The impact of sexual violence is the incredibly unfortunate reality for too many students in Irish higher education institutions. Currently in her second year of her PhD in the school of sociology, Míde Power is questioning whether or not this has to stay a reality. Power’s PhD is focused on creating and developing sexual violence prevention training that is both intersectional and inclusive.
After earning her undergraduate and masters’ degrees from Trinity in occupational therapy and race, ethnicity, and conflict respectively, Power found herself working in the Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion department of a university. Here, she saw this work becoming more and more of a priority for the Department of Higher Education, with more funding and resources coming in. However, with the more resources, the more data you can collect, Power explains to me. This left Power wondering what voices were missing from the conversations around sexual violence.
“A lot of the international research that’s gone into sexual violence prevention training since 2018 will say that it’s predominantly straight, cis-gender, white, middle-class women who are really the ones informing and assessing sexual violence prevention training”, Power said, adding “while the generosity and courage of everyone who shares their perspectives, and experiences to inform sexual violence prevention initiatives cannot be overstated, to date, a lot of the examples included in those training programs will reflect heteronormative examples of sexual misconduct”.
Power says that what she is trying to do within her study and research is determine how the conversation can be expanded and to “diversify the voices that are informing the training that we have”. Key to this, is recognising how misconduct can intersect with other forms of discrimination, such as racism, classism, homophobia, and transphobia. Of the strongly gendered demographic of those informing the conversations, Power states, “we can’t solve sexual violence without men”, adding “We need everyone’s voices because you’re never going to solve a systematic issue like sexual violence without everyone’s voices and without valuing everyone’s perspectives”. Data collected by the Irish census in 2022 that shared 52% of women and 28% of men have experienced sexual violence in their lives. Power says that though men make a smaller percentage, they still make up a substantial demographic of those impacted by abuse. Additionally, she shares, “gender norms and cultural expectations associated with masculinity mean that men experience different kinds of barriers to reporting than women. Lack of awareness and education about male victimisation also impacts the number of men who will make a report.”
Power’s research is centred around surveys, interviews, and focus groups. The surveys, she says, are mainly questioning why it can be challenging to speak up when witnessing harassment and sexual violence as well as factors which could make intervening easier. The interviews and focus groups are scenario based mediums to brainstorm what a better training program would look like. A key part of this work is focused on bystander intervention training which Power explains as “ drawing on the fact that you will have your perpetrator and then you could call them victim, survivor, or target, but then what if there are witnesses?”
Power explains to me that there are three levels to intervention. The first and primary level of intervention is preventing it from happening in the first place (through removing a person from a situation where there is risk for sexual violence). The second level is disruption in the moment of the sexual harassment. Power says this can be done in multiple ways such as calling it out, removing someone from a situation, making a small joke, etc. The third level is following up after the incident, whether that’s following up with the person affected through validating their experience and giving them knowledge of services available, as well speaking with the perpetrator to communicate how their behaviour was not okay. Bystander intervention, Power says, disrupts the bystander effect – the idea that no one will say anything because nobody else is speaking up. Power’s interest in bystander intervention is based on the question of how you can challenge social norms that allow harassment to continue. This training, she hopes, will give students knowledge of how to recognise harassment and the skills to disrupt it.
In gathered stastics for her research, Power shares, “Internationally, meta-analyses and systematic reviews have demonstrated a significant positive correlation between engaging in bystander intervention training and participants’ ability to recognise the risk of sexual violence, disapproval of sexual violence, intention to intervene when they witness sexual harassment, perceived confidence to intervene, perceived responsibility to intervene and their actual implementation of bystander intervention strategies”.
Power states, “My ultimate aim is to try and expand and diversify the content we are including in equipping people to become active bystanders”. She explains that this comes from the fact that training doesn’t often include the experiences of men, particularly how harassment intersects with masculinity as well as other dynamics of power such as class and race. She continues, “People have this idea that it is just this big guns blazing, heroic act, when actually you can be a bystander in so many ways. You could just make a small joke. You could remove someone from a situation, it could be a one to one conversation. That’s one of the most important rules of bystander intervention, don’t intervene if it’s not safe”.
Power also tells me that pluralistic ignorance, the idea that what we believe others are doing and what others approve of deeply influences our behaviour, is crucial in her research. She states, “if you can show on scale that a lot of people disagree with this and a lot of people would think in a situation they would like to speak up, you can use research and information like that to start shifting norms”. From statistics Power gathered, she states that “a systematic review exploring bystander intervention in sexual violence contexts concluded that, in the majority of cases, if individuals believe that peers approve of them intervening, or believe that peers would intervene themselves, they are more likely to intervene”.
“College has been shown to be quite an area where sexual violence does happen”, Power tells me, though she follows up with saying she doesn’t like using a phrase like that as she doesn’t want to scare people. The importance of educating students cannot be overstated, as Power explains that with college and the exciting experiences of independence and freedom can come risks. “The value for students” she says, “is having an awareness and knowledge what constitutes sexual violence and misconduct”. Her research, she continues, is focused on providing students a “suite of tools” which Power says is crucial in recognizing when something is wrong and the next steps.“If you can provide training that lot’s of people are doing” Power questions, “can you start to shift the social norms where ideally sexual harassment becomes something that people feel they don’t need to engage in”.
This research, Power expresses, does not come without its challenges. There are days, Power says “where it just kind of hits you, just the human side of all the research and all the stats”. She continues, “You see it through people’s stories and experiences […] It really humanises it and it really hits home the reason you’re doing this research and puts stories and people behind all those numbers which are so important in this space”. Power explains that much of this struggle is the “element of frustration or helplessness that you can’t do more”, particularly when people share experiences that have had an incredibly negative impact on them. Of this, Power says “there’s definitely a lack of understanding of the toll that something like harassment or sexual violence or assault can have on someone’s life. From my experience doing research in this space for a few years, unless you have experienced it yourself or know someone quite close to you who has had an experience like it, I think people really don’t realise the toll that it takes”.
I ask Power about her long-term goals of her research and the future of sexual violence in Ireland. Power explains that as Ireland has legal systems in place against sexual violence, “we have top down, but we also need bottom up measures”. Power makes sure to acknowledge that though there are laws to protect those affected, these systems can far too often be “difficult and traumatic”. She says “if you really are going to try and address it as a systemic issue, you need to look at how are you legislating about sexual violence, what kind of reporting mechanisms are there, do people feel safe to trust their institutional supports and services?” The other aspect which is bottom up, are the conversations, training, knowledge, and skills that can prevent sexual violence from occuring. Power says, “It is a hard time right now, we can see there is a real global trend towards glorification of sexual violence” and that the idea of how to shift social norms despite “those very loud voices” is the key question of her research.
“The student voice is really at the heart of this, I can read as many papers as I want but I don’t know what the student experience is right now” Power says. She continues, “Voices from across campus are so important, you’re going to produce knowledge and research that are far more representative and speaks far more to the student experience with diverse perspectives, ideas, and experiences”. From this, Power hopes to gather as many voices as she can.
To fill out her survey visit the link bit.ly/TCDAddYourVoiceSurvey or bit.ly/TCDAddYourVoice to sign up for a confidential interview or focus group.
