Secondary school students in Catalonia believe that the following statement is true: "There are also many women who attack men, but they don't talk about that." A belief that feeds machismo that is "very worrying" for the head of the security and transversal policies cabinet of the Department of the Interior, Alba Alfageme, who yesterday presented the latest edition, corresponding to the 2021-2022 academic year, of the School Coexistence and Security Survey that is prepared every five years.
In general, the students rate the previous sentence as 6 on a scale from 0 to 10, but in the case of boys the score rises to 6.9, which would correspond to "quite agree". Another statement with a considerable degree of acceptance is: "Macho violence is an invention: women also mistreat men, but in a different way." The boys surveyed almost agree with this statement, giving it a truthfulness of 4.7 out of 10. The girls, on the other hand, basically disagree (2.2).
These assessments coexist with others that invite greater optimism about attitudes against sexist violence. Thus, for example, they show themselves on scales equivalent to "strongly disagree" (between 1 and 3) that asking for the mobile phone password is normal, or that boys are violent because they provoke them, or that it is common for your partner to ask you not to go with friends to have you exclusively. Nor is it accepted that a girl has to work hard to do what her partner likes, or that jealousy equals love.
In these sentences, the girls rate their maximum degree of discrepancy (between 0 and 2), while the boys score between 2 and 3.
Curiously, the romantic idea of love that would be represented by the phrase "when you find your better half, you have to do whatever it takes to maintain the relationship, because he is the partner of your life" is more pronounced among boys (4) than among girls (2,3).
"We have to address and attack these detected arguments (such as the first sentences) and that have a higher prevalence among boys than among girls," said Alfageme, to prevent dangerous ideas from spreading that end up settling "as we have seen in Sunday's elections," he said.
The survey shows that girls have a greater perception of risk and change their habits when they arrive at ESO for fear of suffering some type of aggression, he continued, such as looking for safer ways to go to school (35% of ESO girls), stop participating in social networks (18%) or stop going out with friends for fear of problems (14%). "And that already marks his personal experience in the future," says the chief of staff.
The perception of risk of some type of sexual assault between peers is high (this is stated by 3 out of 4 students, regardless of their gender), but it is higher among adolescents. 86% of girls consider that their peers suffer sexual assault, such as harassment or annoying comments, insults and touching, and 60% of girls say they have been victims of sexual violence (50% in ESO and 75% in high school).
What kind of violence? Students say they have personally experienced comments of a sexual nature (46% of girls vs. 10% of boys), received messages (36% vs. 11%), requests for photos with sexual content (35% vs. 11%), bullying or stalking (34% vs. 6%), touching (18% vs. 6%), onerous offers (12% vs. 4%), violent touching (4% vs. 2%), and unwanted sexual relations (3.3 % vs. 1.6%).
Primary school students (they were surveyed from the 4th year onwards) are not free from unhealthy behaviours. Almost two out of every ten children under the age of 12 have at some point received comments of a sexual nature, 8.9% messages, 3.4% photographs and 2.2% have suffered sexual touching against their will.
The report also details that more than half of the students –among them 27% in primary school– affirm that they have accessed pages with adult content –although it does not specify whether it is pornography, gambling or chat. This is a more common practice among boys (64%) than among girls (44%).
In general, 64% of the students affirm that they are victims of some type of violence, a percentage that in secondary school has risen 17 points compared to the 2015-2016 edition, while in primary school it has dropped 4 points.
For Alfageme, this increase is due to a greater identification of situations of school violence by students who no longer see teasing, making a vacuum or physical aggression as normal.
The main behaviors that are described as school violence are teasing (46%), making a vacuum (39.3%) or physical violence (29.3%), while 15.8% also state that they have received comments or gestures of a sexual nature.
Likewise, close to 14% of those surveyed consider that they have been the victim of digital violence, with practices such as threats to force them to do something they do not want (41.2%) or comments, messages or gestures of sexual content (41%).
According to the report, 62.6% of those surveyed affirm that they have witnessed how someone from their school suffered school violence - to which more than half tried to help. The reasons expressed are physical appearance (38.7%), sexual orientation (12.7%) and skin colour, culture or origin (12.5%).
In this sense, bullying (frequent and sustained negative actions over time) affects 18.9% of the school population, a figure that has not risen compared to previous editions.
The extensive x-ray of school coexistence that is this report is based on a survey of 2,524 students in 4th, 5th and 6th grade of primary school, 5,158 students of ESO and 2,458 of high school and intermediate level training cycles.
