EPUB and EPDF available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. Until recently, higher education in the UK has largely failed to recognise gender-based violence (GBV) on campus, but following the UK government task force set up in 2015, universities are becoming more aware of the issue. And recent cases in the media about the sexualised abuse of power in institutions such as universities, Parliament and Hollywood highlight the prevalence and damaging impact of GBV. In this book, academics and practitioners provide the first in-depth overview of research and practice in GBV in universities. They set out the international context of ideologies, politics and institutional structures that underlie responses to GBV in elsewhere in Europe, in the US, and in Australia, and consider the implications of implementing related policy and practice. Presenting examples of innovative British approaches to engagement with the issue, the book also considers UK, EU and UN legislation to give an international perspective, making it of direct use to discussions of ‘what works’ in preventing GBV.

South African women's still-increasing presence in local, provincial, and national institutions has inspired sweeping legislation aimed at advancing women's rights and opportunity. Yet the country remains plagued by sexual assault, rape, and intimate partner violence. Hannah E. Britton examines the reasons gendered violence persists in relationship to social inequalities even after women assume political power. Venturing into South African communities, Britton invites service providers, religious and traditional leaders, police officers, and medical professionals to address gender-based violence in their own words. Britton finds the recent turn toward carceral solutions—with a focus on arrests and prosecutions—fails to address the complexities of the problem and looks at how changing specific community dynamics can defuse interpersonal violence. She also examines how place and space affect the implementation of policy and suggests practical ways policymakers can support street level workers. Clear-eyed and revealing, Ending Gender-Based Violence offers needed tools for breaking cycles of brutality and inequality around the world.

Stopping Gender-based Violence in Higher Education provides a unique insight into how gender-based violence at universities is impacting students and staff and outlines the path toward tangible changes that can prevent it. Bringing together perspectives from academics, activists, practitioners, and university administrators, the book presents a diverse range of voices to constructively critique the field. Structured in three parts, the book begins by addressing the context, theory, and law that stipulates how universities can effectively respond to reports of gender-based violence. It goes on to discuss the most pragmatic ways to address the issue while contributing to prevention and supporting victim-survivors. Finally, the book advocates for the development of beneficial working partnerships with key external services available to university communities and also working with students as partners in an ethical and safe way. Throughout the book, contributors are invited to demonstrate a comprehensive institution-wide and trauma-informed approach to centre the needs of the victim-survivor and prioritize resources to undertake this vital work. Each chapter ends with a brief summary of key points or recommendations and suggested further reading on the chapter topic. Although the authors draw on research and policy from the UK Higher Education sector, the insights will be a useful resource for those in universities around the world. This book is an essential reference point and resource for professionals, academics, and students in Higher Education, as well as indispensable reading for activists, policymakers, police, rape crisis groups, and other organisations supporting these universities who want to make meaningful change in reducing, responding to, and preventing gender-based violence in Higher Education.

In the midst of unprecedented attention to gender based violence (GBV), prompted in part by the #MeToo movement, Collaborating for Change: Transforming Cultures to End Gender-Based Violence in Higher Education provides a groundbreaking analysis of higher education culture and how it can be transformed to eradicate GBV. This book builds on existing scholarship and practice, offering unique reflections from faculty, staff, and students about potential avenues for change that go beyond programs and policies. It recognizes the important work achieved to date on this topic but argues that transformation of cultures, rather than reform of practices, is now required. Starting from the premise that cultural change must be embedded in groups of people working together, the contributors to the book offer insights into what makes for constructive, effective collaborations between activists in universities and the wider community, as well as with university leaders, managers, and policy-makers. The volume is an interdisciplinary, international account/analysis of attempts to transform higher education cultures in an attempt to eradicate GBV. The chapters, contributed by leading scholars and practitioners in the field, span the experiences of GBV in Canada, the United States, Scotland, England, France, and India. Collaborating for Change reveals the different institutional, political, and cultural contexts in which activists, scholars, and practitioners endeavor to eradicate GBV and provides insights for others engaged in this work around the globe. The book argues that nothing short of a transformation is required to make higher education safe for all.

Decriminalizing Domestic Violence asks the crucial, yet often overlooked, question of why and how the criminal legal system became the primary response to intimate partner violence in the United States. It introduces readers, both new and well versed in the subject, to the ways in which the criminal legal system harms rather than helps those who are subjected to abuse and violence in their homes and communities, and shares how it drives, rather than deters, intimate partner violence. The book examines how social, legal, and financial resources are diverted into a criminal legal apparatus that is often unable to deliver justice or safety to victims or to prevent intimate partner violence in the first place. Envisioned for both courses and research topics in domestic violence, family violence, gender and law, and sociology of law, the book challenges readers to understand intimate partner violence not solely, or even primarily, as a criminal law concern but as an economic, public health, community, and human rights problem. It also argues that only by viewing intimate partner violence through these lenses can we develop a balanced policy agenda for addressing it. At a moment when we are examining our national addiction to punishment, Decriminalizing Domestic Violence offers a thoughtful, pragmatic roadmap to real reform.

Gender equality is a fundamental value of the mission of the European Union. One of the challenging goals of gender-sensitive policies and programs is to eliminate gender-based violence (GBV) in many political, social, economic and cultural contexts. As a global phenomenon, gender-based violence is closely related to gendered social norms and expectations and unfair power relations based on gender identities.The UNIGEM project included 19 partner universities in the Balkans in order to initiate institutional changes and an organizational culture at universities that must have zero tolerance towards GBV in their environment. At the very beginning of the UNIGEM project, the TPO Foundation conducted extensive quantitative and qualitative research through surveys and indepth interviews at 18 universities with the aim of researching gender (in)equality and gender-based violence in these institutions.The brochure contains a summary of the key findings of this research. The entire research was designed by a team of researchers from the Balkan region: Zilka Spahić Šiljak, Jasna Kovačević, Jasmina Husanović, Ajla Demiragić, Milena Karapetrović, Mirjana Dokmanović, Merima Jašarević, Lana Bobić and Marija Tatar Anđelić. Most of the interviews with women in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia were conducted by Zilka Spahić Šiljak and Lamija Subašić. Interviews with women in Croatia were conducted by Lana Bobić and Daria Glavan Šćulac. In Serbia, interviews with women were conducted by Zorica Mršević. Interviews with men in BH and Montenegro were conducted by Adnan Hasanbegović and Muhamed Velagić, in Croatia by Dario Čepo and Nebojša Zelić, and in Serbia by Dragan Stanojević, Zoran Krstić and Vladimir Todorović.

While promoting access to resources and systems of support for those affected by gender-based violence is absolutely crucial, this new book focuses attention on the important question of how communities can take action to prevent violence and abuse. Using examples of current research and practice, the book explores the actions that can be taken in individual sectors of society, our schools, faith communities, campuses, on our streets and using new popular technologies. The contributors draw on global examples to highlight the importance of learning from the study of the interaction between socio-political contexts and effective policies and strategies to address gender-based violence. Chapters take up the challenge of exploring the construction of effective programmes that address cognitive, affective and behavioural domains. They discuss what people know, how they feel and how they behave, and include the important challenge of how to engage men in working towards the elimination of gender-based violence, offering positive messages which build on men’s values and predisposition to act in a positive manner. Importantly, such strategies place the responsibility for preventing gender-based violence on the society as a whole rather than on vulnerable individuals. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in gender studies, women’s studies, social work, sociology, law and health studies. Its unique approach focuses on the achievement of prevention at the earliest possible stage and examines the issue through a society-wide, but community-focused lens.