Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Question

Do procedures countering sexual violence not limit our freedom?

In the Guidebook on Countering Sexual Harassment at the University the following provision can be found:

‘To ensure the equal treatment of all employees and students at the University of Warsaw and to protect them from sexual harassment, the following kinds of intimate relationships are considered inappropriate and inadmissible:

• a relationship between the person leading a class (an academic teacher) and an undergraduate (BA) or graduate (MA) student – even if the person leading the class does not teach, assess the work of, nor advise the student, either presently or previously;
• a relationship between a doctoral student leading classes and someone who takes part in those classes
• a relationship between a lecturer and a doctoral student – if the lecturer is, or might in the future be, responsible for the progress of the student’s doctoral studies;
• a relationship between someone working in university administration and an undergraduate (BA) or graduate (MA) student – if the employee is responsible for advising the student or has direct influence over their situation as a student.’

Does it not represent an excessive intrusion into the autonomy and privacy of all concerned? The matter concerns adult persons between whom there is no formal/teaching/educational relationship. 

Answer

The Guide takes into consideration practical aspects of studying from students’ perspectives – i.e., for example, compulsory participation in general university classes, which means that from students’ perspective, opportunities to participate in classes go beyond the main field of studies and classes taught by lecturers from other faculties. It therefore assumes that every lecturer may come into contact with students in other faculties at some point.

In addition, the Guide follow the existing practice carried out by the Office of the Academic Ombudsman, the long-standing experience of this Office and those involved in disciplinary committees, the Anti-Discrimination Committee, as well as the support for victims offered by the Student Ombudsman and the Consultant on Sexual Violence.

The authors of the Guide believe that the starting point is to protect all people who are in a vulnerable and dependent position, i.e., students, and not only those who enter into emotional-intimate relationships, but also the rest of class participants. They are usually people at early stages of adulthood and relationships built at university are primarily pedagogical and formative in nature. Therefore, limiting such private relationships is also an expression of responsibility. We know from social science and practice that there is a phenomenon of romanticising authority, infatuation with authority, and thus weakening boundaries by the person in love, who – due to being in an institutionally weaker position – is susceptible to exploitation. These situations do occur and the university is supposed to protect against them.

Emotional-intimate relationships between employees and students of the first and second cycles pose risks of various kinds, which are significant from the point of view of not only the people involved in the relationship but also others around them and the University of Warsaw. For example, the above risk may involve the following situations: the relationship may turn into sexual harassment if either party does not accept a breakup and takes advantage of their professional/academic position, i.a., takes revenge; the risk of defamation which may refer to relationships established between people at the university, and the risk of unequal treatment of other students (whether worse or better).

The right to privacy is limited in the case of academic relationships, just as in other professional relationships. The Guide involves recommendations relevant to the entire academic community and the university as an organisation. This means that they may be contrary to the interests of individuals. Since the University is primarily a space for formal relationships, they are superior to individual interests.

Entering into emotional-intimate relationships described in the Guide as inappropriate is a decision with calculated risk. This means that a person will not be automatically reported to the Disciplinary Committee, but if any doubts related to work and study arise, this relationship will not be to the person’s advantage. We want to remind you once again that these relationships do not happen in a social vacuum but in a specific socio-institutional context in which other people studying and working are involved.

In fact, we face situations where a lecturer from faculty X is friends with a lecturer from faculty Y. He does not teach there but participates in social events organised by lecturers and students from faculty Y. He takes advantage of these occasions to establish short-term emotional-intimate relationships with students of Faculty Y. There is no relationship between them formally, but this is still inappropriate since the students are aware of the lecturer’s status and the friendship between them and their lecturer. Taking into account these dependencies, they find it harder to refuse, and feel intimidated and exploited.

In other words, in relationships where there are dependency issues and status differences, there is no way of knowing whether the consent of the person considered lower in the social hierarchy was consensual or forced by circumstances.

Miniseries of publications prepared by young scholar society Queer UW (available only in Polish):

Handbook “Trans * -inclusive University. Creating a student-friendly university for trans* people. A guide for universities”

Handbook “Trans * -inclusive University. Creating a student-friendly university for trans* people. A guide for administration”

Handbook “Trans* -inclusive University. Creating a student-friendly university for trans* people. A guide for trans* students”

Online sources and handbooks:

„Transpłciowa młodzież w polskiej szkole. Specyfika pomocy trans płciowym dzieciom i młodzieży. Podręcznik dla nauczycieli.” (available in Polish). Wiktor Dynarski, Izabela Jąderek. Fundacja Trans Fuzja 2015

Language Observatory of the University of Warsaw

https://nowewyrazy.pl/haslo/misgenderowac-zmisgenderowac.html

https://nowewyrazy.pl/haslo/dednejm.html

Scientific publications:

„Transpłciowość w Polsce. Wytwarzanie kategorii” (available in Polish). Maria Dębińska. Instytut Archeologii i Etnologii PAN. 2020.

