 Good afternoon everybody. Welcome to join this webinar organized in the context of the European Toolkit for Schools. And today we will be talking on the topic of preventing gender violence in schools. This fits into the overall context of the toolkit, which is a repository of resources on inclusive education and tackling early school living. So we want to bring forward inspiring practices and examples of how more inclusive schools can be developed. And this evening we have the honour to have two very good speakers with us. So they will talk about how this prevention of gender violence in schools can take place in practical ways and how schools can address this quite sensitive issue. So first we will hear from Dr Anna Vidu. She is a postdoctoral fellowship in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley at the moment. And she is also the coordinator of research network on women's and gender studies and the co-founder of solidarity network of victims of gender violence in universities. Our second speaker is Marie-Louise Petersen. She is a teacher in Denmark and she has free and gender studies. She has been an E-twinning ambassador since 2014 and for many years she has also steered a specific E-twinning group on gender and sexuality issues in the E-twinning community. So to know about this topic you are in very good hands this afternoon, what the topic is about and find also some ways to develop the topic at the school level. So I will give the floor now to Anna. Please feel free to start. Thank you. Great. Thank you so much for the presentation and good evening everyone. So today in the part of the presentation I'm going to share with you, I will focus on these four ideas, main ideas on how to prevent gender violence in schools. So I will begin by explaining a little bit the existence of the gender violence in schools and also the need for intervention, for what is now as being an upstander. And then I will focus on the concept of isolating gender violence, so the protection of those who intervene to support victims and to prevent attacks. Also how is important to address the isolating gender violence in order to prevent the gender based violence. And finally I will focus on an example on the zero violence Braves Club as a way to empower schools and communities. So as we all know and read and also the research has agreed that in international level there is a presence of violence in society as a whole, right? More than 120 million girls worldwide have been forced to some sexual acts at some point in their lives according to the data we have. At least one in five girls reported one incident of sexual violence that first occurred between the ages of 10 and 14. Also regarding the world reports on violence against children, schools are not considering to be safe spaces for children, right? So there is a significant proportion of gender violence occurring as we were saying in different spaces. So the data is very significant on how difficult the situation is and how important it is to intervene in order to address this reality. So more specifically in the school context we also have data regarding the cyberbullying and the risk that this situation is involving for children, right? For instance we have some data on how 55% of victims admit fallen into depression after suffering harassment of bullying at schools. 35% of them were self-motilated and 38% of people on this research thought or have tried to commit suicide. So we have very strong consequences on the fact of being victims of violence. So therefore it's so important to have effective solutions and evidence-based activities to take into account and to apply in schools. So we also have as a framework the Istanbul Convention approved by the Council of Europe, which specifies the different types of violence, which are the following, have a big list here. But I would like to say at this point that we already have taken protocols or incorporating in schools mechanisms and laws and actions to progress and to tackle these types of violence, but we still needed to respond to the situation that many victims are still isolated. No many people are still not there to speak about their situation and to break the silence. So what research say regarding this? There is a need to support survivors of violence, right? But also there is a need to protect that support, right? So we know from research that the standard intervention is one of the most effective mechanisms to prevent and protect survivors and gender violence. As a problem, so therefore we need to create alliances and to create these networks of support, which sometimes are informal networks, but also help to address and to be very effective. Sometimes even more effective than the formal ones, right? So as a by standard intervention mechanisms say no, we have to take a stand to speak up, to take action and don't be just a bystander. So don't be just someone who is listening or even looking at the situation, but to be somebody who intervenes. So to be an upstander, so to be an active bystander, to directly intervene, taking action, distract or delegate. So we know how to do it in a theoretical way, so we have different mechanisms and different practical information. So no one has to do everything, but everyone can do something. So we know that also the research is saying that in the academic environments that these formal mechanisms are not enough, right? So we need more, we need to go further and we need to have community norms, to have the community involved, to have people feeling part of the norms in order to achieve a real change, right? So what's the big question here? Even if we know how to do it, how to intervene, what to do, in which way we should take a stand, how to support the survivor, people not always do it, right? So why does in a position to support survivor they have doubts about interviewing or not interviewing? So we took further steps in this sense, even the European Commission approved a protection of who's who, there to speak about normatives that are not being implemented in the