This paper exposes the role of universities in creating silence around gender-based violence in higher education, drawing on narratives from 39 qualitative interviews with victims/survivors and bystanders about reporting incidents and experiences. In this paper, we extend concept of ‘network silence’ around sexual harassment to other forms of gender-based violence. Our research applies three components of the theoretical model of network silence, namely, self-silencing by victims/survivors, silencing, and not hearing by others, and analyses their contextual manifestations through the reporting experiences of victims/survivors and bystanders. This helps to identify the traits of the informal organisational structures and power dynamics, gendered attitudes, actors, and factors which facilitate silencing. The intersectional approach in our analysis of organisational contextual traits contributes to the research on inequality regimes in universities. The findings suggest that universities are making limited efforts to address silence around gender-based violence. We conclude that shared beliefs among the leadership about the reputation and prestige of the university facilitate the endurance of silence in universities. Our findings indicate reasons why universities fail to create spaces that are safe from gender-based violence.

This chapter presents an analysis of qualitative research data collected through 54 individual interviews with researchers about their experiences, observations and consequences of gender-based violence in universities. The interview data were collected as part of the H2020 UniSAFE research project Gender-Based Violence and Institutional Response: Building a Knowledge Base and Operational Tools to Make Universities and Research Organisations Safe. In this chapter, gender and intersectional theory as well as feminist violence studies are applied to examine individual stories, incidents or events that may be regarded not as violence according to legal definitions but as patterned practices of power, domination and inequality in academia. The collected empirical data show that victims often suffer nuanced verbal and non-verbal behaviours that can expand the conventional understanding of sexual harassment as well as psychological, sexual, physical and economic violence. Intersecting inequalities in terms of gender, race, ethnicity and/or migrant status significantly increase the risks of experiencing gender-based violence due to a heightened dependency on supervisors or managers and sexist or racist attitudes and prejudices that exist within universities. Many interviewees reported negative effects on their physical and mental health as well as their personal and professional lives, which impacted their decision to change employment, switch research fields or leave academia. <!----> <!----> <!----> <!---->

Research on gender‐based violence highlights the need to engage men in prevention work through social change programs that present care as a powerful antidote to violence. Implementation of such programs worldwide provides many examples of how education and support for fathers and fathers‐to‐be can promote healthy masculinities and relationships with an intimate partner and their children. This article aims to explore the findings and lessons learned from the pilot of the European Union‐funded Promotion, Awareness Raising and Engagement of men in Nurture Transformations (PARENT) project (PARENT) which sought to develop and pilot curricula adapted from the internationally tested Program P methodology. The PARENT pilot worked in four European countries to provide training activities for social, educational, and health professionals, as well as education groups for fathers and parents, with the overarching goal of preventing domestic violence through the promotion of engaged fatherhood. By reporting the results from mixed‐methods impact evaluations of pilot programs conducted with professionals and parents, this article discusses how gender‐synchronous father‐focused training can contribute to a shift toward increased positive engagement of fathers during the first 1000 days of a child's life. The article conveys the pilot's promising impact on the knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors of professionals and parents, and it examines some of the key contextual factors, limitations, and implementation approaches that plausibly contributed to the PARENT pilot outcomes, with the aim to formulate useful considerations for future scale‐up efforts or the future implementation of similar programs to engage fathers in nurturing care and violence prevention.

Although universities often adopt diversity and inclusion policies, the everyday experience of employees indicates multiple and intersectional forms of discrimination. This article discusses how institutional norms and practices reinforce power structures and stop those experiencing intersectional discrimination from voicing their experiences of gender‐based violence in higher education. We employ the frameworks of “everyday racism” and “network silence” to analyse 12 interviews with racially minoritised women who experienced gender‐based violence in academia and one bystander. Our findings challenge the assumption of universities that gender‐based violence and racial discrimination are marginal concerns. The interviews point to institutional factors that generate, coerce, and support silence. They reveal a paradox combination of dynamics of hypervisibility and invisibility, structural barriers, institutional practices, discriminatory attitudes, stereotypes, and prejudices as factors contributing to silencing, othering, and marginalisation within academia. Women from ethnic minorities and marginalised groups demonstrate both self‐silencing and the deprivation of their agency and voice due to cultural normative expectations. We conclude by exploring alternatives to promote transformational change that considers intersectional and multiple forms of discrimination. We suggest what change agents in higher education institutions can do to hear unheard voices and reduce the long‐standing multiple disadvantages faced by intersectionally marginalised groups.

Power abuse is central to gender-based violence (GBV), and research suggests that GBV continues to thrive within academic environments, despite a low number of formal complaints (Lipinsky et al, 2022). The aim of this article is to explore power expressions and structures of inequality which enable gender-based violence within academia but also how such abuse is resisted. The analysis is based on two sets of interviews from the EU Horizon 2020 funded UniSAFE project: one with individuals directly affected by GBV, and one with professionals working on implementation of policies/practices against GBV. Theoretically, the article draws on Gaventa’s (2005) power-analysis framework and Ahmed’s (2021) work on power and complaints. We find that the struggles of recognition and reporting are related to the invisible and hidden nature of the power abuse, as well as the specific context of academia. The abuse is often subtle but persistent and thus challenging to capture through incident-based reporting. Furthermore, the conditions for abuse are shaped by hierarchies and dependencies. We find that the forms of resistance possible to enact are related to the nature and condition of the abuse. While strings of dependencies create conditions for control and exploitation, they also shape the conditions for informal strategies of resistance that can be used in the pursuit of justice. We conceptualise these forms of subtle and informal strategies as shadow resistance. The article recommends active monitoring of patterns of abuse as well as strategies of resistance to address GBV in academia.