Fear not, diligent readers. I am still alive! Though I haven’t updated in a while, the research is going splendidly. Since my last post, I left the Netherlands and flew to Istanbul. It’s an absolutely delightful city. I’ve been here for 8 days and it really couldn’t have been a better 8 days. This may explain the relative drought of blog updates. I was very busy, and the newest interviews were fascinating. I’ll fill you in on the Istanbul activities (and lots of pictures of Turkish art) tomorrow. In the meantime, I know I promised a post about my data collection in the Netherlands.
I met with representatives from two different universities in Amsterdam to learn more about their gender violence policies. Both of universities stated that the university has not identified gender violence as an issue that needs to be worked on at their campus. Each university had a policy in place if there was a case that was brought to their attention, and said they had followed it before with success. At first look, it seems a bit dull. There are no underground feminists fighting the university, no cases in the media, and no attention from the university on sexual assault or gender violence.
That being said, during both interviews I tried to find out why gender violence and sexual assault was not an issue at these universities. Was it being ignored by the administration? Was it being pushed under the rug? Well, the answer given to me both times was, “We have very few cases, and the cases we do are nearly always non-violent.” I, of course, intend to fact check this, but am still waiting to get my hands on the data.
If true, this will be a very interesting finding. Why, then, is the Netherlands so different from Brazil, Spain, and the United States? Why are there so few reported cases in the Netherlands and so little focus when it seems everywhere else is having large problems and working to update their policy and increase their resources?
In the interviews, the subjects posited two possible explanations. First, there is a very low violent crime rate in the Netherlands. Second, Dutch women are historically quite empowered. The society is egalitarian and there is no “machismo” culture as seen in Spain. Clearly, I will not be able to “prove” either of these things but it is an interesting question to explore. I hope to find out a bit more about this when I get the data.
Tomorrow, I leave Istanbul, fly to Dubai, sit in the Dubai airport for 9 hours, and then fly to Cape Town. What a journey. Anyway, I should have a lot of time to write blog posts.