European Commission. So this is not about gender violence, but this is important because it's a framework we have in order to also implement further mechanisms on how to protect who's who, there to protect the victims. Defend who's who defends, right? So here we have the concept of isolating gender violence because when there are no mechanisms to protect the people who defend the victims, this may suffer from isolating gender violence, meaning attacks and reprisals leaving the direct victims isolated and without support, right? So therefore it's important to consider the idea of isolating gender violence, meaning any kind of violence against who's advocate for gender violence victims. The objective of such violence is to isolate gender violence victims, but also to discourage reporting or receiving support in order to maintain the impunity of gender violence. So it's both, right? It's to attack who's who support survivors, but also to keep the direct victims isolated, right? So this concept was implemented for the first time as the idea of second order sexual harassment. Maybe some of you have heard about that, but during the last 26 years it has no impact on that concept, right? So therefore it was a need to go from the second order sexual harassment to the isolating gender violence, which is the biggest concept, including what is really happening, right? More than just some cases of sexual harassment, no? But introducing different types of gender violence. So also addressing this violence occurring to both people, as I'm saying, no, both figures, right? So who's who intervene and who's who are suffering from direct victims. So from that moment on, from the moment when isolating gender violence was created as a concept, we have different research study going deeper on what is really happening. No, for instance, in violence against women, Ramon Fletcher published an article on different cases when the isolating gender violence may happen. For instance, in schools, or maybe in the family when someone dares to speak about harassment occurred to a minor, for instance, or maybe in the press context or the political party. So in different spaces in society this situation may happen. So therefore it is important to have research on this reality. So this other research here to relation showed for the first time data, quantitative data on why people do not intervene helping survivors. And 40% of the population say they do not help for fear of reprisals, right? And 64% plays the same reason to explain why others do not help. So this is important to consider that there is a fear of attacks and reprisals if interviewing in supporting survivors. Therefore, to support is so important. We also have legislation regarding the isolating gender violence, and I just briefly want to mention the first legislation considered in the European context. It was the Catalan Parliament which approved not the modification of the article on gender-based violence and addressing different forms of sex violence, incorporating the concept of second order violence, which is the same, right, isolating gender violence with this name. And it was an historical achievement in overcoming second order violence and isolating gender violence, right? Because if we have laws, then it's important to have also mechanisms and concrete practices, right? So I will just say that from that moment different actions started to begin and different associations starting to implement and to introduce the concept of the importance of defending who could defend in their protocols and normatives. And also different universities and their equality plans. And there are also public hearings being conducted in different political parties in order to address this concept in other countries. So what we need in order to have more people daring to stand up for victims of gender violence is to defend the victims to support the defense of the victims and to stand up in their own context. Also creating an environment of zero tolerance, and this is what I'm going to explain to you in the time I have now, right? So we have an example of the Braves Club, the zero violence from age zero, which was an action already introduced in the European toolkit for schools and also it is introduced in different schools. So it is an action already being implemented and already going on and having successful results at different points in academical schools and also in scientific publications, right? So how is this by standard intervention model implemented in schools, right? So we have the dialogic model of conflict prevention. I will go deeper on that later. So since the Braves Club started in 2014, it has made progress in eradicating school violence in both primary and secondary schools. And it's a strategy to implement effective evidence in foreign practices on preventing violence and gender-based violence. The principles of this action include avoiding the normalization of violence. So sometimes in school it's kind of normal, some behaviors that may be aggressive, understanding the principle of no means no. So this is important to be tackled through different actions conducted in schools. Also to create this solidarity among students, as I was saying, this informal mechanism and this friendship. They used to call it to do the shield, to protect those who are suffering from an attack or violent behavior. So those who defend the victims are the Braves one. That's the idea and belong to the Braves Club. So also this is important because it's a way to reverse on this widely accepted idea that the ones who perpetrate violence are the Braves ones, right? So and there is also an aspect here regarding what is attractive in school, right? What is cool, what is great, what is fancy function to have in school, then this is like making a violent behavior unattractive, right? So that's also important not to have the bad guys unpopular, right? And this is also a way of reversing the widely accepted idea in this sense. Looking at how to implement this no Braves Club in schools, we have different successful