Federal sexual misconduct policy impact on intersectional identities: a critical quantitative study
2019 Spring. ; Includes bibliographical references. ; Sexual misconduct is an epidemic on college campuses. Studies show consistently that one in five women on college campuses experience sexual assault during their academic career. When a broader range of types of sexual misconduct are included, the percentage of women and other gendered students who experienced sexual misconduct increases greatly, to at times above 50%, in the literature. Additionally, racial and ethnic minorities, trans* and gender non-binary persons, lesbian, and gay, and bisexual persons all experience sexual victimization at higher rates than their dominant group peers according to research studies. Research has neglected to address how intersectional identities experience sexual misconduct. In 2013, the federal government passed the Violence Against Women Reauthorization of 2013 in order, in part, to address sexual misconduct on college campuses. The bill specifically focused on prevention efforts and reporting requirements for institutions of higher education. This study utilized a critical quantitative methodology to explore the question of how students have experienced the federal policy change at 21 Missouri institutions of higher education from 2012-2016 using an intersectionality framework. Within this issue, it is important to understand how marginalized populations were or were not served by policy and if the policy change impacted the rates of sexual misconduct. The study found that the Violence Against Women's Act of 2013 impacted different intersectional social locations differently. The data indicated the potential for effective educational efforts and increased assistance when examining the whole study population. In examining all participants over the five years of the study, there was a general indication of increased experience of sexual misconduct across several categories of sexual misconduct. The data also suggested more participants sought assistance after experiencing sexual misconduct over the time period of the study for the entire population of the study. However, the participants did not indicate that the effectiveness of the assistance received after experiencing sexual misconduct increased. A general theme across many social locations was the benefit of privileged aspects of social locations such as heterosexual or White, European-American, or Caucasian participants often had a better response in the data to the VAWA 2013 policy change compared to their less privileged peers. Inequity regarding the impact of the VAWA 2013 policy change was also evident with gender and ethnicity regarding transgender participants, gender and race regarding Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander participants, and race and sexuality regarding lesbian, queer, and questioning participants amongst other social locations throughout the time period of the study. The complexity of the 62 different social locations provides pathways for both praxis and future research.
