Exploring adolescent boys’ perceptions of violence against women and girls and peer-on-peer sexual abuse in schools

Abstract

Feeling safe is a basic human right for children and an important pre-requisite for optimal learning. The ‘Everyone’s Invited’ movement revealed thousands of testimonies from women and girls about their experience of sexual violence in schools, leading to a growing realisation that violence against women and girls (VAWG) in UK schools has, according to Ofsted, become so frequent as to be considered normal or even expected. Alongside this, there is growing concern about the rise of the manosphere - a loose network of online male influencers and platforms - with schools reporting increasing levels of misogynistic behaviour among pupils, leaving many teachers feeling unsure how to respond.
Research suggests a disparity between the perceptions of boys and girls regarding the likely occurrence of harmful sexual behaviours (HSB), particularly contact forms, with boys much less likely to think these things happened regularly. However, there is an increasing recognition that efforts to prevent VAWG must include men. As such, my empirical study seeks to obtain boys’ views about peer-on-peer sexual abuse in schools, seeking to understand more about what secondary school boys believe makes a safe school, both for themselves and for their female peers. Alongside this, my Systematic Literature Review explores boys’ views about VAWG through a thematic synthesis of research published in the UK, Europe and America answering the question: How are adolescent boys’ attitudes and understanding of violence against women and girls shaped by gender norms?

More information

Identifiers

ORCID for Anna Burnett: orcid.org/0000-0001-5152-1015

ORCID for Henry Wood-Downie: orcid.org/0000-0003-4965-7778

ORCID for Ffion Heulwen Davies: orcid.org/0000-0002-4026-8787

Catalogue record

Export record