When David Defeats Goliath. The Case of MeToo University: The Solidarity Network of Victims of Gender-Based Violence in Universities

The first inquiries into gender-based violence in the Spanish university context revealed that 62% of the participating students had been a victim or knew someone who had been a victim of gender violence at university (Valls et al., 2016). The results of this research confirmed that the reality in Spain is similar to that of other countries where we found research in this regard since the 1980s (Koss, Gidycz and Wisniewski, 1987). However, at the same time, it emphasized the silence on this significant social problem that has been maintained for decades in Spain. One of the impacts of this research in Spain was the incorporation into the legislation on gender equality, in 2007, the legal obligation to establish protocols against gender-based violence in universities. This seemed to bring a hopeful future, with greater equality and social justice, but this was not what the members of the Solidarity Network of victims of gender violence at the university experienced. In this chapter, we analyse the case of this network driven by university students, created in 2013, which has managed to bring together people from different sectors who have been victims and the people who support them. Their example shows how the participation of young people in this social transformation is necessary, but at the same time, it implies important risks and difficulties. Through different examples, we show how the barriers imposed by some representatives of the institution did not manage to deactivate their struggle. These barriers made even more evident the need for their action and encouraged them to organize themselves and seek alliances with the rest of the university community, with other universities and with other young people in the rest of the world who participate in similar social movements. This approach, in which action focuses on promoting the intervention of all people in the community, applied in different educational contexts, has been shown to achieve social impact in the reduction of violence and protection of victims (Banyard, 2008; Jouriles et al., 2020).