Power, hierarchies and higher education : Rape on campus in India and the UK

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 kinds of sexual and gender-based violence and harassment to occur. Despite the different histories of activism around rape and sexual violence in each context, as well as different policy contexts this chapter describes similarities between the experiences of survivors and complainants in both countries. This appears to be due, at least in part, to the international nature of academic culture which is characterised by the gendered power hierarchies that historically and today shape HE institutions.