EU-level concern about inclusion and workplace sexual harassment is on the rise. Despite this, European academic research continues to overlook how race, class, and legal status shape victims' experiences. Irene Landini says it's time for studies of sexual harassment in higher education to take an intersectional turn
Universities across Europe present themselves as promoters of inclusion and anti-discrimination research. Yet within their own walls, various forms of inequality and discrimination continue to unfold. European universities including the renowned College of Europe, the University of Lausanne and many others recently experienced sexual harassment scandals. Even prestigious institutions, it seems, can become unsafe workplaces. The advent of digital platforms has enabled new forms of workplace harassment, often replicating and reinforcing existing patterns of harm.
Recent investigations show that victims of online and/or face-to-face sexual harassment in HE often hail from diverse backgrounds. Some belong to the white, middle-class majority in their home countries. Others come from lower-income or racialised communities. In acknowledgement of this, the EU developed its Gender Equality Strategy 2020–2025. The Strategy underlines the need for increased attention to online and offline/face-to-face workplace sexual harassment at EU policy level — and not just in higher education institutions. The strategy likewise calls for more trauma-informed, intersectional research.
Policymakers and practitioners, too, are calling for a more intersectional response to workplace sexual harassment — especially in higher education. Despite this, most research on the topic still lags behind . This is particularly the case for research produced by, and located in, contexts outside the US and non-English-speaking countries. With some important exceptions, the voices and experiences of those who do no not fit into these strict categories often remain absent.
Since Kimberlé Crenshaw’s foundational work in 1989, scholars have drawn attention to how gender, race, class, disability, and more interact to produce unique experiences of oppression and privilege. Indeed, 'intersectionality' has grown to become a commonly invoked term.
Disadvantaged migrants and ethnic minorities remain persistently absent from academic studies on sexual harassment in higher education
Examining sexual harassment in higher education through an intersectional lens would significantly advance conceptual and empirical understanding of the problem. It would give voice to people rarely at the centre of mainstream research: those outside white, middle-class, majority-ethnic groups. Disadvantaged migrants and ethnic minorities remain persistently absent from academic studies on sexual harassment in higher education. With only a few, albeit important, exceptions, and interesting pieces of work, their experiences remain largely unexamined, especially in Europe.
Academic research tends to focus primarily on the so-called 'international staff': Erasmus students, visiting professors, or PhD researchers. These groups typically include individuals who are highly resourced, well-supported institutionally, and, often, only temporary. But what about the many scholars, staff members, and early-career researchers who have relocated for economic, political, or personal reasons, and who live and work in host countries long-term or permanently? What about those whose socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds differ significantly from the elite profiles often associated with academic mobility?
Yet, as Crenshaw and colleagues argued in 2013, a truly intersectional approach doesn’t simply create a checklist of individual characteristics, differences, and layers of structural oppression. It goes deeper. Intersectionality interrogates how these categories interact, compound, and shift depending on the structural context and, especially, the systems of power and structural inequality, such as the workplace or society at large. It challenges us to see our own and others’ identities not as a static sum of parts, but as something produced through social, institutional, and historical dynamics. Identity is also something that transforms, adapts, and takes on a different meaning depending on the workplace, the broader social context, or one's position in intersecting systems of power. It evolves over time and across space. Intersectionality, in this sense, is not about counting fixed differences. It is about the dynamic interplay of power, context, and positionality.
A truly intersectional approach doesn’t simply create a checklist of individual characteristics; it interrogates how these characteristics interact, compound, and shift depending on the structural context
To combat sexual harassment in higher education effectively, we must stop seeing victims as a monolithic category. Not all women experience face-to-face or online sexual harassment in the same way just because they identify as women. Similarly, not all migrants experience harassment in the same way. Legal status matters. Skin colour matters. Class, race, age, nationality, contract type, institutional context, and many other characteristics and factors affects who gets targeted, how it happens, and what consequences it carries.
And when one’s personal situation changes over time, past vulnerabilities may recede while new challenges emerge, shaped by shifting positionalities. If a refugee student acquires citizenship, for example, this may lessen her risk of sexual harassment because her legal status becomes more secure. She may still, however, suffer sexual harassment because of her ethnicity, financial precarity, or marginalised social position.
These dynamics are never neutral. Systems of power and structural inequality that operate across the social, institutional, and geopolitical domain produce and transform them. Ignoring them has serious consequences, not just for research accuracy, but for policy and justice, too. If scholarly studies do not reflect the diverse reality of victimisation, how can policies claim to protect us all?
If scholarly studies do not reflect the diverse reality of victimisation, how can policies claim to protect us all?
Without intersectionality we risk retaining outdated laws that leave those most at risk unprotected, unrepresented, and unheard. Even worse: as academia itself becomes complicit. Research is not neutral, indeed. Who we include, what we ask, and how we analyse, all reflects our assumptions about whose experiences do really matter. If we continue to study sexual harassment through a narrow lens, we will continue to get only partial answers — and partial justice. But if we widen our scope, listen more carefully, and focus on those who are too often excluded, we can build a research landscape — and a university culture — that is not only more accurate, but more just.
