A whole campus approach to tackling gender based violence

Those who study and work in our universities are no more immune to domestic abuse, rape, sexual violence and harassment than those in the general population. Statistics show that stalking, harassment, sexual assault and domestic abuse are significant issues facing Scottish women today and university age women are no exception, with 1 in 4 reporting unwanted sexual behaviour during their studies and one in five experiencing sexual harassment during their first week of term (National Union of Students (NUS) 2013). The NUS (2012) survey explicitly connects a university ‘lad culture’ with the normalisation of “language and attitudes that are supportive of sexual harassment and violence”. This paper presents data from a research project that is implementing the Scottish Government violence against women and girls policy ‘Equally Safe’ in a higher education setting. The project is mirroring the Equally Safe response in its four work streams of: Curriculum / Knowledge Exchange, Campus Policy, HR And Campus Safety, Primary Prevention and Early Intervention. Underpinning this policy driven response the project also involves a multi-methodology framework to generate data on a whole university student and staff population to capture prevalence and incidence data via an online survey, and employing interviews and focus groups to capture experiential and attitudinal data. This will be the first whole university sample data for the UK.