify and rationalise violence against women and girls. For example, girls who do not conform to gender expectations of women within heterosexual relationships are narrated as ‘deserving’ of violence towards them.

 

‘If they hear things about you, and they won’t even ask you … Some guys do not mind you talking to [another] guy, it’s just that they are like, if you cheat on them, then obviously the guy is going to get messy.’

 

‘If she slept with someone else, then there could be a little bit of violence, but he shouldn’t take it to the extreme.’

 

‘If she turns him away [for sex] and he is like a violent person and he feels rejected and embarrassed then it could turn into a violent situation.’

 

(All quotes above are from Sundaram, 2013)

 

  1. The salience of gender expectations and normative discourses about ‘normal’ gender behaviour are visible in widespread harassment experienced by young people at school. A recently completed research project on school-based sex and relationships education revealed the extent to which sexualised harassment permeates the school world, influencing the practices and beliefs of young women in particular (Sundaram & Sauntson, 2016). Young women talked about being overtly judged and shamed on the basis of their appearance:

 

‘I think there’s definitely like a stereotype about what’s sexy.  Like skinny, big boobs, big arse, yeah.  But then like no one really has that.  No one is like that thin or like skinny and have big boobs and a big arse. It doesn’t happen.  I’ve never seen that anywhere, even models.’

 

‘I hang out with a whole group of guys and they’ve devised this graph of girls on a scale. In the school, like I’m on the graph, a couple of my best friends are on the graph.  And they place you on it to like what you look like, your figure and stuff like that; they have like different zones on the graph.  They tell me all about it but they don’t tell me where I am on the graph.  It makes me feel just like really self-conscious because I’m like, where am I on this graph?  Am I in like a really bad place? But, like it did make me feel like I’d be in a really bad place.  Then they have this bit called the whale zone which is like the really fat girls in our year.  Which I think is really, really horrible.’

 

‘Guys tell girls at our school if they do [fancy them], it’s gross.  Like about one of our friends guys were like, “Oh yeah, but she’s lovely naked.”  Oh my god, it’s horrible, I don’t like it really.’

 

‘They said it to me because I’m quite flat chested and I don’t really have a bum, but they just said to me that my personality is really slutty and I was just like, ‘That’s not very nice’.’

 

(All quotes above are from Sundaram & Sauntson, 2016).

 

  1. The findings also revealed the extent to which sexual pressure and coercive behaviours were prevalent among school-aged pupils:

 

‘And then like if you say you’ve never kissed a guy then you’re really frigid but then if you say you’ve kissed like loads of guys ...’

 

‘They’re ready to have blow jobs and hand jobs and girls aren’t ready to do that kind of stuff, so it’s kind of developed at the wrong age and it doesn’t really work.’

 

‘If a guy went to like touch your arse and you smacked him he’d be like, ‘Oh I heard you’re well frigid’ and then but you’re not being slutty ...’

 

‘But I know there’s been like Lucy[1], she was telling Grace that she felt pressured like when people asked her to do that.  She thought that, she didn’t like her reputation, but she kind of felt like she’d lose it if she did, so she gave people like blow jobs and stuff because that’s what they wanted, not because she wanted to give them.’

 

(All quotes above are from Sundaram & Sauntson, 2016).

 

  1. Recent research suggests that gender expectations shape young people’s behaviour in particular ways, many of which involve demeaning young women (Sundaram & Sauntson, 2016). Young women’s learning about expected gender behaviour is often premised on ‘pleasing the boys’, which may include conforming to particular physical ideals of femininity or female sexuality and which frequently entail an acceptance of sexual harassment through policing of physical appearance.

 

‘Sometimes, me and Fiona were talking about this, it’s like they even judge you on what knickers you wear.  If you don’t wear a thong then you’re frigid but if you wear a thong then you’re a slut.  It’s like do you not want us to wear any knickers at all?  Would that make you happy?  You can’t get the right balance.’

 

‘That is a bit like boys expect girls to be wearing make-up and to look perfect whereas don’t always necessarily expect as much of that like from boys, if that makes sense.’

 

‘It’s like the sexual stuff isn’t like… you can all be exactly the same girls but if one girl had messy hair, no make-up and was wearing like a jumper and jeans and this girl, exactly the same was wearing like really tight tops, they’d be like, “Oh my god, she’s so much more pretty than her.’

 

(All quotes above are from Sundaram & Sauntson, 2016).

