Expect Respect – addressing gendered violence in schools
Queensland Teachers' Journal, Vol 130 No 6, 5 September 2025, page no 23.
The QTU has commissioned research into gendered violence in schools.
This is a global problem. UNESCO estimates that it affects nearly 250 million children each year, whether physically or online. The scale of the problem is likely to be much greater, given that a first world jurisdiction like Queensland has no mechanism to collect and report on incidents of gendered violence.
The QTU has identified gendered violence in schools as a critical issue for our members, disproportionately impacting upon women teachers, heads of program, school leaders, and the girls in our schools. Our concern aligns with our Union’s core priorities, which include ensuring safe, healthy, and properly resourced workplaces; addressing the broader education crisis – including teacher shortages and occupational violence; and holding employers accountable for the wellbeing of education professionals.
While there is no mechanism for reporting incidents of gendered violence in schools, QTU members have provided quantitative and qualitative data.
In 2021, our Expect Respect survey investigated the prevalence and nature of gendered violence in schools. Actions arising from the report’s recommendations led to the development of the QTU’s Guide to Gendered Violence for Employees, which provides guidance on how to recognise, report, and respond to incidents.
Building on the report, the 22 August 2024 meeting of the QTU Women Teachers and Girls Education Committee discussed gendered violence in schools and considered how we can harness the research that’s already out there. November State Council endorsed the proposal to investigate gendered violence in schools and resolved “THAT Council calls on QTU objective one to include a campaign action which targets reduction of gendered violence in schools.”
As a result, Professor Liz Mackinlay and Associate Professor Aspa Baroutsis (Southern Cross University) have been commissioned to engage with the QTU and our members over the next 18 months and prepare an independent report on gendered violence in schools. Supported by the motions of the Women Teachers and Girls Education Committee and State Council, the focus of Professor Mackinlay and Associate Professor Baroutsis’ work will be the production of an independent report. The key thematic of the report will be fed forward to the QTU, which will have the opportunity to add solutions and supports, based on member perspectives and experiences.
Our Southern Cross University partners began this work at our 2025 QTU Biennial Conference, where Professor Mackinlay and Associate Professor Baroutsis conducted a short survey of all delegates and then co-presented a concurrent session with QTU Officers. Fifty conference delegates participated in the concurrent session, which collected qualitative data on QTU members’ experiences of gendered violence in schools. At the time of writing, this work is under review by Southern Cross and Union officers, and reports will follow in future editions of the Journal and on the QTU website.
During the concurrent session, 50 delegates wrote 52 short stories representing member experiences of gendered violence in schools. The delegates then worked collegially to generate 34 solutions. When woven together, these scraps of data form a tapestry that creates a larger narrative.
Iris Marion Young’s five faces of oppression deepen understandings of the narrative, revealing exploitation, marginalisation, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and violence manifesting as group violence, sexualised behaviour, intimidation, and use of derogatory terms online and in classrooms and staffrooms.
The QTU recognises that gendered violence occurs in schools, but it is rooted in economic, political, and socio-cultural causes. These are underpinned by intersectionality of misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, racism, and inequitable distribution of wealth, all of which begin outside of the school gate. Addressing gendered violence requires policy initiatives and systems change to drive global and local communities towards a more just future. This includes understanding that there is no single policy lever available to governments, departments, communities, schools, teachers or their Union. Rather, a coordinated response is required. The QTU has a history of resistance to oppression and barriers to safe and just futures, and the Union is committed to actively engaging in — and to lead when required — government and community programs which seek to eliminate violence against women a
nd girls.