Breaking the Silence at Spanish Universities

This paper focuses on the impunity of aggressors in most Spanish universities and on the aspects that maintain these specific gender, power and knowledge dynamics and finally lead to the expulsion of the victims instead of the aggressors. Whereas VAW at universities all around the world is a recognized problem and most prestigious universities have implemented measures to combat this phenomenon, in Spain it is still silenced although first steps have demonstrated the need for researching this phenomenon. The project “Gender-based violence in Spanish universities” funded under the Spanish National RTD Program (Valls, 2006-2008) was pioneer. For the first time in Spain, a questionnaire with 1083 students, 13 in-depth interviews with professors and university staff, and 16 communicative daily life stories with students on this issue were conducted. The results, similar to international numbers, show that a high percentage of the participants knew someone or have suffered some kind of situation of VAW at the university. Besides, it evidenced that people supporting the victims of VAW become “second order victims”. This research was crucial in breaking the silence on VAW in Spanish universities and has also suggested evidence-based actions to fight against it. Once the results had been presented on a national level, universities increasingly started implementing actions to address VAW, asking CREA research for support. As a result of this process some faculties have introduced protocols for cases of harassment. This is also due to the political impact of the results since the Law for effective equality between women and men (Spanish Government, 2007) obliges all public offices to establish procedures on cases of harassment. Even if there is still resistance to changing these dynamics, the article in the Spanish law for equality is an important step to challenging the dynamics of gender, power and knowledge at Spanish universities.