Victoria A. Ferrer Pérez
University of Islas Baleares
Helping behaviors and violence against women in university settings.
Participants: Andrés Sánchez Prada; Virginia Ferreiro Basurto; Ainara Nardi Rodríguez; Leila I. Vázquez Gómez.
Violence against women constitutes a serious social and health problem of epidemic proportions that occurs in all contexts, including educational and higher education, and has serious emotional, physical, and social consequences for those who suffer from it, but also for their environment and society as a whole. Precisely for this reason, actions are necessary not only for intervention in cases of violence but also and preferably, actions for primary, secondary and tertiary prevention whose ultimate goal is the eradication of this violence.
In this context, we have been developing a research project whose objective is to analyze the factors that facilitate/inhibit helping behaviors in different forms of violence against women, in order to subsequently provide keys for designing action proposals that reverse the factors that inhibit these helping behaviors, and empower those who facilitate them, with the ultimate goal of converting potential passive witnesses into active or prosocial witnesses who can contribute to the prevention and elimination of this violence.
Of the three forms of violence that we address in the project (partner violence against women, sexual harassment and street sexual harassment), this symposium will focus on the last two that particularly affect young women, and will focus their analysis in the university context presenting the latest advances obtained in the development of the project.
Victoria A. Ferrer is Professor of Gender Social Psychology at the University of the Balearic Islands (UIB). She teaches in the Master's Degree in Equality Policies and Prevention of Gender Violence at the UIB and has directed and participated as a teacher in master's degrees, postgraduate courses and training activities on gender social psychology, gender-based violence, equal opportunities, and equality plans, both in Spanish and Latin American universities, as well as in private entities and public administrations in the Balearic Islands and the rest of the Spanish state.
In the field of research, she is a member of the research group "Gender Studies" at the UIB and coordinates at this university the Interuniversity Doctorate in Interdisciplinary Gender Studies, which is taught jointly by 8 Spanish universities, and has directed and participated as a researcher in projects of national and regional level on gender psychology and, especially, on gender violence, financed by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, and by the Women's Institute.
