Abstract
Research on women’s response and resistance to sexual assault risk has informed the development of interventions to improve women’s ability to effectively resist sexual assault. However, little is known about how women anticipate, navigate, and respond to risk following participation in sexual assault risk reduction/resistance education programs. In this study, we examined the information and skills used by university women who had recently completed the effective Enhanced Assess, Acknowledge, Act (EAAA) sexual assault resistance program. We analyzed responses from 445 women using descriptive statistics and content and thematic analysis. Just under half (42%) of women used at least one EAAA strategy in the following 2 years. Most women reported that their efforts were successful in stopping an attack. Women’s responses included strategies both to preempt sexual assault threat (e.g., avoiding men who display danger cues, communicating assertively about wanted and unwanted sex) and to interrupt or avoid an imminent threat (e.g., yelling, hitting, and kicking). Women’s use of resistance strategies worked to subvert gendered social norms and socialization. The results suggest that counter to criticisms that risk reduction/resistance programs blame women or make them responsible for stopping men’s violence, women who took EAAA typically positioned themselves as agentic and empowered in their resistance.
Highlights
Despite reductions in the prevalence of most other major crimes, rates of sexual assault have remained consistent (Koss et al, 1987; Koss & Oros, 1982; Smith et al, 2018)
This research can be categorized into three types: (a) identifying the tactics women employ to reduce the likelihood that she will be the target of sexual assault, otherwise known as protective behavioral or precautionary strategies (PBS), (b) measuring women’s behavioral responses to either a hypothetical or real sexual assault threat, labeled sexual assault resistance strategies, and (c) identifying the risk reduction/resistance and self-defense strategies used by women following sexual assault risk reduction/resistance education
As part of the randomized controlled trial (RCT) follow-up surveys, women were asked about their use of program content, but we remained open to the possibility that what the women identified as strategies used to protect themselves and what we as researchers identified as risk reduction/resistance based on the literature might differ
Summary
Despite reductions in the prevalence of most other major crimes, rates of sexual assault have remained consistent (Koss et al, 1987; Koss & Oros, 1982; Smith et al, 2018). With increasing demands for campus-based prevention, alongside evidence that very few primary prevention programs designed for boys/men and mixed-gender groups in primary through secondary school and college, produce decreases in perpetration (see DeGue et al, 2014, for systematic review; see Gidycz et al, 2011; Salazar et al, 2014, for approaches combining social norms and bystander content that have short-term impact), effective risk reduction/resistance programs to reduce victimization are increasingly being implemented As such, it is important for researchers, institutional administrators, and program implementers to understand how women incorporate evidence-based resistance strategies from these programs into their lives. This research can be categorized into three types: (a) identifying the tactics women employ to reduce the likelihood (i.e., risk) that she will be the target of sexual assault, otherwise known as protective behavioral or precautionary strategies (PBS), (b) measuring women’s behavioral responses to either a hypothetical or real sexual assault threat, labeled sexual assault resistance strategies, and (c) identifying the risk reduction/resistance and self-defense strategies used by women following sexual assault risk reduction/resistance education
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