Female Students’ Narratives of Gender-Based Violence at a large Public University in India: An Intersectional Analysis

• In Event: Intersectionality within research on gender and education: omissions, opportunities, and challenges

Proposal

Most scholars today believe in the importance of addressing gender-based violence (GBV) in university spaces for the physical and mental well-being of students. However, the bulk of empirical research on the topic conflates GBV with heterosexual violence, and treats the category of women as homogenous; thereby eliding intragroup differences based on sexuality, caste, class, ability, religion, etc. This is problematic because a) GBV also manifests in non-sexual and non-heterosexual forms, and b) overlapping marginalized identities influence not only who is targeted, but also how individuals define and understand GBV, thus producing diverse risks, and experiences for female students (Saguy & Rees, 2021).

My dissertation is a narrative inquiry that employs an intersectional feminist framework to address this research gap. Using a broad definition of violence that includes physical, sexual, psychological, and economic manifestations, I investigate how female students’ experiences with GBV at a large public university in India are shaped by the structural and cultural characteristics of the institution. Additionally, I investigate how gender interacts with sexual orientation, caste, and religion to contribute to the participants’ experiences. The notions of “structure” and “culture” are used as heuristic tools to separate the formal limitations (=structure) on institutional stakeholders from the largely unspoken collective assumptions and values (=culture) that guide their actions.

The research design’s primary aim was to collect, in a safe and empowering research space, a constellation of stories from a diverse group of female students (n=75) enrolled at the Indian University. The research design involves two interdependent levels of investigation undertaken over fifteen months: 1) focus group discussions with bystanders (n=60) of GBV, and 2) art-based narrative interviews with self-identified victim-survivors (n=15) of GBV. The participants included students from the LGBTQ+ (n=15) community, religious minorities (n=10), and Dalit Adivasi groups (n=5), in addition to non-minority female students enrolled at the university.

Emerging data demonstrate that gender interacted with sexual orientation, caste, and religion to produce diverse risks and experiences for the participants in several ways. Firstly, queer and Muslim participants reported experiencing constant bullying and intimidation by peers; with humour often used as a powerful tool to advance homophobia and Islamophobia. In the case of the non-minority students, faculty or the administration was identified as the primary source of bullying and intimidation, with peers either playing a positive or neutral role. Additionally, the colleges in the study seemed to exploit the labour of marginalized students by 1) placing the burden of advocacy on their shoulders and 2) appropriating their labour for the neoliberal purpose of marketization and higher rankings- findings that I conceptualize using the lens of institutional polishing (Ahmed, 2017) and institutional betrayal (Freyd & James, 2014). Another critical finding was the nexus between right-wing Hindutva politics and the fear of physical violence, particularly by Muslim female students. Participants revealed the psychological the fear took, not just on them but also on the parents, that translated into restrictions on mobility, and enforced silence/passivity when confronted with microaggressions.

Author

• Ruchi Saini, University of Maryland College Park