An interview with Dr Charlene Senn, an inspiring and impressive academic, researcher and leader in gender-based violence prevention in Canada.
Location: Zoom (Melbourne [visiting from Windsor, Ontario, Canada] and Canberra!)
“We need to enact the power in the world.”
Dr Charlene Senn was one of the first people I met with on my return to Australia after becoming unwell overseas, having surgery (oops) and having to postpone most of my interviews in the last few weeks of my travels. I am so glad I was still able to connect with Senn in January 2023 over zoom - and in the same timezone! Senn was visiting Melbourne, Australia, to deliver training to universities on the implementation of the Sexual Assault Resistance Education for University Women: The Enhanced Assess, Acknowledge, Act (EAAA) Sexual Assault Resistance Program also known to students as Flip the Script with EAAA™ program.
About Dr Charlene Senn
Senn is a gender-based violence expert-researcher who teaches courses in the psychology of women, male violence against women and applied social psychology at the University of Windsor, Canada. For more than 10 years, Senn developed, delivered and evaluated a sexual assault resistance education program (EAAA) for first year university women. The program is now available to universities in a ‘train the trainer’ model, to then be delivered in their own communities. In 2005, Senn founded the Health Research Centre for the Study of Violence against Women which brings together researchers across campus for interdisciplinary research collaborations and events. She is also the co-founder of (and primary researcher for) the University of Windsor Bystander Initiative, which embeds bystander-focused sexual assault prevention and training into the academic curriculum.
Senn has had a very broad and interesting activism journey that led her to where she is now. She completed her undergraduate degree in psychology, and discovered feminism in the first women's studies course offered at her university. During this course, she viewed the documentary film, Not a Love Story: A Film About Pornography, which explored the pornography industry and its impact on women. This sparked Senn's anti-pornography activism, in which she makes clear that anti-pornography does not mean anti-sex.
Her anti-pornography activism was reinforced by her work in a shelter for assaulted women and their children at the time, as many women would tell Senn about how porn was used as a weapon against them. Noticing a lack of discourse about this experience, she went on to take a graduate degree in social psychology, examining the effects of violent and dehumanising content in pornography on women- inspired by how men used it against women. Subsequently, Senn completed her PhD on women’s experiences with and attitudes toward pornography, and now works in academia and research.
“My dissertation was all of me - an activist, survivor and researcher making change.”
Following the completion of her PhD, Senn decided she needed to know what could be done to actually change this, and began developing the EAAA program. Particularly as the evidence shows that men’s behaviour change programs and other perpetrator-focused programs were not working.
Alongside her research and work in this space, Senn also continues to be active in the community by sitting on boards of local organisations, attending protests and marches, and also progressing her research on gender-based violence.
“A student activist will ask a question that shows she doesn’t think older women are survivors, they don't see researchers as activists, and I would love to change that.”
This sentiment was also brought up by other professionals working in the sector on my travels - the fact that sometimes student activists enter the space with the assumption that those who work in the field are not also survivors themselves. Noting that the sector is generally survivor-led, I agree it is important to bring everyone together and acknowledge the lived experiences of others. In this way, Senn brings together all of her experiences and makes sure that the really rigorous and high quality research is serving those goals. Senn's goal is for her work to directly impact the lives of girls and women, and ultimately change lives.
Senn's sentiment about student activists is also a key reason as to why a lot of her activism emerges through mentoring and supporting younger scholars and activists.
“When I am able to be my whole self in the work is when I can make the most change and everything is coming together.”
Flip the Script with EAAA™
“I did not want to create a program that was about enforcing women’s boundaries, refusing and fighting back without talking about women’s desire.”
The Flip the Script with EAAA™ program is a sexual assault resistance education program for young women. The program has been extensively researched by Senn and her team, and shown to decrease the likelihood of experiencing sexual assault in the future. Senn describes this program as a way for women to learn tools to be able to resist against a person trying to harm them. This program is one part of a comprehensive sexual violence prevention plan that should be coupled with other initiatives that engage the whole community to create social change. This program seeks to act as a short term solution that can make a difference in the lives of individual women, rather than achieving a systemic societal difference in men's behaviour.
