Do deaf women feel safe on campus? A qualitative case study of one UK university - EDICa

Do deaf women feel safe on campus? A qualitative case study of one UK university

An article reporting on interviews conducted with five deaf women who work or study at one UK university to examine whether they feel safe on campus. They reported having more concerns because they are deaf, rather than because they are women. Recommendations are made for university campuses.

Published : 01/01/2024

Deaf

Disability

Research

Home » Do deaf women feel safe on campus? A qualitative case study of one UK university

With increasing attention to sexual misconduct on university campuses, universities have focused attention on campus safety, but safety systems are based on assumptions that people who live and work on campuses are able-minded and able-bodied. Any contemplation of campus safety needs to consider the intersectional experiences of students and staff. Considering the experiences of people from minoritised groups can provide insights into socially constructed notions of safety on campus.

One such minoritised group is deaf women. Using the broader concept of safety to mean ‘the state of being ‘safe’ and the condition of being protected from any harm or other danger’, this paper reports on interviews conducted with five deaf women who work or study at one UK university to examine whether they feel safe on the campus.

Four key themes were identified: (i) safety on campus, (ii) safety as a woman, (iii) safety as a deaf person, and (iv) accessible safeguarding. These five deaf women reported having more concerns because they are deaf rather than because they are women, but noted that the intersectional experience of being deaf and a woman create deeper safety concerns. Recommendations are made for university campuses to ensure that their safeguarding practices are accessible.

Other related resources

EDICa hosts a regular blog and seminars, as well as collecting a library of resources of equality, diversity & inclusion practices in research & innovation.

Black man's hands making a sign

Representation & diversity in the sign language translation & interpreting profession in UK

Date: September 2022

Article on the diversity and representation of the sign language and interpreter profession, including recommendations.

A loom with a variety of colourful threads stretching away into the loom.

Enabling NeuroDiverse Inclusive Science Careers

Date: 31st May 2022

Recommendations for how to make science careers more inclusive for neurodivergent researchers.

Guide for employers working with deaf sign language users

Date: 1st July 2019

A useful, research-based guide for employers on how to recruit, support and retain deaf sign language users.

Dr Anjali Mazumder

AI and Justice and Human Rights Theme Lead

The Turing Institute

Anjali Mazumder is the Theme Lead on AI and Justice & Human Rights. Her work focuses on empowering government and non-profit organisations by co-designing and developing responsible and inclusive data and AI methods, tools and frameworks for safeguarding people from harm – particularly those most vulnerable, building resilient institutions and systems, and accelerating the opportunity for inclusive, fair and just services, systems, economies, and communities. She is passionate about fostering multi-disciplinary collaborations and multi-sector partnerships to co-create pathways for innovation that improves services, policy, and actions to safeguard human rights and address humanitarian challenges. Her research interests are in developing integrated Bayesian decision support systems to manage uncertainty with complex data structures, value of evidence, causal reasoning in the wild; expert judgement; detecting bias and algorithmic fairness; socio-technical solutions to harnessing multiple disparate sources of data whilst enabling responsible and inclusive data and AI principles and practices; communicating uncertainty and risk; and safeguarding rights and the Rule of Law.

She has over 15 years’ experience tackling fundamental statistical problems of societal importance – human rights, justice, security, the Law, education, public health & safety – working at the interface of research, policy and practice in the UK, the US, and Canada, fostering multi-disciplinary and cross-sector collaborations. She was appointed to Canada’s National DNA Databank Advisory Committee (2012-2018) and currently serves on the UK Forensic Science Regulator’s fingerprint interpretation subgroup, and the senior management board of the UK’s Policy and Evidence Centre for Modern Slavery and Human Rights. She has also served the Royal Statistical Society in a variety of ways, most recently appointed to the Statistics & Law Section and the Data Science Section committees. She holds a doctorate in Statistics from the University of Oxford and two masters’ degrees in Measurement and Evaluation, and Statistics from the University of Toronto.

Dr Jenny Douglas

Senior Lecturer in Health Promotion
Faculty of Wellbeing, Education & Language Studies

Dr Jenny Douglas is passionate about the health and wellbeing of black women as evidenced through her research and public engagement. She has a PhD in Women’s Studies and completed her doctoral thesis on cigarette smoking and identity among African-Caribbean young women in contemporary British society. This research brought together two divergent research traditions: medical public health and health promotion approaches with sociological approaches to researching cigarette smoking. This interdisciplinary research approach brings together sociology, public health and women’s studies. Her commitment to comparative approaches finds expression not only in working across disciplinary and national boundaries, but also across theoretical and methodological traditions. Her research is both varied and wide ranging spanning 30 years on issues of race, health, gender and ethnicity. The key theme unifying her research and activism is intersectionality – exploring how ‘race’, class and gender affect particular aspects of African – Caribbean women’s health.

Jenny Douglas established and chairs the Black Women’s Health and Wellbeing Research Network. (www.open.ac.uk/black-womens-health-and-wellbeing) and her ambition is to establish a research institute on the health and wellbeing of black women. She is a contributing author to ‘Inside the Ivory Tower’.

Jenny Douglas is a Senior Lecturer in Health Promotion in the Faculty of Wellbeing, Education and Language Studies at the Open University. She has a PhD in Women’s Studies from the University of York, an MA in Sociological Research in Health Care from the University of Warwick, an MSc in Environmental Pollution Control from the University of Leeds and a BSc (Hons) in Microbiology and Virology from the University of Warwick. She is module lead of the K311 – ‘Promoting Public Health’, is an honorary member of the Faculty of Public Health and is a director of the UK Public Health Register.

Jenny is a Research Affiliate of the Institute for Intersectionality Research and Policy, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada and a Visiting Scholar in the Department of Psychology at The George Washington University, Washington D.C., USA.