Violence against women (VAW) is gender-based violence directed at women and girls on account of being female that can take on multiple forms and manifest in different contexts. Among the many possible forms of VAW, this article focuses on “piropos”, a type of stranger harassment situation. Specifically, the objectives of this study were two-fold: to analyze the usefulness of a tool to evaluate social attitudes towards this form of VAW and to analyze the influence of sociodemographic variables and prior victimization (whether as a witness or victim) on attitudes towards this type of violence among Spanish youth. An opportunity sample of 538 young Spanish people took part in this study. They filled out a sociodemographic data sheet, a victimization questionnaire designed ad hoc, and a questionnaire on attitudes towards “piropos”. The results obtained indicate that the questionnaire was adequate for use as a tool to evaluate social attitudes towards this type of VAW and suggest its applicability for future studies on attitudes towards “piropos” as a type of stranger harassment situation in a Spanish context. Moreover, the results on victimization not only corroborate the magnitude of street sexual harassment in Spain and a direct effect of gender on the perception of the violence experienced, they also reinforce the need to further investigate new aspects. Regarding attitudes towards “piropos”, the results obtained indicate that, in general, participants demonstrated negative attitudes or rejection, and these feelings were particularly strong among women.

Supportive attitudes towards intimate partner violence against women (IPVAW) normalize and promote these aggressive behaviors. As a result, more and more research is proposing the identification, analysis and intervention of these attitudes. However, the vast majority of this research focuses on students. The main objective of this paper is to analyze these supportive attitudes throughout the lifecycle. An opportunity sample of 200 Spanish participants, by age and sex fixed quotas, took part in this study. Attitudes were measured using the Inventory of Distorted Thoughts about Women and Violence, the Inventory of Beliefs about Intimate Partner Violence and the Gender Violence Implicit Association Test, a personalized form of Implicit Association Test (IAT). The results show that explicitly measured supportive attitudes towards intimate partner violence against women differ between age groups, adopting a U-shape distribution: lower acceptance among middle-aged-adults and young-adults and higher acceptance among adolescents and older adults. However, when these attitudes were implicitly measured, the IPVAW rejection increased with age, which is a counter-intuitive result and inconsistent with previous theoretical evidence. In summary, these results support an age effect that differs according to the measure of attitudes used and highlight some difficulties related to based-on-reaction-time measures among older people. This suggests the need for further research on the topic, especially among the older population.

Within the context of emergency situations, the terms witness or bystander are used to refer to individuals involved in oppressive incidents who are neither the victim nor the perpetrator. Among the different types of emergency situations, our study focuses on violence against women (VAW). In keeping with current efforts in the scientific literature on bystander intervention and the evidence currently available, the main focus of this study is to analyze some personal factors that reflect the characteristics or experiences of bystanders and that could have a bearing on their predisposition to help victims of VAW (i.e., empathy, a just world belief system, and expectations of self-efficacy) and later analyze the possible relationship between these personal characteristics and gender or previous experience as a VAW bystander. An opportunity sample of 546 Spanish participants (73.4% women and 26.6% men) between 18 and 56 years of age took part in this study and fill out a sociodemographic data sheet, a questionnaire to evaluate the experience as violence witness designed ad hoc, and the Characteristics of People who Help Questionnaire scale (CPHQ). The results obtained indicate that CPHQ could constitute an adequate measure for the three dimensions analyzed. Female participants are significantly more empathetic than males, but in the case of a just world belief and expectations of self-efficacy the results showed no gender-related differences. Additionally, only a just world belief was clearly influenced by having been a bystander to some form of VAW. In conclusion, this study contributes a proposal for an evaluating instrument featuring three relevant personal characteristics in the development of helping behaviors, presenting some results of interest regarding empathy, a just world belief, and expectations of self-efficacy and their relationship with gender or previous experiences as VAW bystanders. These results obtained suggest an initial path toward future research in the development of interventions with bystander participation in our environment.

The current study analyses the prevalence of sexual harassment among staff and undergraduate students at a Spanish public university. The EASIS-U, a 38-item questionnaire, was administered to a sample of 1,521 university students, and 172 staff members. Results show that 26.4% of teaching and research staff (TRS), 28.3% of administrative staff (AS), and 15.9% of the students had experienced at least one episode of sexual blackmail behaviour; 30.9% of TRS, 27.0% of AS and 16.0% of the students had experienced at least one episode of physical sexual harassment; and 23.7% of TRS, 34.4% of AS and 17.1% of the students had experienced at least one episode of verbal sexual harassment. A comparison of staff and students revealed significant differences in prevalence rates, with staff reporting higher rates of unwanted contact than students. Contrary to expectations, male students reported more sexual harassment than did female students. We analyse the possible reasons for these results.

This study describes and assesses the effectiveness of a brief training intervention to prevent sexual harassment (SH) in higher education. The aim of the training is to reduce the acceptance of SH myths and to increase the sensitivity towards sexist remarks (piropos). A quasi-experimental pre-post study with Spanish university students (N=102) was carried out. Data were collected through an online survey before and after the face-to-face training took place. The results indicate positive and significant effects of the training. Repeated measures ANOVA showed lower myth acceptance and higher rejection of piropos after the training. Further, training increased rejection of piropos for male more than for female participants. This study expands the limited research on the effectiveness of SH trainings, particularly in the higher education context. Effective strategies for universities to develop SH prevention programmes and promote a safe learning environment are discussed.

Understanding the scope of cyberviolence against women and girls in adolescents and the differences between girls and boys is a fundamental starting point for its prevention. This study analyzes the experiences of cyberaggression and cybervictimization perpetrated and suffered by 762 adolescents (399 girls and 363 boys) aged 14 and 15 in the Balearic Islands (Spain) through a diagnostic study of an electronic survey administering the Gender Violence 2.0 questionnaire. The descriptive results show that, in general, the majority of boys and girls do not commit or suffer from sexist behaviors in digital environments. A crosstab analysis (p < 0.001) confirms that, as expected, girls commit less cyberaggression and suffer more cybervictimization, while boys were more often the cyberaggressors and less frequently the victims. Specifically, boys claim to be cyberaggressors more often than girls, especially in relation to cybervictimization associated with sexual violence, impositions of beauty standards, and anti-patriarchal manifestations; girls claim to be cybervictims more often than boys, primarily experiencing cyberviolence related to partner cyber control and beauty standards. These results reinforce the need to design differentiated programs for the prevention of this cyberviolence: for boys, it should be focused on the cyberaggression committed, and for girls, it should be focused on identifying and coping with cyberaggression received.