When Senn started to develop the program, she introduced a ‘positive sexuality’ framework to deliver the resistance content. This framing has allowed for women's sexual desires to be explicit, rather than the more common focus of sexuality education to be around men's desires and women being there to respond to men’s requests and wants.
Senn and her team provide this program through the SARE Centre, a non-profit organisation founded by Senn which offers training and support to individuals and institutions in the administration and delivery of the EAAA sexual assault resistance program.
Senn first received a grant to pilot the program in 2005, conducted a randomised control trial in 2011, and has since done an implementation effectiveness trial which shows great results. More recently, Senn has been working with Dr Sarah M. Peitzmeier from the University of Michigan (who I met at the SVRI Forum) to adapt the program to focus on trans women.
“We don’t just do adaptation without researching.”
Considering Senn's program is producing such high quality results for reducing sexual violence, it has the potential to be scaled into other communities and bring great value. There is a lot of duplication in gender-based violence work, meaning that people working in the sector tend to develop their own content and programs without researching what already exists and adapting it to their own community. A key word of advice by Senn is for people not to start from scratch and instead utilise what is already out there. On the flipside, she also cautions against picking up a program and dropping it in a new context and expecting the same results. Any adaptation must be informed by research before jumping in and utilising a program like EAAA.
“It’s not putting the burden on women, it’s taking the power away from men.”
- Nicole Bedera (describing Flip the Script with EAAA™)
Senn is also a valued researcher that many in the field look up to and respect. For example, when I spoke with Nicole Bedera (see my blog here), she spoke about how Senn's program is the only sexual violence prevention program that has actually produced evidence of lower rates of sexual violence as a result. The way Bedera described this is in how it teaches women the real definition of sexual assault combined with physical self-defence classes. This community care based group teaches practical skills about how to protect each other, support each other and build a feminist community. As a result, participants are much less likely to blame themselves which leads their experience of sexual assault to be far less traumatic and without the associated negative self-talk that many victim-survivors go through. It provides them with a framework for acknowledging and responding to the real threats they face.
The Bystander Initiative
“Single people cannot do everything, we need a village and we all need to do the work.”
Senn was also a founding member of the Bystander Initiative at Windsor University, and led it for a number of years. This came about when the university asked Senn and her team for a proposal on what to do to prevent sexual violence on campus. Senn and her team put forward a bystander intervention program as the only existing initiative at the time with evidence that changes behaviour in the short term (approx. one year). Despite the program not reducing perpetration or victimisation, it did have promise which Senn wanted to draw on in academia to make it more sustainable. They were able to create two courses available for course credit for upper year students to facilitate the program to the lower year students. There were also extra workshops that these students could facilitate which were built into the courses available to those lower year students. By embedding bystander intervention into the curriculum, it allows it to be more sustainably embedded within the institution and to reach more students then it would have as a separate workshop activity.
The combination of EAAA and the Bystander Initiative (inclusive of academic courses and extra workshops) provides a more comprehensive model of sexual violence prevention and intervention on campus. All of these programs are peer-facilitated and have extensive training for students and young graduates to feel equipped to be able to facilitate the content. Senn speaks about how important it is that all prevention is delivered by near-peers, not authority figures (such as herself) for it to be effective.
“This work is really hard. We can’t do everything. We need to put limits on our life so we don’t burnout.”
Lastly, Senn also spoke about how while this work is extremely important and is an integral part to our lives for many - we need to look after ourselves. While this is not something I am good at (eek), it's true. We can only do so much at any given time and if we don't recharge ourselves to keep going, then we will continue to burnout to a point where we can't continue.
Thank you Dr Charlene Senn for your generosity, wisdom and service to help women live their best lives free from violence and exploitation.
In solidarity,
Camille Schloeffel
References / Learn more:
Comments