A Room of One’s Own at UTAS

WORDS BY Rachel Hay

In recent weeks, we’ve seen how sexual assault and harassment, as well as sexist, patriarchal and misogynist values, are rife within in the federal government.

For the most part, the university campus is a place where I can feel and deal with these emotions. I talk to my friends, my classmates and my lecturers about everything that’s happening and feel supported by them.

But for some women, the university campus is just another place where they experience or live under the shadow of the same gendered issues that they experience in all other areas of their life.

Sexual Assault and Harassment

Between 2016-7, 54% of students at UTAS experienced sexual harassment, and 6.5% experienced sexual assault. These experiences are something that are always present for those who have experienced them, and they don’t simply fall away when they walk into the boundaries of the university. For some students, this trauma is compounded where they have been assaulted and harassed on campus, or by people that they met at university.

Some women sit in the same classes as people who have sexually assaulted and harassed them, unable to do anything about it. They pass people who have sexually assaulted and harassed them in the hallways. There are men who’ve held positions of power as students who’ve been accused of sexual assault. I’ve heard stories of men masturbating and groping women in the library.

In the Activities Centre, scrawled on the back of the toilet door, there’s a note that says, ‘my best friend asked her boyfriend to rape me’. A few years ago, in the Morris Miller toilets there was a note that said, ‘I was raped’. Around the same time, there was a note in the Humanities building accusing another student of being a rapist. Another person had written underneath the accusation that they ‘could confirm’.

In 2017, students from the UTAS Women’s Collective protested a man who had been convicted of sexually assaulting a child and making child exploitation material being allowed on campus. Whilst he was banned from attending a UTAS campus in 2018, he still graduated with his PhD in 2019. When I graduate, I won’t be proud to part of an alumnus that includes a person who has committed sexual assault against a child.

Until last year, two pieces in UTAS’ art collection hung in the Law Faculty. One depicted a person being groped. The other depicted a male lawyer standing over a naked, cowering woman to symbolise the awesome responsibility lawyers have in cross-examining witnesses, as they leave their witnesses vulnerable. To the Law Faculty’s credit, when students complained the pictures were removed, despite criticisms from some community members that it amounted to ‘censorship’. Each week while walking to classes, studying in the library and listening to lectures, female students have opened their phones laptops to a new allegation in an ever-growing list, or another woefully inadequate or downright harmful response from a federal politician. Each new addition to this story makes them feel the same emotions in a cycle as they relive the trauma that they have experienced. Disappointment. Distress. Anger. Fear. Exhaustion.

If a woman has been sexually assaulted or harassed and needs an extension on an assignment so she has time to cope with the trauma she has experienced or pursue legal avenueslegal avenues she is pursuing, she can only do this through the generosity of her lecturer or by gaining a Learning Access Plan. In order to do this, she will need to get a doctor to provide a report with the nature of her health condition, the impact of this on her ability to study and give recommendations. This means that a woman needs to be experiencing symptoms of a mental or physical illness from the sexual assault or harassment in order to be granted a Learning Access Plan. Getting a doctor to verify this can also be more difficult for women, who are often dismissed and ignored by doctors.

Sexual assault and harassment aren’t just a prevalent issue for students on campus, but staff as well. In a review last year of the former Vice Chancellor Peter Rathjen’s time at UTAS, there were 11 complaints made about sexual misconduct, discrimination and bullying. It leaves me wondering how women can be assured of UTAS’ commitment to end sexual assault and harassment on campus when just two years ago it was happening unabated, right at the top.

Gendered Environments and Teaching

In some disciplines, such as maths, science and engineering, women can sit in a lecture theatre and be outnumbered many times over by men. In these same disciplines, their teachers are often men. In these spaces, women are more likely to feel unsafe, not respected and not listened to. I remember a friend once told me about the time that her male lecturer had asked her to put on makeup before attending a careers fair where she was there to try and encourage women to join her discipline, because he thought that would help her relate to women.

