Join our campaign to eradicate gender-based violence in research and academia!

Leveraging on the International day for the Elimination of violence against women (25 November), we are joining forces with sister projects involved in structural change for gender equality in research and academia (SUPERA, SPEAR, TARGETED-MPI, TARGET, GEARING ROLES, RESET) as well as with other interested sister projects, organisations, and individuals, to raise awareness on gender-based violence in research and academia through a campaign running between 22 and 29 November.

Gender-based violence is a complex, prevalent, persistent feature and force in many organisations, with pandemic proportions. Violence, violations, and abuse may be physical, sexual, economic/financial, psychological – online or offline – and can include gender or sexual harassment.

Universities and research organisations are not exempt from this pandemic. Specific organisational structures can even create conditions for hierarchies of power that are structured by gender and age and regularly underpin violence. While gender-based violence deeply impacts individual lives, it also has serious social, economic, and health repercussions on organisational and social levels.

Despite the scale, the political significance and the growing interest in academia, gender-based violence in research organisations remains largely under-reported and under-researched. It also often remains unspoken.

How to participate?

From 22 to 29 November, all projects, organisations, and individuals intent on eradicating gender-based violence in academia and research organisations are invited to actively post on social media using the hashtag #SafeResearch4All.

Media, articles, reports designed or collected by UniSAFE and sister projects – namely the SUPERA project – have been made freely available in an Awareness-raising Toolkit. When sharing UniSAFE results, full acknowledgement of the project and authors must be mentioned, as stated in the introduction to the reports.

All contributions are welcome!

If you wish to share contents on the same topic, whether research results, findings, data, reflections on the issue, or examples of what your institution, region or country is doing to prevent gender-based violence in academia or research organisations, share by email at unisafe-eu@esf.org for them to be added to the toolkit.

Fighting gender-based violence in academia and research starts with bringing the issue to the surface, paving the way for victims to speak out, and for all students and research staff to be proactive role models in this respect.

  Expected to be among the largest of its kind, the survey will be launched in January 2022.

The EU-funded project UniSAFE announced 46 universities and research organisations from 15 European countries will participate in its European survey on gender-based violence. Click here to access the full press release.

The survey will be implemented from January to April 2022 among participants’ staff, undergraduate and graduate students, and could potentially be one of the largest of its kind to provide measurable evidence of gender-based violence in European research and performing organisations.  

Gender-based violence is a persistent force present in all universities and research organisations. Although they have not specifically encountered more violence than in other organisations, UniSAFE partner universities and research organisations recognise the importance of this universal issue and are intent on eradicating it by taking proactive measures.  

The first step within this project will be to gather measurable evidence on the prevalence of gender-based violence in European universities and understand how it relates to its determinants and consequences. The research examines experiences and related attitudes and behaviours among staff and students from the participating universities and research organisations. This quantitative study will be completed by 60 individual interviews with researchers at higher risk of gender-based violence and case studies on institutional responses at selected research performing organisations.  

The next step will be to translate this solid and comparable data into recommendations and guidelines for all universities and organisations willing to implement radical change in preventing gender-base violence, protecting their students and staff, prosecuting the perpetrators, and providing services to their victims.  

“Despite the growing interest in gender-based violence in academia, it remains an under-developed field of knowledge and policy-making in the European Research Area. Generating in-depth data on a large scale will not only serve to raise awareness, it will also provide a solid basis to develop tools for universities and research organisations to eradicate gender-based violence” says Sofia Strid, UniSAFE scientific coordinator.

The UniSAFE consortium is developing the survey with the support of GESIS Leibniz-Institute for the Social Sciences, the largest infrastructure institution for social sciences in Germany. The team includes researchers and highly experienced practitioners with in-depth knowledge and extensive collaborative track record on researching gender-based violence. 

The aggregated data for this survey will be available in July 2022. 

The UniSAFE project thanks the following universities and research organisations for their active participation: 

• University of Namur (BE) 
• University of Ghent (BE) 
• University of Liège (BE) 
• Institute of Czech Literature Czech Academy of Sciences (CZ)
• University of Ostrava (CZ)
• University of West Bohemia (CZ) 
• Tampere University (FI) 
• University of Helsinki (FI)
• University of Lapland (FI)
• CNRS (FR) 
• International Space University (FR)
• University of Paris-Est Créteil (FR) 
• University of Cologne (DE) 
• Technical University of Dresden (DE) 
• Forschungszentrum Jülich (Helmholtz Association) (DE)
• University of Lübeck (DE) 
• FH Aachen (DE) 
• University of Akureyri (IS) 
• Reykjavik University (IS) 
• University of Iceland (IS) 
• TU Dublin (IE) 
• Maynooth University (IE) 
• University of Cagliari (IT) 
• Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (IT) 
• University of Turin (IT) 
• Mykolas Romeris University (LT)
• Vilnius Art Academy (LT)
• Vilnius University (LT) 
• Kaunas University of Technology (LT) 
• Wrocław University of Environmental and Life Sciences (PL)
• Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń (PL) 
• Institute of Nuclear Physics (PL)
• University of Warsaw (PL)
• Union University (RS) 
• University of Belgrade (RS) 
• University of Novi Sad (RS)
• University of the Basque Country (ES)  
• University of Granada (ES)
• University Jaume I (ES)
• University of Deusto (ES)
• Halmstad University (SE) 
• University West (SE) 
• Middle East Technical University (TR)
• Ozyegin University (TR) 
• Sabanci University (TR)  
• University of Warwick (UK)
• Babraham Institute (UK)
• Brunel University (UK)