Victim-survivors’ and response staff’s perspectives on reporting gender-based violence and harassment to UK higher education institutions

A growing body of research documents the poor experiences that victim-survivors of gender-based violence and harassment (GBVH) have of reporting to their higher education (HE) institutions, with this evidence leading some commentators to argue that formal reporting processes have ‘failed’. However, empirical studies in this area are heavily dominated by the US context with a lack of evidence around formal reporting experiences in other jurisdictions which might shed light on context-specific differences. To address this gap in existing literature, this study reports on data from 20 qualitative interviews with staff handling GBVH reports in UK HE and 27 academic staff and student reporting parties to explore why poor experiences of reporting are occurring. Challenges identified across both reporting parties and response staff were similar. These included a lack of rights for reporting parties, a weak regulatory regime, and unsafe practices around data sharing and confidentiality. However, response staff noted that at the time of interviews in 2020-21, institutional responses to GBVH in the UK remained a work in progress. This meant that reports were being dealt with within systems that staff acknowledged as not being fully fit for purpose. It is therefore unsurprising that reporting parties were having poor experiences. These findings are drawn on to argue, with Sara Ahmed, for formal processes as tools that can be mobilised to make visible the violence, oppression, and harms that are occurring within HEIs, and to attempt to change the cultures that enable such harms, to work towards gender justice in HE.