actions. These successful actions were part of an European project called Included, which was a big project conducting in Europe, a framework, an European framework project of research and also the only project of social sciences considers as a best practice, a best project with social impact in Europe, right? So it is based as I mentioned before in the more dialogic model of violence prevention, which is widely supported by research and also by action and practices in school, right? So it involves the community in deciding the norms. It has an implication on how schools may organize their daily activities. There are mixed committees and also this idea of achieving zero violence from year zero from the beginning. There is more attention and protection to victims and zero attention to bullies, to the people doing aggressive behaviors, right? So the dialogic model of violence prevention is a way of having an agreement about the school norm. So it's a very big organization of the school, but they have these norms as an important basis. They debate everything, they have general assemblies, they have delegates to explain to all the community the support of mixed communities. So all communities involved, there is a full commitment of everyone with the norm agreement and also the open process to support and also training for everyone in the school, right? And these everything is evidence based, right? And also published in different articles, right? So here we have the zero violence brave club, ready, published in research projects and articles and in the violence zero project from zero age. So both boys and girls lean from the beginning and for their entire lives that no one has the right to pressure them by the restricted freedom and less so in matters such as intimate as their body contact, right? So they really address such important context in school. So everybody is part of the zero violence brave club and this was already supported by previous research results, working on diversity, on people's universities in school, such as this research we have here. And they were saying that usually there were these diverse students, they were excluded and they were also suffering more harassment and attacks than others. So this is a way of including everyone and also preventing these exclusionary behaviors that we previously know that they were happening in schools. So breaking the silence is an important principle and also working the friendship principle because friendship excludes violence. So the idea of who loves me will treat me well. So they work on this and they learn this and they make this part of their own discourse, right? So there is another important aspect to be mentioned here just quickly, which is the language of desire. So everything is based on how we language, how we express what is going on in school, how this is coherent with schools, behaviors and schools environment. So the language of ethics, meaning oh this is good or this is bad, it's not working anymore. It has to be substituted by the language of desire, meaning this is attractive, the good guy is attractive, the good behavior is attractive here, is popular here. So this is what we really have to conduct, right? So the goals of the Zero Violence Brace Club is to provide students with defensive models free from violence, to encourage all students the freedom to decide and that their decision are respected. No means no and this important aspect to support the victims so that they feel protected when they report an assault. So to show this, that if you reported you will be protected and this is also a very powerful idea actually and to break out the law of silence. The law of silence is something that everybody know that it's happening but nobody dare to intervene to break it because it's so strong that it's supposed to become a law. And to change the stigma of the snitch of someone who is telling that others are not getting attention. So yeah, this is a little bit what we were saying, I'm going to the end now just to show that this concept had very good results. No on incrementing complaints against different aggressions, also incrementing the empowerment among equals among peers as agents of change and also really advocating for healthy relationships and reducing the feeling of isolation among victims. So yeah, we have here some steps on how to create it and also some voices of students saying how it's important for them to tell to others. No here we have a rapist 10 year old he's saying I tell you this because you are my cousin and I don't like you to behave like that. No and I I tell you this because I like you right so it's a way of really transforming educational environment and becoming it even even even better and with a better environment and therefore a better student achievement. And finally we have this professor of the school also recognizing how the environment changing in that school how changing also the visibility of who's who were the bad guys and and no no there are more empowerment of the good ones and also. Also yeah like the bully except criticism and isolation so it has and it may change their behavior so yeah so finally we have here a girl saying I don't want to have someone near me who treats me badly on happy days so this is also an empowerment of saying what you really want and what they what they really want to which relationships they want to have in school and therefore of course in their in their lives later on. Thank you so much. Thank you Anna. It was very empowering presentation with the concrete example how this difficult difficult questions can be dealt with so I think we will move on directly to the next presentation of. Marie Louise. We are now on slide 42 because there was a bit of concern about the right number of the slide so Marie Louise please feel free to take the control and then you will continue the presentation from here. Please everybody feel free to post questions or comments in the chat so we will take them at the end of the second presentation for post presentations. Okay alright thank you