How do College Students in India Respond to Gender-Based Violence (GBV)?

Gendered perspectives of power and social norms establish themselves in adolescence, as boys and girls begin to form senses of self, obligation, and goals during this period of rapid development. In the Indian context, adolescent socialization on gender roles and how to dress, behave, and interact with the opposite sex are established by parents and may be enforced by physical violence ². Gender inequitable norms are often vertically transmitted from parent to child, demonstrated in parent-child concordance found between mothers and daughters on a girl’s right to choose when to marry, marital contraceptive use, and acceptability of marital violence ¹⁵. Though these gendered perceptions are built from early childhood, the period of ‘youth’ from age 15-24, when boys and girls participate in higher education, provides a unique opportunity where individual perceptions of gender norms remain malleable ¹⁷ This is also a time when adolescents have the opportunity to question and stimulate critiques of their actions, attitudes and perceptions of gender – many of which were taught to them as children ^{4, 10}.

Adolescence and early adulthood are high-risk periods for sexual harassment, trafficking, and honour killing in South Asia, as the onset of puberty brings girls out of the home and gives a new identity of independence ¹⁶. Nearly thirty percent of women in India have experienced physical or sexual violence since age 15, most often committed by intimate partners ⁷. Indeed, a recent study of adolescent boys in India showed that 78.1% of participants somewhat or highly condoned violence against girls, and 14.4% had previously perpetrated violence against girls ⁶. In tandem to this increased risk of violence, social norms historically have discriminated against women’s educational attainment due to their responsibility as caregivers and wives ¹.

Fortunately, the roles of women in Indian society have been shifting rapidly. There are currently 17.4 million women, more than ever in history, participating in higher education in India and increasing in almost all cities ⁸. Gender parity in Indian education is currently 0.97, a large increase from 0.86 in 2010 ⁸. This means that more female college students than ever are exposed to the risk of gender-based violence (GBV) based on campus culture, first time experiences with independence, and the building of social networks (including romantic relationships) outside the family sphere of influence ⁹. In a rapid assessment of India, Natarajan found widespread harassment experienced by 70% of female college students participants, who reported taking 20 different precautionary steps to avoid eve teasing^{1, 14}. Furthermore, in a study of 21 countries, India was found to have consistently high patterns of physical assault and sexual coercion reported by university students ³.

A bystander intervention occurs when someone who witnesses a possible situation or act of gender-based violence then intervenes to prevent initial or continued harm of violence ⁵. The bystander intervention approach is novel in its efforts to prevent violence through witnesses of the act, compared to prevention through victims or perpetrators. Though bystander intervention is a newly burgeoning field in gender-based violence prevention in the United States, similar studies and interventions are rare or non-existent internationally. In a literature review of gender-based violence studies in India, only two studies on bystander intention to intervene were found. The first focused on a men’s-only athletic gender-based violence prevention training program in Mumbai ¹¹ and the other dedicated to comparing factors affecting bystander intervention in multiple countries ⁹.

An understanding of the unique risks, causes, and situations related to gender-based violence on college campuses is critical to help with prevention of violence. Perpetration of violence against women and girls in India has been found to be strongly correlated with gender norms and perspectives that support inequitable attitudes towards women, such as harmful notions of masculinity, femininity, and expectations of female accommodation to male needs ⁶. Unfortunately, few studies have been completed in India on the existing gender norms and perspectives of college students or how they react to gender-based violence in real time (such as bystander response and intervention).

This cross-sectional study analysed the data collected from a large sample of male and female college-students in India to examine current gender norms and perspectives, attitudes towards bystander intervention, and knowledge and discussion of gender-based violence on college campuses in India. College students, at the cusp of adolescence and young adulthood, must be incorporated into current strategies to prevent gender-based violence in India.

(Table 1), below, represents the sociodemographic characteristics of the 603 study participants, all of whom were college students in India. Though 603 participants took the survey, only 505 completed the survey in its entirety. The proportion of male to female participants was 30.7% to 69.3%, respectively; given the stronger representation of females in the data sample, all analysis was disaggregated by gender. The majority of participants attended college in Delhi (26.9%) or Hyderabad (47.3%). Approximately 25.8% of participants came from other cities in India where representation in the sample was less than 5%, such as Bhubaneswar (4.48%), Cuttack (3.98%), and Mumbai (1.99%). Mean age of participants was 19.02 (SD = 2.141), with females being approximately a year younger on average than males (18.75, SD 2.025 compared to 19.63, SD = 2.271, respectively). Nearly all (98.3%) of participants reporting their marital status as single. Regarding current living context, most of the participants (63.5%) were still living at home with their family, despite attending college.

This cross-sectional study draws attention to the prevailing gender attitudes and stereotypes on college campuses in India, while also highlighting the strong potential for bystander intervention training to combat gender-based violence. The foundation for gendered attitudes, violence, and bystander response to witnessed violence is built through the years of youth and adolescence, structured by family, societal norms, attitudes ^{2, 6, 10, 15, 17}.

Researchers have found that construction of gender attitudes and perceptions continue through the age where Indian students normally enter college ¹⁰.

Without intervention, these inequitable behaviors and attitudes will persist into adulthood. However, with focused preventative efforts, such as gender sensitization programs, college can instead be a period of significant positive change for these adolescents. Indeed, the unique risks faced by girls entering higher education in India is paralleled by the unique opportunities for change in gender norms and perspectives through gender sensitization and bystander intervention programming.

