Abstract
Rates of gender-based violence remain high during college in India, a time of adolescent malleability where gender norms, gender perspectives, and responses to violence are open to change. Few gender-based violence interventions focus on college students and even fewer on bystander intervention as a preventative approach - a concept novel to India. This cross-sectional study reached 603 college students in India to examine current gender norms and perspectives, bystander intervention behaviours, and discussion of gender-based violence on campuses. Statistically significant differences were found between male and female college students in all scenarios of bystander intervention response and frequency of discussion of gender-based violence. Multinomial logistic regression analysis showed significant differences in those who had never seen violence or had a positive bystander intervention response, compared to those who responded negatively. Given the findings, targeting college students appears a promising approach to change the narrative of gender-based violence and norms in India.
Highlights
Gendered perspectives of power and social norms establish themselves in adolescence, as boys and girls begin to form senses of self, obligation, and goals during this period of rapid development
In the case of eve teasing, both male (32.9%) and female (36.3%) participants who had ever witnessed an example of this type of gender-based violence were more likely to have had a negative than a positive bystander response (p
In the case of cyberbullying, males were almost twice as likely as females to have had a negative bystander response than females (33.6% vs 14.2%, p
Summary
Gendered perspectives of power and social norms establish themselves in adolescence, as boys and girls begin to form senses of self, obligation, and goals during this period of rapid development. Gender inequitable norms are often vertically transmitted from parent to child, demonstrated in parent-child concordance found between mothers and daughters on a girl’s right to choose when to marry, marital contraceptive use, and acceptability of marital violence [15] Though these gendered perceptions are built from early childhood, the period of ‘youth’ from age 15-24, when boys and girls participate in higher education, provides a unique opportunity where individual perceptions of gender norms remain malleable [17] This is a time when adolescents have the opportunity to question and stimulate critiques of their actions, attitudes and perceptions of gender – many of which were taught to them as children [4,10]. In tandem to this increased risk of violence, social norms historically have discriminated against women’s educational attainment due to their responsibility as caregivers and wives [1]
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