Promotion of publications within the UNIGEM project

The challenges of Mainstreaming Gender Equality in university communities. Fighting gender-based violence – key research results
Editors: Zilka Spahić Šiljak, Jasna Kovačević, Jasmina Husanović

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.

GENDER BASED VIOLENCE IN UNIVERSITY COMMUNITIES POLICY, PREVENTION AND EDUCATIONAL INTERVENTIONS IN BRITAIN.
SUNDARI ANITHA I RUTH LEWIS

We understand GBV as behavior or attitudes underpinned by inequitable power relations that hurt, threaten or undermine people because of their (perceived) gender or sexuality. This definition recognises that GBV is influenced by and influences gender relations and problematizes violence premised on hierarchical constructions of gender and sexuality. Women and girls constitute the vast majority of victims of GBV, and men the overwhelming majority of perpetrators (Watts and Zimmerman, 2002; Hester, 2009). GBV includes a continuum of behaviours and attitudes such as domestic violence, sexual violence, sexist harassment on the streets, trans/homophobic expressions and behaviours, and expressions on social media which normalise sexism and sexual objectification. These expressions and behaviors are connected through what Kelly (1988) described as a continuum of incidents and experiences. The continuum of incidents (Kelly, 1988, 1989) refers to the conceptual connections between acts that constitute the wallpaper of violations – the behaviors and expressions so commonplace that they often recede into the minutiae of everyday life – and the less common ‘sledgehammer’ events (Stanko, 1985) that are more widely recognised as harm, which are both underpinned by and reinforce gendered power hierarchies.”