In preparing a new recommendation to the government, Mariëtte Hamer spoke to both victims and perpetrators of sexually transgressive behaviour and sexual violence in higher education. She also spoke to students, experts and representatives of higher education institutions.

As a special government commissioner tasked with combatting sexually transgressive behaviour and sexual violence, Hamer has been advising the government since 2022. She was appointed in response to the widely publicised allegations of sexual misconduct behind the scenes at the TV programme The Voice of Holland.

In her recommendation, which was published yesterday, Hamer sets out the problems in higher education. She also argues that the low number of formal reports being filed – just 300 in 2022 – does not reflect reality. According to her, there is a “worrying discrepancy between the number of reports and the (estimated) actual number of incidents”.

Half of young women

As Hamer writes in her letter to the government: “Half of women aged 18 to 24 experienced some form of sexually transgressive behaviour last year.”

Although these incidents usually don’t happen on campus, many of them do. In other instances, the perpetrators are fellow students, meaning the institution in question has a role to play regardless of where the misconduct occurred. But none of this is evident from the limited number of formal complaints.

The response to a report of sexually transgressive behaviour or sexual violence is often rather procedural and legalistic, and aftercare for victims is “minimal or absent”, Hamer writes. As a result, complaint procedures sometimes do victims more harm than good.

Moreover, a variety of factors increase the risk of problems, such as strong hierarchies, one-to-one working relationships, uncertainty due to temporary contracts, high workloads and cutthroat competition. At universities, PhD students and postdocs in particular suffer the consequences of this working climate, Hamer notes.

Training and duty of care

Hamer recommends providing training and supervision, raising awareness, emphasising the duty of care institutions have towards their students, holding meetings and conducting risk assessments to achieve a culture change. In addition, ‘relationship and sex education’ should be given a permanent place in all curricula, and the position of PhD students and postdocs should be improved.

This does raise a question: how much time should institutions spend on such classes, meetings and supervision? That is beside the point, Hamer said in response to the Higher Education Press Agency. “We are already spending a lot of time on this, fixing problems that could have been prevented. Institutions can even lose talented employees when things go wrong, for instance when PhD student are so disappointed that they leave academia.”