Lena. It was interesting to hear your your talk Anna. So now continue and as as you know I'm a teacher in Denmark and and also an each one ambassador. And I have moderate moderate this group on each one that I call gender know how to stop stereotypes where the idea is that teachers educators can share links on gender issues and sexuality issues. And there there's also the possibility to make some polls. And as you can see here some of the teachers and have experienced sexist comments either from students or from students and teachers. And there's just to give you how do I do this slide here. Yeah. And I also had this question about LGBTI students if people have policies at their schools and only one has actually and it's not me not my school. But as you can see some of that is too much of a taboo. So it's really different from country to country. And I can imagine you participants. I can see that you also from different countries and you probably have different things to take in consideration when dealing with gender violence and these issues because they are a bit delicate and we are very much into a private sphere. Of of also of the body. Yeah. I also took because we have the 25th of November and in some countries as I don't know in your country and there's a focus on this to stop violence against women and with the campaign also in the EU and for having this to stop violence against women. And it's interesting to see that quite a few said that they had on especially in the 20th of November they did something at their school regarding teaching violence against women. Yeah. So surely and through the gender group this group I have the possibility to invite guest speakers. So throughout for the last four years as you can see on the slide I have different topics. So on all things like gender and neutral pedagogy pedagogy in Sweden or LGBTI inclusion. And also on sexuality education and some a few in French and as you can see I had how to prevent and tackle sexism in school with Kat Banya from UK feminist and that I'll just mention a little bit in a moment from from there. Yeah. And also as I think some interesting French research and work about mixing genders because of there's so much gender segregation in schools. Yeah. So to prevent gender based violence in school the knowledge whole school approach sexuality education rethinking the public spaces in school and having conversations on masculinities and non criticism. And then also to work with it integrated in the subject like in small projects or in camp school campaigns or having guest speakers. I'm not going to speak all these but I'll get into some of some of it. I had the possibility to invite Kate Banya to something called talk town in Copenhagen. And so different people attended the workshop on how to tackle sexism in school based on on their materials. And it was interesting for me to hear that that some people could say well they had experienced something in when they went to school things that they would consider sexist but at the time they didn't think of it that way. And I think that's interesting that we now have a language to speak about these things also with the me too. So to have documentation to like also that Anna showed in her presentation. These are just pictures from different reports from France from the UK feminist. And also this thing was a sexy cane will you are you who tell a restaurant. And that's from vocational school. That was the first place I think when there was a big survey and one in fifth so that goes on well together with the other statistics one in fifth student had experienced some kind of harassment or from from peers in the vocational school. And also want to mention a Danish book that was written by a high school student. And this was between the two me too waves in Denmark. We had a first wave like everyone had in 2017 I think. And then we had a big the really not much happened in Denmark at that time. And then we had the real big way with a lot of consequences in 2020. And so the book is in between. And it describes some very sexist rights combined with alcohol in the high schools. And these fights are now stopped. So UK feminist that they were together with the teacher union in Britain. They made this report research on sexism and the as the title says it's just everywhere. So that was the conclusion and I'm just showing you a few. It says here from the teachers who had a quite frequently had heard some sexist language use either on a daily basis or on a thirdly. But it was only 17 who never heard in. And the same goes with students who experience as you can see harassment and. And teachers also witnessing some kind of harassment at the school. And this report is a public one so you can easily find if you're interested in seeing the more of the figures. But it really made a solid documentation that there is a lot of sexism and sexual harassment going on in the secondary schools. And so the UK feminist that made a lot of resources and both for the teachers and for students to empower students and also for parents. And for parents that could be for example to have a template to to write to the school. Okay. Is my children's school to take being aware of sexism or they're doing something to prevent this. So they have the different people in consideration. And also when it comes to UK feminist they have the whole school approach. And I won't read all of this but it's just to again the whole school approach where I have underlined at the institutional framework with the policies to have this explicit mentioning of sexism and harassment. And there's this thing of building up capacity. So knowledge and skills and tools so the teachers know how to intervene or how to help other students intervene. And also the thing with the empowering the students. So they dare report sexism. And then again which has already been mentioned the zero tolerance. So I'll just go through that. I think this film if you don't know this film I will definitely recommend you. I came across the film because I am in contact with an organization