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Socialist Students plan to develop campaigns against sexism in and around campus this year. It is not just a question of campaigns against sexist advertising around campus (including in the Student Unions Ents promotions) and female students encountering sexist attitudes and comments. Sexual harassment is a big issue. Three-quarters of female students do not always feel safe walking around their university campus at night. Female students are concerned about the threat of sexual assault and drink spiking in bars and clubs.

We believe that big business, including sections of the media and advertising, alcohol industry and assorted entertainment venues, is creating an increasingly sexist culture which views women’s bodies as objects to sell various products and services, everything from beer to car insurance! Even more seriously, the sex industry (including lap-dancing clubs, sex ‘chatlines’ and prostitution) is to varying degrees based on turning women’s actual bodies and the various ‘sexual services’ they can provide, into commodities for sale. This reinforces existing inequality and backward ideas which underpin sexual harassment and violence against women.

We think socialists should oppose the treatment of women in this way. It is the logic of capitalism to reduce everything, including human beings, into commodities on the capitalist ‘market’. Socialists on the other hand have a very different point of view! In particular, we think the growth of sexist advertising around campus is linked to the question of the creeping commercialisation and privatisation of higher education as a whole. The fact that in areas close to some campuses adverts have appeared for the sex industry that target female students is not a sign of young women’s ‘sexual liberation’. Instead, it indicates how the sex industry is cynically using female student’s impoverishment as a result of the fees and scrapping of the grant to recruit to its sexually exploitative trade.

Gender stereotyping in higher education academic courses is a big problem. Female students are less likely to enter ‘male’ subject areas linked to some of the country's highest paid industries, such as financial management, sciences, maths, computer science, engineering and technology. However, female students are the majority of students in the biological sciences, the humanities, social sciences and the creative arts. This is partly why it will take female graduates much longer to pay off their student debt than male graduates.

There are other disturbing indications of a sexist culture at our universities and higher education institutions. The Times Education Supplement (TES) recently reported that female academics are claiming that university managers are failing to protect female academics against abuse and intimidation from students. The TES reported that a paper presented at the Women in Higher Education Network conference this year revealed that female academics have been subjected to physical attacks, stalking and heckling by students. According to TES, the Nuffield Foundation-sponsored research argued that in every case, the women reported inappropriate and often sexist management responses. We think the trade unions and NUS should have trained advisers who specialise in sexual harassment cases to represent women in these situations as well as having policies against sexual harassment in place (if they do not already have them).

In the meantime, the situation is likely to reinforce the fears of many female students about the threat of sexual harassment and even sexual assault around campus. Socialist Students take part in safety campaigns to make campuses safer at night and put forward demands including for free night-time transport to be provided for students to and from campus, for all areas in and around campus to be well lit at night, as well as other appropriate safety measures. We support existing student union safety awareness campaigns and initiatives, including the campaign warning of the dangers of drink spiking and the provision of rape alarm kits for all female students. We link this with the need to campaign to increase support services available for women (and men) who have experienced sexual assault and rape – services that are currently extremely limited in availability, under-funded or, in some areas, not available at all. Socialist Students campaign to link these struggles on campus with the trade unions, and community campaigns.

Socialists believe that one of the problems with sexism is that, as well as undermining women, it divides men and women and cuts across the unity and solidarity necessary for successful struggle. We believe that workers and youth should take part in collective struggles (whether it is fighting the fees and neo-liberal cutbacks and closures in higher education, campaigning against low pay, against racism and so on) on the basis of equality. This is a different approach from the one taken by feminists who blame all men for women’s oppression and inequality. The divide some feminists draw between the genders (implied or otherwise) is artificial, misleading and provides no solution to the struggles that women, and working class women in particular, face whether it is at university, school, college, the workplace or in society generally.

Sarah Mayo – Socialist Party Wales.