Over the autumn term, Wonkhe teamed up with The 1752 Group’s Anna Bull to run a series of blogs on gender-based violence and harassment (GBVH) in higher education (HE).
In anticipation of the Office for Students (OfS) consultation response and GBVH prevalence survey – and while we wait to hear if there will be regulatory action in this area – we wanted to know what data is currently being held, what we can learn from it, and how it can be used to improve prevention and response programmes.
The series included contributions from academics, professional services staff, students’ union leaders, and others in various roles across the sector, as well as a piece from the regulator in England on the opportunities and challenges in gathering data on GBVH HE. Here is a little of what we found out.
Data on gender-based violence in UK universities is hard to come by – both at the institution and sector level. In their 2019 review of progress on the Changing the Culture report, Universities UK found that “only a small number of institutions are currently looking at the impact and evaluation of interventions.” While good practice has undoubtedly developed to some degree since then, it seems that what works in preventing GBVH is not accessible nor widely shared.
