On the utility of the concept of ‘school-related gender-based violence’ (SRGBV) in the context of escalating gendered violence in schools

Abstract

This paper engages with the concept of school-related gender-based violence (SRGBV) as an essential classifying, clarifying and categorising concept to encapsulate gendered abuse, misogyny, sexual harassment and sexism experienced by women, girls and non-binary young people in schools. While SRGBV is currently used in reference to violence in schools in low- and middle-income nations, it is near-absent in both policy and research on school-related violences in high-income countries, despite a long history of research documenting violence as a normative feature of schools in those regions. We argue that this absence is informed by ontological fallacies, gender biases and complacencies that create a sense of exceptionalism among these nations around the presence of gendered violence in their school settings and that to confront gendered violence in schools, we must reckon with the inherent and formative violences of all educational institutions. Finally, we contend that in the context of intensifying gender-based violence in schools around the world, and in order to make progress towards the elimination of school-related gender-based violence, there is significant utility in adopting a singular conceptual classification across policy and practice.