called Outspoken. And it's only nine minutes but it's this girl Amina who's testifying when she began secondary school that she had really looked forward to begin that from almost day one she experienced some kind of harassment first in the language and then later on in actually touching. And she describes an incident where a boy pushes her to the floor and and now I read the quotes. She says I know people saw what no one said anything. They looked and then they kind of looked away. They pretended it didn't happen. And then later on she says she doesn't tell her parents because I was scared that I would be blamed. And at some other point in the film she says I would stick up for someone. So for people not doing that for me was really hard. I think that goes very well together with what Anna spoke about with the intervenions by by standards. I think conversations on masculinity are also interesting to to to get into this. And there are more and more organizations who who put focus on this. And there is one in England called Beyond Equality. And they do also to like UK Feminist that they do these workshops for universities and also for schools where they have facilitators coming out and having conversations with with boys or young men on on the on on gender role and this masculinity on violence. And they are very careful about not as they say they don't it's not about fixing the boys, but it's about conversation and listening and bringing attention to difficult issues. And they have this five five things that men and boys can do to prevent. And one of them is speak up and speak out. And the other links are there is really a momentum right now in Britain after the murder of Sarah Everett in London in March was killed by murdered by kidnapped and murdered by a police officer. So there's really a big momentum. And Scotland and I don't know if it's called but the Scottish police they have also made some interesting site on where masculinity and violence is discussed. With many different small films. And it's also from one of these organizations that I have come across the distinct gender violence as a continuum. So with the language and in one end with the jokes and then teasing and sex and then sex is language. And then what what the what the thing about cat calling sort of the whistling or of typically girls and then harassment and rape and then at the very sort of end of the continuum of actual murder. And this model can also I've seen it pictured as a pyramid. I just made the arrow because it was what I saw in my but I read about it in the white ribbon in the home page. I attended a couple of weeks ago I attended. It was for free in a webinar in by with interview with people from this organization. And these are some quotes that students are more attentive than two and three years ago and they experienced that. And the fact that nobody is not is denying the existence of gender based violence. Apparently somewhere before. And there's this male ally ship was shook coated before was always really nice that there's this bonding. And they also said that parents can be an important ally and then this thing we speak the word we create. And I think also this conversation about being a man so boys can do better by women and girls. Non binary folk like people with other gender identities and then each other. I think that's a good way of putting it. Then I wanted to turn attention to Sweden because they have there's a school or many schools who have been working with gender. And there was one again with the zero tolerance. This was to playful fighting. So even this thing a little bit of just teasing or fooling around in the corridor was they found out that this was intimidating for other students. And they also had their school problems with many of the boys not doing well in their grades. And when they applied this norm critical approach and also with the so having questionings to the norms in the school. Should all boys always make a lot of noise or is this a norm and then looking at it in a critical way. Then they also came up with this absolute zero tolerance to playful fighting. And apparently it also improved not only made it more calm and less intimidating but also improved the grades and particularly among the boys. So I think that's very interesting. And there's a link to where you can read about it in English. I always like to to cite some of the French geographer because the public spaces and playgrounds. It's often the place of the bullying hotspots where the teachers not everywhere. And the bullying hotspot is IGLIO. It's an organization who works for LGBTI inclusion. And they call it it's from them I have the word hotspots. And again, as a school institution ask what are the norms in these areas. Is it a norm that some people sit and shout in the canteen? Is it like so with the sound they dominate the space? Does everyone have the right to be at the different places or is a certain group and behavior dominating? The French geographer, Edith Marie Jules, who also once did a talk on each winning. She says there's a lot of stereotypic behavior and gender segregation in the playgrounds. Her observations showed that and researched that the boys dominate the center spaces with ball games. And then out in the periphery the girls and some of the boys they are sort of squeezed into more sort of activities where they don't take up space. So there's even the body learning to not take up space. And another point she has that some of her research showed that some of the boys actually wanted to play with girls. And they were just afraid that they couldn't do it because they were so afraid how other boys would judge them. And that they would get in a comment that hey, you're a sissy or something. And so to look at the critical look at the public spaces is a possibility. And some schools who have worked with this, they have made the playground focus with ball games, with rotating. So maybe one group can have it on Monday and then on another day another group. And also with having more plants and semi intimate spaces so