Power, Hierarchies, and Higher Education

Abstract

This chapter examines rape, sexual violence and harassment, and other forms of gender-based violence within higher education (HE) by comparing students’ experiences and institutional responses across two countries: India and the UK. It suggests that the distinctiveness of higher education as a context for rape and sexual violence to occur can be analysed on two levels: first, through the ways in which wider social inequalities may be reproduced or compounded within the HE context and, second, through the ways in which hierarchies of power within HE institutions create a “conducive context” for some forms of sexual and gender-based violence and harassment to occur. Across the UK and India, despite different histories of activism to address rape and sexual violence as well as different policy contexts, our research has revealed similarities in the experiences of survivors in higher education. This appears to be due, at least in part, to the transnational culture of academia which is characterised by gendered power hierarchies that historically and today shape HE institutions.