Dr. Clíona Saidléar:

To respond to the gendered question, we can see the gendered impacts but it is more difficult to see how all that plays out before we get to those stark impacts. That is one of the reasons I have spoken on a few occasions about the need for a sexual harassment policy.

In the programmes we are involved in, boys and girls are together in the classroom but, as a facilitator and an educator, we are clearly looking at power dynamics and the different expectation that are based on gender. When we commissioned the research, Young people, Alcohol and Sex: What's consent got to do with it?, it surprised us that young people said there is no difference between men and women, boys and girls, they are all empowered now, they can all say "Yes" and "No", and that everything is fantastic. However, when we scratched the surface of that regarding scenarios that were questionable such as sexual violence and sexual consent, in the quick responses on who is the gatekeeper in terms of responsibility and blame, strict gender roles were outlined.

Delivering the curriculum in the classroom is one thing but what happens when those children walk out into the corridor? Unless we have a sophisticated understanding of the gendered, sexist and misogynistic world they are stepping into in the corridor, we may have equipped them poorly to engage. If we do not empower them to stand up for themselves and call out, say, the sexual assault they experience as soon as they step out into that corridor, what have we done as institutions to ensure they are in a safe place in terms of the power dynamics going on in that corridor?

When we have delivered our curriculum, have we also done our homework on the context they step out into? That is why I talk about a sexual harassment action plan for schools, a national policy on how we do that and create safe spaces in the school environment. We have a template, 'Safe and Supportive' that BeLonG To spoke about. It is an excellent piece of work. Why do we not have that for sexual harassment? We would like to think about how this curriculum is enacted in children's lives when they step back into the real world and whether we have empowered them in ways that are unintentionally unsafe because we have not taken care of context outside the classroom.