“O płci od nowa. Własna tożsamość oczami osób transpłciowych” (available in Polish). A. Kłonkowska, K. Bojarska, K. Witek. Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego 2015

The University of Warsaw desires that everyone feels safe within its walls. The less hostility is present in everyday life, also in the form of homophobia and transphobia, the easier it is to learn and develop science. Research shows that there are from 5% up to 10% of LGBT+ people in every society. Considering that 55,000 people study and work at the University of Warsaw, our academic community includes approximately 5,000 LGBT+ people.

LGBT+ people – lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgender and other people who do not identify themselves with a heterosexual orientation are more exposed to rejection, contempt, hatred and persecution based on their sexual orientation. What for heterosexual people is an entirely neutral part of everyday life at university – talking about their husband or wife, boyfriend or girlfriend, raising children – for LGBT+ people, it means the necessity to ‘come out’ and reveal their sexual orientation to be able to speak about their private life, even if only anecdotally. Not every social environment is perceived as a safe space where people can discuss who they are. Therefore, what is evident for heterosexual people may be stressful for LGBT+ people. Moreover, some of the LGBT + people working at the University of Warsaw got married in other EU countries. The Polish State does not recognize these relationships as legal, even though they were concluded in accordance with the law.

A study on the situation of LGBTQ people at the University of Warsaw, conducted in 2016 by the Queer UW research group, indicates that such people face many problems. For 32% of the respondents (regardless of their sexual orientation), coming out at the university could make them feel discomfort, whereas 40% of the surveyed (regardless of their sexual orientation) had faced offending non-heterosexual people publicly. The respondents who had witnessed discrimination against LGBTQ people most often had faced “dissemination of negative opinions about this person” and verbal taunts, humiliation and insults. 11% of the surveyed had faced jerks and blows, while 6% of them had been subjected to hateful emails and text messages.

In contrast, a study on the experience of equal treatment at the University of Warsaw conducted in 2019 demonstrates that 4% of the respondents had experienced negative comments on sexual orientation, and 11% had heard of such situations.

A study on the experiences of people studying in Great Britain indicated that universities were not viewed as safe spaces for LGBT+ people.
Microaggression is a particular problem – hostility related to sexual orientation and gender identity, manifested in the language: persistent misgendering of transgender people, homophobic jokes, and commenting on stereotypes about a “typical woman” and “typical man”.

LGBT+ people should not feel isolated with their problems. Their sense of security can also be ensured by colleagues – by ensuring
equality in language and intervening in situations of discrimination (research on this topic). It is also worth taking a look at the guide for allies of LGBT+ people
We aim to make the University of Warsaw a safe place for all who study and work here. Therefore,
the educational video about homophobia and transphobia is a part of the We Are All Equivalent campaign.

Universities around the world have reached similar conclusions. For example, look at the website of the University of Oxford, which provides a support network for LGBT employees, or the Harvard University website, offering support to people working and studying.

We recommend reading the report prepared by the UW Center for Research on Prejudice for the Campaign Against Homophobia:

Social situation of LGBTA people in Poland – the UW Center for Research on Prejudice (available in Polish)

Definitions

LGBT+ – lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgenders and all other people not identifying with a heterosexual orientation. The abbreviation LGBTQ is also used, in which Q stands for queer, i.e., people who do not wish to specify their orientation. Nowadays, the word ‘Queer’ is also used as a synonym to describe the LGBT+ community.

Coming out – it refers to a situation in which an LGBT+ person talks openly about their psychosexual orientation for the first time. It doesn’t have to be a singular event – it’s one thing to tell loved ones about it, and another to talk about it at university or work. Coming out must not be forced. A person must not be outed without their consent.

Heteronormativity – it is a normative belief that the heterosexual orientation is the only one or the ideal, mature form – to the exclusion of all others. It manifests itself in the belief that every person encountered is heterosexual and cisgendered, and that everyone performs the gender roles traditionally assigned to men and women. Other sexual identities are perceived as deviant and marginal.

Gender identity – it signifies which gender you identify with. This is another issue that most do not think about because they identify with their assigned sex. “It’s a girl!” “It’s a boy!” – the assignment of a baby’s gender shortly after birth raises no doubts. It is a deep-rooted inner sense of belonging to social gender, which may or may not correspond to the sex assigned at birth. Gender identity reflects a personal perception of the body (which may include freely understood changes in appearance and body function carried out medically or in other ways) and how gender is expressed using clothes, speech or gestures. There are people who feel a deep incompatibility between how
they identify themselves and the sex they were assigned at birth. They often want to have their gender recognised so that the one they identify with corresponds to the sex they have been assigned. This may involve changing their name, dress and personal documentation. Sometimes it includes surgery and hormone therapy. Gender recognition and correction are not a whim or trend; quite the contrary – they stem from a very strong and pressing need.

Trans* people/Transgender people – individuals who do not identify with the sex assigned at birth.

Cisgender people – individuals who identify with the sex assigned at birth.
Non-binary people – individuals who identify neither as a woman nor as a man. They may be somewhere on the spectrum between femininity and masculinity, reject the concepts of gender altogether or combine them.

Preferred pronouns – the answer to the question “how should I address you?”. In the English language, if you are not sure how a person would like to be addressed and talked about – just say ‘they’. In the case of Polish, the easiest way is to simply ask politely. For example, you can ask everyone to introduce themselves by name, surname – and also by the preferred pronoun in situations such as the first class of the semester.

