Citation

Ridde V, Dagenais C, Daigneault I. BMJ Glob. Health 2019; 4(2): e001616.

Affiliation

Department of Psychology, Université de Montréal, Montréal, Québec, Canada.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, BMJ Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1136/bmjgh-2019-001616

PMID

31139462

PMCID

PMC6509593

Abstract

Looking back over the first year of the global #MeToo movement that brought sexual violence (from harassment to coercion and assault) out in the open,1 we note that this issue has received little attention in academic global health. Recent cases of sexual misconduct in Joint United Nations Programme on HIV and AIDS (UNAIDS)2 and Oxfam show that the global health community must act to address this problem.3 In just a few months, the #MeToo movement raised awareness, stimulated new debates and placed this issue squarely on the public agenda in politics, business and entertainment. But academic global health still does not adequately prepare (women and men) students and academics for this problem; and recent discussions on global health training ignore the problem.4 Indeed, there is an urgent need to implement evidence-based comprehensive and integrated prevention strategies to address sexual violence in global health academic research.5

Collaboration between partners from countries with unequal incomes and power is common in academic global health.6 7 While challenges of power, money, publication, data use, and so on, within such collaborations are widely discussed,6 8–10 there is relative silence around sexual violence. Gender inequality in global health is increasingly discussed11—as scientific panels are often composed of a majority of (or only) men and the work of unpaid young women represents a large proportion of global health internships ...

Language: en

Keywords

Gender; Global Health; Sexual Violence; Sexual harassment; health education and promotion