A critical finding of the study is that over 25% of participants in each given scenario of gender-based violence reported positive bystander intervention – either by reporting the violence to the police or stopping it in the moment. Interestingly, females were more likely than males in instances of eve teasing or physical abuse to have had a negative bystander response. This finding is in line with previous studies which discovered mothers as the primary actors in socializing adolescents in gendered behaviours, roles, and attitudes ^{2, 15}. Since there was only one example of bystander intervention training in India found related to male athletes ¹¹, more research is warranted on the effectiveness of bystander intervention training targeted at both male and female college students in India, as a preventative method for gender-based violence.

However, the number of participants who report having “never-seen” the surveyed scenarios of violence are concerning. Given the reported prevalence of these types of violence in India, it is unclear from the study findings if participants having “never-seen” the given scenarios of gender-based violence have truly never witnessed or simply do not know how to recognize these types of violence in their community. This is one interpretation of the multinomial regression models, where there was much more statistical significance amongst those participants in all three scenarios of gender-based violence that had never seen that type of violence compared to those participants who had a negative bystander response for all three types of violence. Since women are more often the targets of gender-based violence, it is unsurprising that more female than male college students both know someone who has faced violence on their college campus (25.4% vs 23.2%) and report having witnessed two of the three scenarios of gender-based violence (72.2% vs. 50.9%, p<0.05 for eve teasing and 55.2% vs. 60.1%, p<0.01 for physical abuse). If these students are not recognizing violence and their community due to lack of knowledge and awareness as to what constitutes gender-based violence, then it points to a strong need for gender sensitization and prevention of bystander intervention training in those communities. In the multinomial logistic regression analysis, the results also demonstrated that male students were more likely than female students to have not witnessed the surveyed scenarios of gender-based violence compared to having a negative bystander response. Outside of the potential aforementioned explanation that men simply do not know how to recognize gender-based violence when they see it, these results also support the context that women are much more often the victim of these types of violence. More research should be done to provide more evidence for, as well as a baseline understanding of, gender-based violence experiences and risks on college campuses in India.

The study results also mirrored previous findings about male adolescents prior to college and their gender inequitable attitudes. Male college students reported lower gender equitable scores than females in this study, as well as lower frequency of discussion gender-based violence with their friends. In tandem with other research on adolescents in India ^{2, 6, 10, 15, 13} these findings strengthen the argument that males must be included in the conversations of gender-based violence prevention. Sensitizing these adolescent boys on how they can be a positive change-maker in situations of violence may well change the narrative of gender-based violence and gender attitudes on college campuses.

Finally, the statistically significant differences in gender attitudes and bystander intervention responses demarcate that more work must be done to understand the unique contexts of each Indian city. Across the study results, Delhi, Hyderabad, and the Other city categories had statistically significant differences in gender attitudes and bystander intention to intervene. Delhi, for example, had a higher percentage of negative bystander intervention intentions than did Hyderabad and Other for the first two scenarios (eve teasing and cyberbullying). It may then be unsurprising, based on data from previous studies which demonstrate gender-based violence is strongly correlated with inequitable attitudes ⁶ that Delhi also had the highest prevalence of exposure to gender-based violence. It is unclear from the data what these differences are due to, but points to the need for interventions focused on gender-based violence prevention to be contextualized to the city environment so as to be effective, instead of using a “one-size-fits-all” approach.

Harmful gender norms and inequities passed on from parents are often perpetuated in the college and higher education environment. Few interventions have focused on college students as a primary target audience to break the cycle of gender inequity, and even fewer studies have focused on bystander intervention as a preventative approach to gender-based violence. Given the findings of the study, programming targeting college students during this time of malleability, in partnership with institutions of higher education, may be a promising approach to change the narrative of gender attitudes and gender-based violence. Furthermore, because bystander strategies engage others in the prevention of gender-based violence, through increasing awareness of gender-based violence and the behaviors to safety intervene, training should be provided to students on these interventions to better understand gender-based violence and safely intervene. This approach is novel to India – and yet has proved promising in the United States and can be easily adapted to the Indian context. As more women than ever break away from the cycle from father to husband, college provides a unique environment for which adolescents can challenge the gender norms passed on from their families – changing the narrative of gender equity for generations to come.

The findings of this study are elucidating and have important implications for future work and research conducted related to gender-based violence, norms, and perceptions of college students in India. That being said, there are several limitations to this study that should be highlighted. The survey instrument was not directly translated into the local language, and thus respondents may have had readability and understanding issues when filling out the survey. Furthermore, many college students in India do not have mobile phones, computers, or internet access – and therefore may not have been able to fill out surveys, potentially skewing the sample. Due to these barriers to filling out the survey, as well as the use of a convenience sample was used, the generalisability of these findings to college students outside of Hyderabad and Delhi is limited. Gender equity as a concept is well known across India; thus, it is possible that the social desirability of answering “correctly” may have affected respondent choices for the survey. This bias was likely small in scope since the surveys were anonymous and taken individually. Finally, this was a cross-sectional study which means that causal inferences cannot be drawn from the data.

All authors were at The George Washington University during their primary contribution to this study.

All procedures for this study, including protection of human subjects, were reviewed and approved by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) at the GW Office of Human Research 

It is important that a note of appreciation be extended to those people and organizations that made this study possible. We would like to recognize the Girl Rising India and Vasavya Mahila Mandali staff for their partnership in piloting and disseminating the surveys with college students in India. We are also extremely appreciative to the many youth participants who filled out the survey and made this contribution to the body of research on gender-based violence and gender norms and perspectives possible. Finally, a special thank you to Gayatri Malhotra, MPH, and Kayla Thompson, MPH who helped support data collection on the ground in Vishakhapatnam and Bhubaneswar, India.

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