Prevention of violence against women/girls so as to build safe-spaces for women in educational universities in Vietnam

Violence against women and female students causes serious impacts on physical and mental wellbeing, and sabotages opportunities for the development of women/girls in employment and education. The United Nations emphasized in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development its commitment to achieving the goals of gender equality and the empowerment of all women/girls through the end of all forms of violence. The key to eliminating GBV in HE is to ensure that the university environment becomes a safe-space for women to contribute ideas and participate. Suggested actions to eliminate violence against women and create a safe school environment at universities can be focused on three general groups: 1) Favourable institutional environment; 2) Access to services; and 3) Prevention (UN Women, 2018).However, the teaching curriculum on preventing and responding to violence against women/girls, as well as knowledge about gender and gender equality in Vietnam, is still limited at all educational levels.The aim of this study is to address this gap by:
1. Conduct a detailed needs assessment and analysis of current teacher-training programmes i) to identify how gender sensitive they are, such as if the programme raises awareness of girls' and women’s rights and if the textbooks or curriculum promote non-traditional gender roles.
2. Evaluate the environment and current situation of gender-based violence among officials, lecturers, staff and female students at five pedagogical universities from all three regions of Vietnam (North, Central and South).
3. Develop training materials on gender-related issues and gender equality (prevention and response to gender-based violence) for students and lecturers at pedagogical universities in Vietnam;
4. Implement training on the above materials for students and lecturers from the sampled pedagogical universities;
5. Make recommendations to the MOET, as well as universities of education more widely, on the implementation of mainstreaming curricula on gender, gender equality and prevention of violence against women/girls (at all levels of education, but especially for pedagogical university students).
The project is conducted in collaboration between researchers and lecturers from Hanoi National University of Education (Vietnam), the University of Northampton (UK) and the University of Salford (UK), and will bring several values to both universities at different levels;

This project seeks to develop training materials on gender equality for students and staff in Vietnamese universities to raise awareness of gender-based violence.