Today is March 8 - International Women's Day. With this blog post, we at SFS want to focus in particular on a major problem area within the university: sexual harassment.
Gender equality in higher education
There are many areas where the university can become more equal than at present. Women are overrepresented among students but underrepresented in the proportion of professors. Women have strictly better throughput than men. Research funding goes to a greater extent to men than women. There are remaining structures at higher education institutions, both among students and employees, which are problematic for the university's development and quality. There is simply a lot that can be touched when it comes to gender equality.
#Akademiuppropet and the work against sexual harassment
One area whose discussion is bright with its absence is sexual harassment * within the academy. In 2017, #metoo happened, which created waves in many sectors. At the university, there was #akademiuppropet, which was probably part of that UHR was given a government assignment to map the universities' work on preventing and dealing with sexual harassment within the university, summary can be found here. The report showed that there were relatively good routines for dealing with harassment within the staff, but relatively little for students, in particular there is a lack of support for doctoral students. This is despite the fact that students and especially doctoral students are a vulnerable group within the academy due to the power relations that exist.
The student unions must take great responsibility
Concerning students, UHR's report showed that the higher education institutions in many ways rely on the student unions to do most of the work, both for preventive purposes during receptions and more. but even when something has happened. The work of dealing with these difficult situations often ends up with organizations and individuals who do not have the resources or sufficient training. Over the years, several chairmen among SFS 'member corps have had to deal with tragic cases in which students have been exposed for many weeks. The university's response is often at best that the matter quickly comes up in the disciplinary committee and that one of the students is suspended for a certain period of time. In the worst case, the university does not have control and may pair offenders with the one who has been exposed without further action. This has happened at Swedish universities and is unacceptable.
Doctoral students end up in an extremely vulnerable position
Concerning doctoral students, the situation is even more problematic. Doctoral students often find themselves in a position of dependence on supervisors and others in the research world. Even as we in Sweden have come a long way in creating relatively secure forms of employment for doctoral students, there is still a lot to do and many doctoral students still have to withdraw their own salary through external grants. It is therefore particularly remarkable that so few efforts are directed at doctoral students to prevent and deal with sexual harassment. Here, SFS requires improvement at the university level.
Last financial year, SFS arranged a seminar on the universities' work regarding sexual harassment, and SFS DK's chairman wrote a debate article in this connection.
What can be done going forward?
We believe that much can be done to improve the situation going forward. In UHR's report, the student unions mention a number of examples:
Above all, more and clearer information is requested from 53 higher education institutions for students, but also for student unions and employees, and for the information to be more easily accessible, available on websites and integrated into the higher education institution's teaching. Some student unions also demand more knowledge at the university, especially from the university's staff, among other things it is emphasized that training opportunities on sexual harassment for the university's staff should not be voluntary. Some student unions believe that their universities could work differently in terms of prioritizing equality issues more, see sexual harassment as part of their work environment work, have clearer guidelines for the work with sexual harassment, and include sexual harassment in annual faculty meetings where the systematic prevention work against discrimination is followed up "
CLOCK
Here we want to see an expanded dialogue and that the higher education sector itself raises this issue to take up more space than it currently has. The issue is complex and concerns many different types of situations, contexts and solutions, but we see that there are good examples that many higher education institutions could implement today.
During the pandemic, the number of reports of sexual harassment has decreased according to CSN. Although this is positive, we can unfortunately expect them to rise again when education to a greater extent returns to being campus-based. It is therefore an important time to start looking at the efforts and structures that can be created to improve the situation. Sweden's students and doctoral students are worthy of a university without sexual harassment, let's work together towards that goal.
Simon Edström, Chairman of SFS
Linn Svärd, Vice Chairman of SFS
* To read more about what sexual harassment means and what the statistics look like. Read more at the Gender Equality Authority here.