Lecturers often teach students about the contents of a patriarchal system. For example, most of the law that law students learn about has been made by men, who still outnumber women in law-making positions. Just last week I learnt in my class on the law of evidence that, until recently, at a trial for rape, a women’s history of sexual experiences were admitted as evidence because if she had no sexual history then she was considered chaste, and therefore less likely to lie about the sexual experiences that were at the centre of the trial.

Women also learn about subject areas through a patriarchal lens. In international relations, for example, students are taught key theories which inform how they analyse international events. These theories are almost always based in the writings of men from hundreds, and even thousands, of years ago, when women were still locked out of key positions in society. But because this history plays such an important part in what we learn today, women remain excluded.

Care Responsibilities

Whilst women are studying at UTAS, they are likely to also be doing unpaid care and domestic responsibilities – twice as much as their male counterparts. This is especially burdensome for women who are caring for children or a sick family member whilst studying at university.

Whilst there are Learning Access Plans for people who are sick, there is no such instrument for women caring for others. This means if a woman’s child unexpectedly comes down with an illness, they will have to rely on their lecturer’s kindness to obtain an extension on an assignment.

Furthermore, whilst there is a childcare facility at UTAS, the university acknowledges that this facility is in high demand and the waitlistsweight lists are often long. This means that women with children often have to take care of their child and study at the same time – something that anyone who has spent any time at all around a child knows is nearly impossible.

Juggling working with unpaid work at home is also a significant issue for UTAS staff, 58.2% of which are female.

Whilst the COVID-19 pandemic has forced lecturers to be more flexible in delivering course content online, there are still some classes which require attendance in person at a certain time. For the women who have to care for others or work to support others, this inflexibility can be detrimental to their working relationships, the people they care for and their grades.

The Gender Pay Gap and Women in Leadership Positions

Women are aware that in the careers which they are studying to obtain, they will be paid less than their male colleagues and finish them with half the superannuation that men have.

They know that in these careers that will be less likely than the males that they work with to receive promotions or work in leadership roles. Even amongst UTAS staff, women do not progress in their careers equally to men, and there are less women than men who are in senior roles.

Spaces and Advocates for Women on Campus

Because of the issues that women face in their lives and as a student at UTAS, there needs to be avenues for women to seek support and places where they can feel understood and safe.

As a result of the restructure of the Tasmanian University Union – now the Tasmanian University Student Association (TUSA) – there is no longer a women’s officer on campus. However, there is an Equity President and there will be an Equity Committee. The Equity President, Sophie Crothers, is the main point of contact for women experiencing issues. She will listen to and support students and take their issues to the Equity Committee and UTAS administration and staff where necessary. Sophie also oversees equity concerns at TUSA, such as organising free menstrual products in the female and male bathrooms at UTAS. You can find Sophie’s contact on the TUSA website, or her office in the TUSA building. There is a Women’s Room in the TUSA building, where women can feel safe and supported by other women.

The UTAS Women’s Society, affiliated with TUSA, aims to be a point-of-contact for women, nonbinary and non-conforming people on campus, where they need help or connection. They also aim to create a safe space and community for women, non-binary, non-conforming people to meet, chat, learn and grow. They have a morning tea and an afternoon tea on alternating fortnights at Source Community Wholefoods. You can find these events on Facebook.

UTAS has a Safe and Fair Community Unit which you can approach if you experience sexual assault or harassment. They aim to listen, provide information and advice regarding your options for pursuing the complaint and accessing the support you may need. You can find them online.

UTAS has an Equity Committee, chaired by the Pro Vice-Chancellor for Culture, Wellbeing and Sustainability, Professor Margaret Otlowski. Each College also has an Inclusion, Diversity and Equity Committee. UTAS has committed to the Respect.Now.Always. Campaign and the #NeverOK to try to raise awareness that sexual assault and harassment are not tolerated at UTAS.