that there's also nice areas for the people who just want to talk. And then also to actually ensure a more equal sharing of spaces so that everyone feel they can also use the center space or the court. And then also to ensure and encourage more mixed gender activities. I can see my I will speed up a little. I just want to make a publicity for this French website called Matilda. And they have a video context. And if you have students, some of you, you can still time to register for this little video contest. Busson controller sexisme to go against sexism. I did I attended this contest with my students and I have a French class at my former school about three or four years ago. And my my my students made their own manuscript is about you throw like a girl. And just making this film gave a lot of attention and focused on this matter. And so you hand in the film in March. And these are just some examples from there are many French, but you can also have do them in other languages. There are films in Spanish and English. And as long as there are some top titles, I think in French. Yeah, and I think it's interesting. They also have we had this thing about no. And as it says here, this is the class that made something about no snub being respected. And I want to finish off by this little webinar and two kids that I have used. It's called hacking to hack hate by Selma. And a Finnish teacher and I, we both attended this. It was a webinar with two kids and it was to learn about to learn how we teachers can teach. And we talked about behavior and social media and hacking hate. And so after we had attended and we were introduced the difference toolkit, we created a E-twelling project. And as you can see, the Danish students, we called we called us project empathy and social media. So to have focus on the positive thing, empathy. And we had the conversations about politeness, social media and hate speech. And they did on, as you can see in the picture, they did. This is my class sitting and they're looking at a speech by the Finnish student on hate speech. And we had, we had a focus in our school about homophobia and transphobia. So they did my students did a PowerPoint about this in connection with hate speech. And as you can see, the focus was also on hacking, hacking hate and to speak up maybe on social media to write a comment to show that it's not just the silence and consent. Yes, I think this was all from me. So thank you for your attention. Thank you, Marie-Louise. So we are at the end of the end of the webinar, but we still have some time for questions. I picked up earlier on from the chat couple of points that at Hanasia wrote. So these were during Anna's presentation, but of course can be relevant for both presenters. So first one was to have more details on the practice of covered corner and private corner. So, yeah, perhaps we can share some resources on that. And there was also a comment that would it be difficult to have these practices without creating discriminatory factors like bullying the bully. So this was also a comment, perhaps Anna can comment on this. So I already start by the second part. So I will say, I mean about the bullies now. And so of course language is important, but it's also important to know which language or which terms we are changing, right? So therefore it's a way of addressing them directly to say this is what we really want to think about and we want to really analyze what's happening with this. Who is behaving in which way. And about the corners. You were saying the brave corners. I didn't point out so much on this, but the corner versus the brave corner. So there is a space where you can join if you are the brave one, right? If there is someone interviewing and someone taking a step, supporting the survivors is a braver, right? You are from the brave club. This is like something, an attractive group and an attractive name to call a brave to someone who is interviewing. Because there is an awareness of how difficult and how hard it is for someone to interview considering the attacks and the negative consequences they may suffer. So therefore you are brave if you stand up, if you are saying what is happening in class. And if you are not, there is a co-words corner. So yeah, it's the opposite, right? But what school supports is the braze one and all the popular people who are interviewing. There are a lot of materials going on. So if you need some specific research on this, just let us know. Thank you. We've also shared some links during the presentations in the chat. So you may find more information there and presentations will of course be shared online. There was a wealth of ideas and resources presented, which then you can of course explore further on your own time. For the time being, I haven't seen other questions, but there were a lot of thank you messages, which we all agree with. These two presentations have been just very amazing. And showing how also this challenging topic can be addressed in positive ways. If there are no further questions, I think we are then ready to close the webinar. But before doing so, I would like to remind that next week there is another webinar organized by the European Toolkit for Schools. So this is a small series of webinars that we are running right now. The topic next Friday at the same time at four o'clock in the afternoon Central European time is a systemic whole school approach to mental health and well-being in schools in the European Union. So on mental health and well-being will be the focus next week. We really hope that you have joined. You have joined taking part this evening and that you can also participate next week. A big thank for the presenters, Marie-Louise and Anna. It was a pleasure to have you here. The recording and the presentations will be available on the website. I'm finishing the session by just wishing everybody a good evening and a lovely weekend. Thank you. Thank you and thank you for inviting us. It was interesting to participate in this and to putting focus on the topic. I think that was a great initiative.