Academic Culture, Mental Health, and Harassment in Brazilian Universities: A Critical Gendered-Racial Diagnosis and Response

Recent research shows that, at least since the mid-2010s, the category ‘sexual harassment’ has circulated in Brazilian universities to describe a range of forms of gender-based violence that takes place in academia, a space also marked by great power hierarchies (Almeida & Zanello 2023). However, in Brazil, there is little research mapping this phenomenon, tracing its causes and implications, and particularly, devising policy mechanisms that can produce long-term transformative change. Indeed, there is no aggregate database on crime rates and violent practices on college campuses in Brazil. Similarly, there is also no national study on the policies undertaken by different university administrations about violence. This project aims to start filling in this gap by conducting university-wide mixed-methods research in two large Brazilian public universities, to a) measure the prevalence of physical violence, psychological violence, economic violence, sexual violence, and sexual harassment and b) understand experiences of gender-based violence, sexual harassment and their effects on mental health and unacknowledged aspects of sexual harassment against people of racial/ethnic minorities. The research will involve four groups of participants – undergraduate and graduate students, professors, and administrative personnel –- at the Federal University of Minas Gerais and the Federal University of Goiás. The comparison between these two universities, located in different regions and exhibiting distinct profiles in terms of their student and professional bodies, as well as budget and resources, will allow us to identify the main forms of gender-based violence that take place in these spaces, who the most likely perpetrators and victims are, how this phenomenon affects people’s academic performance, mental health, and general wellbeing, and what institutional response mechanisms are in place.