Title: Gender-based Violence among Female Students and Effects for health Interventions
Programmes in public Universities.
BACKGROUND
Gender-based violence is violence directed against any person based on gender norms and
unequal power relationships. Gender-based violence establishes itself in different types;
physical, sexual, and verbal/emotional. In this learning, physical violence is understood as
when a person hurts a partner by kicking, hitting, or using another type of physical force
while sexual violence refers to forcing or attempting to force a partner to take part in a sex
act, sexual touching, or a non-physical sexual event for instance, flirt-text when the partner
does not or cannot consent (Adams, Mabusela & Dlamini, Citation2013). Emotional/verbal
abuse is defined as a pattern of behaviour in which the offender abuses, shames, and usually
instils fear in an individual to control them (Gqola, Citation2015).
As a result, an individual’s reality may become distorted as a person may adopt the abuse as
their own failings (Gqola, Citation2015). Even though gender-based violence affects both
men and women, evidence shows that violence against women is a regular, and general
problem (Adams, Mabusela & Dlamini, Citation 2013). (Anitha &
Lewis, Citation2018) agree that gender-based violence against women is a
universal threat affecting every civilisation. Gender-based violence has no
culture, wealth, street, home, school, workplace or institution, and it is a
human rights violation which is a limitation on gender equality and the
development of nations” (Belknap & Erez, Citation2007;
Gqola, Citation2015). The purpose of this study is to analyze the incidence and factors
underlying gender-based violence among female students at public universities in the Eastern
Cape. Outcomes may be used by the government, and stakeholders to develop policies and
involvement programmes to fight gender-based violence among female students on South
, African campuses. Bloom (Citation2008) shows that globally, one out of three women will be
physically or sexually harmed, and one out of five will experience rape or attempted rape in
their lifetime. In resulting countries, gender-based violence is a serious problem, as the rate of
violence is high (between 30% and 76%) and takes place under different cases. While South
Africa is becoming more aware of the problem of gender-based violence in institutions of
higher education and training, there is a lack of provincial or national research to offer a
clearer thoughtful of the nature and extent of gender-based violence in institutions of higher
education and training in South Africa. Furthermore, the under-reporting of gender-based
violence, particularly sexual violence, makes it difficult to determine the prevalence of the
different forms of gender-based violence in institutions of higher education and training.
Keywords: Gender-based violence female students universities
: Sexual violation factors Rape
Problem formulation
South African institutions of higher education and training have not been spared from the
threat of gender-based violence leading to several complaints around the country time and
again, many of which concerned sexual violence on campuses. The anger over gender-based
violence around university campuses is a result of the few occurrences reported by media
both local and national. However, only a few cases make it into the national news. Thus, just
a small portion of the incidents of gender-based violence on and around campuses in the
country is reported (Phipps et al., Citation2018) the risk of experiencing gender-based
