The sexual harassment and abuse of power that many women have suffered in silence at some point in their lives has once again come to the fore since the non-consensual kiss of Jenni Hermoso was spread after the Women’s World Cup final that ended with the victory of the Spanish team, and a new investigation that has analyzed hundreds of testimonies from professors, researchers and health professionals in Spain has revealed an alarming fact: three out of every four women surveyed in the health and academic field in our country have suffered sexual harassment.
The study is the result of the teamwork of a group of Spanish researchers who are members of the Women in Global Health Spain Association (WGH), and has been coordinated by Montserrat Gea-Sánchez, head of the IRBLleida Health Care Research Group. and professor at the University of Lleida, and by Helena Legido-Quigley, Professor at Imperial College (United Kingdom).
The testimonies began to be collected on August 29 through social networks when a group of researchers launched the #Seacabó initiative, inviting women in the health and academic sectors to anonymously share their experiences with sexual harassment and other forms of abuses of power, to find out if incidents like the one that had occurred in the sports field also occurred in the academic and health sectors. The survey ended on September 11 after collecting 345 personal stories.
“We seek to eradicate power and sexual abuse, establishing a safe, respectful and conducive environment for the well-being of all people”
The results are worrying, as they show that 73.6% of the women who responded to the survey stated that they had suffered sexual harassment, while 28.7% reported having experienced some form of abuse. These findings have been published in The Lancet Regional Health – Europe and have shown that these abuses not only cause immediate harm, but also have long-term consequences.
In fact, 34.5% of victims report lasting psychological effects, such as disgust, fear, anger, shame, anxiety, depression, trauma and different mental health problems. And it is important to highlight that sexism and sexual harassment especially affect vulnerable women who find themselves in precarious situations.
For Thaïs González-Capella, researcher at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, “it is striking that women of all generations, both younger and already retired, today still carry their trauma. “We have reflected a lot on the consequences on their mental health and well-being, but also on the negative impact on the progression of our professional careers.”
As noted by The Guardian, the women who contacted Legido-Quigley added that they detailed behavior ranging from lewd comments to inappropriate touching and sexual assault. “Most of them said, ‘I’m only going to share two or three stories out of the many stories I’ve had,’” Legido-Quigley said. “So this is the first alarming fact: for most women it is not just one incident, but several incidents during their career.”
“We sincerely appreciate every story shared. These women, brave in breaking their silence, are the driving force behind the urgent change we need in academia and in our health system. We propose concrete measures, such as promoting transformative leadership, implementing comprehensive prevention policies, challenging the normalization of harassment and evaluating with measurable indicators. We seek to eradicate power and sexual abuse, establishing a safe, respectful and conducive environment for the well-being of all people,” said Helena Legido-Quigley, professor at Imperial College in the United Kingdom.
Zero tolerance towards sexual harassment and abuse
“#SeAcabó is not exactly the Spanish #MeToo, we can consider it softer because it does not directly point out the culprits. However, it is presented as a more radical and direct indication of the structural causes that produce or facilitate this type of harassment so present in our society,” explained Elena González-Rojo, another of the researchers of the study and professor at the Pablo University Foundation. by Olavide.
Sexual harassment experienced by study participants takes many forms. Verbal abuse consisting of inappropriate, offensive and humiliating comments is the most common type (53%). Physical abuse, such as inappropriate touching, groping, kisses and hugs, is also common (44.9%), especially in the health sector. Unwanted sexual advances and requests for sexual favors occur in 6.4% of cases, including Quid Pro Quo harassment.
Cyberbullying and sexual memes are less frequent, with only 3.8% of accounts reporting such practices. In addition, several participants described experiences of hostile or offensive harassment carried out by colleagues in healthcare and academic workplaces, specifically in 47.5% of the shared experiences.
“In light of the information shared by the participants, it is clear that the forms of abuse towards women for being women continue to be normalized. It is our obligation, and especially those of us women who have a stable position, to not allow these patterns to continue reproducing between generations. It is essential that the application of current legislation is real and that governments and institutions apply a policy of zero tolerance towards sexual abuse and harassment through the recommendations that we propose,” Montserrat Gea-Sánchez clarified.
Blanca Paniello-Castillo, a predoctoral researcher at ISGlobal, points out that “we need a structural change in the institutions. We have seen that of the 6.7% of women who reported to their educational or health institutions, in only 1.4% of cases there were any consequences. We hear from doctors and nurses who suffer humiliating comments and requests for sexual favors from their bosses or managers, to undergraduate and doctoral students who have suffered completely inappropriate touching and groping at the hands of their professors and bosses.”
“The study, at the same time, is part of a process of reparation for the victims. Some have not talked about it or felt they were not heard. Giving their testimony their own voice and consideration is an example of how science can and should contribute to revealing inequalities and discrimination in women’s rights, in the search for effective solutions. This analysis also makes a fundamental contribution in demonstrating that the impact of violence against women is not only when the incident occurs, but is sustained over time and that in many cases there is no adequate response from the system. public or private. In the face of this institutional violence, a call is made for the committed involvement of any social agent to care for the victims correctly and without complicity with the aggressor,” said the researcher at the Open University of Catalonia and journalist specialized in gender violence, Ana Bernal. Trivino.
The results of the work constitute further proof of the need for the top managers of universities and health institutions to be involved in the problems of gender inequality and respect for human rights, recognizing that sexual harassment is linked to rights such as equality and social justice. In this regard, the study proposes the following recommendations:
- Promote gender balance and diversity in leadership roles.
- Implement comprehensive prevention policies beyond the Equality Protocols.
- Challenge normalization through awareness-raising, campaigns and dynamic training.
- Integrate the information from the harassment protocol into the incorporation processes.
- Develop clear definitions of sexual harassment and abuse of power.
- Incorporate Monitoring, Periodic Evaluation and Learning practices.
- Promote a victim-surviving approach.
- Zero Tolerance Strategy.
Source: Women in Global Health Spain and IRBLleida (Institut de Recerca Biomèdica)
