A week free from violence

Professor vid Institutionen för epidemiologi och global hälsa

ImageMattias Pettersson

Isabel, please tell us a bit about your research and how it relates to this particular week! 

Our research (because it’s not only I) deals with how social and health care services respond to gendered violence. We, for example, analyse the reasons behind why despite all the efforts to incorporate routine questions about violence within health care and social services, few women disclose ongoing violence to health care professionals or social workers.

Trust is a crucial aspect here: women need to trust health care and social services’ professionals to be able to tell their stories, they need to feel validated and that they get the support they need. Unfortunately, and despite the motivation and great work of many professionals, there are many challenges to developing and sustaining trust in welfare institutions, and without such trust it becomes impossible to disclose violence and to accept support. That is what we are studying: what challenges trust between victims/survivors of violence and welfare institutions and how can we enhance trust.

How can the university in general and the faculty of medicine in particular work to help prevent gender based violence?

It is crucial to recognize that such violence exists and affects students and staff at the university. Even more, we need to acknowledge that certain characteristics of academia, like hierarchies, authority, power, contribute to sustain gendered violence, and make it harder for victims/survivors to denounce.

We need to make sure that victims/survivors of gendered violence in academia can complain and that when they do, they feel listened to, trusted, validated and supported. But also, that the burden is not put on victims/survivors to be brave and denounce; instead it should be a shared responsibility between all of us to make academia a safer environment, one where we all feel compelled to complain if we think something is unfair or wrong, and where we all contribute to minimizing the hierarchial and power structures that sustain gendered  violence. The higher in the hierarchy the more responsibility we should have to speak up and contribute to eliminate gendered violence.

The other important aspect is that at the Faculty of Medicine we have the responsibility to train the next generation of health care professionals: they need to finish their education knowing that responding to gendered violence is also the responsibility of the healthcare system, and what they can do within the health care system to better support victims/survivors of gendered violence. We are integrating teaching on gendered violence, both to understand its pervasiveness, gendered roots, its global impact, as well as what works when it comes to health care responses. This is a particularly important contribution, since gendered violence is also a health problem, and victims/survivors of violence reach health care services more often than any other public institutions.

If you would pick one of the activities this week in Västerbotten, what would you recommend?

It is great that there are many, and with different focus, because gendered violence touches many arenas. I would suggest joining the demonstration on the 25th of November, which is a great way to show support for eliminating gendered violence, and it is a demonstration that unites many cities around the world on that day.

The 25th of November has been celebrated by feminist activists since 1960 in honour of the Mirabal sisters, three political activists from the Dominican Republic who were brutally murdered in 1960 by order of the country's ruler, Rafael Trujillo (1930-1961).

Participating on the demonstration in Umeå is also a way to show support for the feminist shelter movement (Kvinno and Tjejjouren), and to recognize that it was feminist activism that put, and struggles to keep, this problem in the agenda.