Tpo Fondacija - Novosti

Sexism, offensive comments, unwanted compliments and touching are among the most common forms of gender-based harassment in the university community. More than 60 percent of students and teaching and administrative staff at faculties in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro and Croatia have personally experienced some form of gender-based harassment and violence, while 80 percent of them are familiar with such experiences of others, it was recently published research by the TPO Foundation from Sarajevo, conducted at 18 universities.

Source: diskriminacija.ba

Babuskara, jezikara, ženska glavo – these are some of the sexist comments that about 57 percent of respondents from Bosnia and Herzegovina said they heard at university. More than 17 percent of people have personally received unwanted compliments and vulgar comments via phone, e-mail or SMS, and almost 20 percent of them know colleagues who have experienced the same.

While the numbers are alarming, reports are rare, as is open conversation about the issue within the academic community.

“What is characteristic of all partner universities is that very little is said about violence, that there is fear, stigma and mistrust in institutions that nothing will change even when the victim speaks,” says Zilka Spahić Šiljak, director of the TPO Foundation and one of the editors of research „Challenges of integrating gender equality in the university community: Against gender-based violence“.

At the faculties, the existence and influence of gender-based violence is minimized, and the perpetrators are not prosecuted and continue to work at their workplaces, is one of the conclusions of the research.

“This was confirmed to us in the interviews by women, especially between the ages of thirty and fifty, in the most productive age of their careers, who said that they survived terrible mobbing and violence, were exposed to discrimination and that they lost their health and the will to continue improving their careers”, explains Spahić Šiljak.

At the professor’s apartment with a bottle of drink

Close to 5,000 members of the university community participated in the TPO Foundation’s research – 4,754 questionnaires were filled in, and the research team interviewed 133 people. It was through the conversations that a clearer idea was created about specific cases of gender-based harassment that occur at the faculties. For the editor of the research, two phenomena that female students spoke about were striking – that there are professors who invite female students to their apartments to take exams, and that, on the other hand, there are female students who use their appearance to pass exams.

“That surprised me, for some people who were mentioned, who are known as great authorities in certain fields, that female students said that their colleagues went to those apartments, had to bring a certain type of drink, spent some time there. We didn’t get into what happened there, but the very thought that you are going to an exam in some kind of apartment, and that you are carrying drinks and that you are leaving, and that you are ready for that kind of relationship, that is terrible,” says Spahić Šiljak.

In addition, a large number of respondents in the interviews said that there are female students who use “the situation, their appearance and professors who are ready for this kind of communication” and come to the exam “challengingly dressed”, says Spahić Šiljak and adds that she was surprised that a large a number of women talk about their colleagues in this way.

“We have the abuse of those in a position of power – professors who use it, but, then, abuse on the other side, the students, who use that situation to achieve their goals in the short term. Those two things were somehow more disappointing than surprising to me.”

Faculties have adopted internal procedures, students are insufficiently familiar with them

Research by the TPO Foundation, which was carried out as part of the regional UNIGEM project, showed that almost half of the respondents were not aware that there are rules and procedures related to gender-based violence at their universities.

“Which again points to the fact that the victim wanders in the academic system, but also in the legal system itself, when and to whom to turn and ask for legal or psychological support”, explains Jasna Kovačević, professor at the Faculty of Economics in Sarajevo and editor of the research.

That the student population does not know that rules governing this area exist is confirmed by the Helsinki Parliament of the citizens of Banjaluka, the organization that initiated the adoption of the Guidelines for the Prevention of Sexual and Gender-Based Harassment at the University of Banjaluka in 2020.

Although the promotion of these guidelines should be the duty of the University and its faculties, a survey conducted by the Helsinki Parliament among students of several Banja Luka faculties showed that 99 percent of them do not know that the guidelines exist, explains Svjetlana Ramić Marković from the Helsinki Parliament. They came to this information when last year, in partnership with the United Women’s Foundation, they started promoting guidelines at colleges.

“This happens not only because the guidelines are not physically highlighted on the bulletin boards of individual faculties where they really should be, but because also in the online space, on the websites of the faculties, that is, the University of Banja Luka, they are cut off somewhere and you you can’t find easily”, says Ramić Marković.

The University of Bnajaluca says that such a small number of applications can be viewed from two angles. The first is that there has been a significant improvement in awareness of unacceptable types of behavior and that such negative occurrences are few, and the second relates to insufficient information and, possibly, reluctance to report.

“I think the real picture is somewhere between the two. I think that there has been a certain improvement in awareness and that these negative phenomena have been reduced, to some extent, to a minimum, but I also think that the number we have is also quite low”, says Kesić.

Guidelines, with the help of the Atlantic Initiative, as part of the project Prevention of sexual and gender-based harassment at universities in BiH, were developed and adopted during 2017 and 2018 at the University of East Sarajevo, as well as at the Faculty of Political Sciences, Faculty of Criminology, Criminology and security studies and the Faculty of Law in Sarajevo. Similar numbers of applications were confirmed to us by counselors from these institutions as well.

Since the introduction of the position of advisor in 2017 and 2018, the Faculty of Political Sciences has received one application, while at the University of East Sarajevo, the Faculty of Law, and the Faculty of Criminology, Criminology and Security Studies, advisors have not received any applications.

Precisely because of this fact, as well as the need for a deeper understanding of all the specifics of this extremely important field in the process of higher education, as explained by professors Dina Bajraktarević Pajević and Elvira Čekić, advisors at the Faculty of Criminology, Criminology and Security Studies, a project is being prepared at that faculty which in the summer semester of the academic year 2022/2023 will attempt to analyze in detail how students and employees understand the phenomenon of gender-based and sexual violence. They add that through the project, established procedures will be analyzed, as well as how well students and employees know them, so that improvement measures can be proposed.

Changing power relations is a long-term and painful process

In addition to the conducted research, as part of the UNIGEM project, the partner universities established centers or councils for gender equality and developed gender action plans that will need to be implemented in the coming period. At the University of Sarajevo, in October 2021, the Council for Gender Equality was established, chaired by Professor Jasna Kovačević. Until now, the council has been active in advocacy campaigns for gender equality, but it also takes on other roles.

“The council actively takes a role in the modification of the appropriate documentation and regulations at the university, so as an advisory body we took part in the public debate when the Law on Higher Education in Sarajevo Canton was adopted,” says Kovačević.

Spahić Šiljak adds that they have developed five syllabi in order to integrate the field of gender equality into curricula, and partner universities can now use them as optional or compulsory subjects. Until the end of the project, the focus will be on empowering the teaching and administrative staff, because, as the research showed, they do not have a high level of knowledge and understanding of the concepts of gender equality and gender-based violence.

“Now it is up to our coordinators who work at these universities to, within the framework of the teaching staff education program, not only present the results, but also find ways to now ensure a way to report violence so that the victim who reports it does not get lost in the system.”

The problem of gender-based violence at colleges is deeply rooted in our region and has various faces, and it will take a long time for all who represent the university community to approach it seriously and without minimizing its consequences, according to our interlocutors.

“It is a long-term and painful process, because changing hierarchical structures and power relations within the university community is not at all easy, but you have to start somewhere,” concludes Spahić Šiljak.

GENDER-BASED VIOLENCE AT UNIVERSITIES: EXPERIENCED BY MANY, REPORTED BY FEW