 

  1. Resistance to sexual harassment and monitoring is expressed by some young women. However, these girls remain in the minority and their resistance is expressed in tentative terms, signalling the power of normative expectations to conform to particular gender behaviours. Even when harassment was rejected by young women, their narratives revealed a degree of internalisation of gender expectations (Sundaram & Sauntson, 2016, below)

 

‘But people use [the word ‘slut’] like, ‘Oh my God, you’re wearing a short skirt, you’re so slutty’.  Well actually she’s not.  She’s only wearing like a short skirt.  Or even slutty clothes, it doesn’t make her a slut because she hasn’t slept around with loads of people.  People use it like all the time, they don’t really know what it means, so that really annoys me.’(added emphasis)

 

  1. Young women do point to areas for challenge to gender-based harassment and underlying gender norms which may be reinforced by school curricula. For example, they are clear that the content of sex and relationships education should challenge existing gender expectations around sexual desire, sexuality and sexual harassment or abuse. Sex and relationships education should not position girls as less sexually desiring or agentic, or boys as automatically sexually desiring. Assumptions around heterosexual desire should be challenged, as should powerful norms about girls’ responsibility to protect themselves from men, in terms of pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections or rape and harassment.

 

‘It is, it’s not, like contraception and stuff, they say, “Girls make sure your boyfriend uses a condom.” And that is not our responsibility, well partly it is but it’s their responsibility to make sure we’re on the pill and their responsibility… it’s silly.’

 

‘It is the guys essentially raping the girls, so they should be taught not to do it.  Because, if you’re just telling the girls how to protect themselves, you should like kill it from where it starts.’

 

‘Yeah, I think we learn about porn next year because…, but I think that it’s like guys expect more from girls and I think that they just…, they shouldn’t because in porn you normally see girls, like the guy is always like dominating the girl and they’re getting pleasure out of it and stuff.’ 

 

(All quotes above are from Sundaram & Sauntson, 2016).

 

  1. Recent projects to challenge sexual harassment and violence in universities have focused on transforming the cultures of these organisations, including awareness-raising about the prevalence of sexual harassment, the impact on survivors and challenging myths and misperceptions about why sexual harassment and violence occurs and who is most likely to be victimised. These projects (including the Universities Supporting Survivors of Sexual Violence project referenced earlier in the submission) seek to develop empathy and understanding for survivors, as well as skills for supporting survivors who choose to disclose their experiences. The need to recognise sexual harassment and abuse in public places as linked to gender inequality more widely (and to current, dominant gender expectations and norms for women and men) is essential to challenging the values underpinning such behaviours, as well as the behaviours themselves. A continued focus on individual ‘monsters’ or sensationalised ‘sex scandals’ detracts from our understanding of sexual harassment and abuse as widespread, as perpetrated (predominantly) by men and boys of differing ages, across social strata, ethnicities and national contexts, (predominantly) against women and girls of differing ages, socio-economic backgrounds, ethnicities and national contexts. If we can challenge current expectations for masculinity and femininity in early years settings, scaffolded by work with parents and communities, we can address the root causes of sexism, sexual harassment and sexual violence perpetrated against women and girls in public places, and elsewhere.

 

 

March 2018

 

References

 

Barter, C., McCarry, M., Berridge, D. & Evans, K. (2009). Partner exploitation and violence in teenage intimate relationships. University of Bristol: NSPCC.

Barter, C.  et al. (2014). Young people’s perspectives on interpersonal violence and abuse in intimate relationships. STIR Briefing Paper 5. Paper available at: http://stiritup.eu

Coy, M. & Garner, M. (2012). Definitions, discourses and dilemmas: policy and academic engagement with the sexualisation of popular culture Gender & Education 24(3) 285-301.

Jackson, C. & Sundaram, V. (2015).  Is ‘lad culture’ in higher education a problem? Exploring the perspectives of staff working in UK universities. Society for Research into Higher Education.

McCarry, M. (2010). Becoming a ‘proper’ man: young people’s attitudes about interpersonal violence and perceptions of gender. Gender and Education, 22(1), 17-30.  

Sundaram, V. (2013).  Violence as understandable, unacceptable or deserved? Listening for gender in teenagers’ talk about violence. Gender and Education

Sundaram, V. (2014). Preventing Youth Violence: Rethinking the Role of Gender and Schools. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Sundaram, V. & Saunton, H. (2016). Discursive silences: using critical linguistic and qualitative analysis to explore the continued absence of pleasure in sex and relationships education in England. Sex Education: Sexuality, Society and Learning (Special Issue on Young People and Sexual Pleasure), 16(3), 240-254.

Sundaram, V. (2018). Making visible the 'invisible': Institutional conceptualisations of and responses to sexual violence. Keynote talk given at Brunel University, Universities Supporting Survivors of Sexual Violence local findings conference, 7th February 2018.

 

 

[1] Pseudonyms for all participants are used.