Prepared by dr hab. Julia Kubisa in co-operation with Queer UW.

See also (available in Polish):

Handbook “Trans* -inclusive University. Creating a student-friendly university trans* people. A guide for universities”

Handbook “Trans * -inclusive University. Creating a student-friendly university for trans* people. A guide for administration”

Handbook “Trans * -inclusive University. Creating a student-friendly university for trans* people. A guide for trans* students”

The actions aimed at equality and diversity result from the fact that there are continuing structural inequalities. They are present at the university as well.

Both research on equality at the University of Warsaw and other studies conducted in the higher education sector demonstrate that womens’ opportunities for scientific careers are limited compared to men. This is reflected in the statistics – while the proportions of male and female doctoral students are equal, there are fewer and fewer women at subsequent stages of scientific careers. You can read about the academic careers of women and men here.

Female scientists have identified numerous problems: the difficulty of combining scientific work – which is intensive, never-ending, and requires various kinds of travel, including longer trips – with family life. Numerous female scientists choose to have children after completing their PhD. Combining family life of this kind with the demands of achieving rapid scientific success, participating in postdoctoral training programmes, or writing multiple high-quality publications is undoubtedly challenging.

On the other hand, the slowdown of their scientific careers or the decision to interrupt them is a loss for science – because people whose achievements could greatly enrich it withdraw from the community.

Other barriers faced by female scientists include:

• difficulty in establishing scientific contacts that partially stem from unwarranted generalisations (‘why invest in a woman, she will get pregnant soon’)
• dominant communication styles in the field, e.g., a more confrontational style of presenting and defending research results. In the course of socialisation, women are discouraged from a confrontational style of argumentation. For instance, they are told to be aggressive rather than confident
• women’s individual beliefs that they “are still not good enough” to apply for larger grants, submit publications to higher scoring journals etc.
• they are victims of impostor syndrome

Based on the diagnosis of existing gender inequalities, various initiatives are therefore being taken to strengthen womens’ scientific careers.

Providing an equal climate at work and indicating that more equality means better science are principles that are not only recommended by the European Charter for Researchers but also followed by the University of Warsaw.

Dr hab. Julia Kubisa

Question

Are hostile comments against people of Vietnamese origin discrimination based on ethnicity? After all, the Vietnamese are not included to ethnic minorities on the territory of Poland?

Answer

In this context, the concept of ethnicity should be understood more broadly than ethnic minority, which is precisely defined by Polish law as a broad ‘ethnic’ group. A similar and probably more prominent example is the Arabs – after all, they are neither an ethnic minority according to Polish law nor a nationality. I would then classify them as a broadly defined ethnic group. Interestingly enough, the Public Opinion Research Center (CBOS), when conducting the annual survey of Poles’ sympathies for various nationalities, treats Arabs as a nation.

Marta Pietrusińska, PhD – a lecturer conducting equality courses for students at the University of Warsaw

Question

Are the solutions presented in the Gender Equality Plan for the University of Warsaw discriminatory?

Answer

No, they absolutely are not!

Pursuant to Article 33 of the Constitution of the Republic of Poland: “Men and women shall have equal rights in family, political, social and economic life in the Republic of Poland.” The Gender Equality Plan introduced at the University of Warsaw aims to provide women and men with equal rights in academic and scientific work at the University of Warsaw. Thus, the solutions considered (including those related to admissions) not only do not violate this provision but also strengthen its effect.

In fact, there is still no gender balance in university management and or in scientific research at the University of Warsaw: managerial functions are far more often held by men than by women (last term of office: 15 men and 6 women held the deanship position, in the history of the UW only one woman has been rector), the higher the academic rank, the lower the percentage of women (among assistant professors there are 1,038 women and 1,026 men, but among university professors, there are 105 women and 177 men, and in the highest category, among belvedere professors, 156 women and 347 men), in the organising committees of scientific events decision-making and leadership roles are definitely more often held by men than by women.

The Gender Equality Plan aims to bring greater diversity to the scientific community, i.a., by tackling ‘self-selection’ barriers such as people who – despite being qualified – do not decide to apply for a position or participate in the recruitment process. The research shows that women are a group that may need additional encouragement in this area. The main activities focus on the recruitment itself, i.e., reaching out to potentially interested people and formulating information about vacancies in such a way that invites a broader group of potential candidates.

In specific and exceptional situations, different treatment is necessary to redress actual social inequalities between women and men, such as those resulting from the fact that throughout history, women’s social status has prevented them from enjoying the rights granted to them on an equal footing with men or particular positions and jobs as they were stereotypically perceived as exclusively ‘feminine’ or ‘masculine’. Preferential treatment in exceptional situations of a specific gender is called ‘positive discrimination’ or ‘compensatory action’. This is fully accepted under constitutional, EU and international law.

Pursuant to the Polish Labour Code:

Article 18^3b § 3

3. The principle of equal treatment in employment is not violated by conduct undertaken for a certain period of time, aimed at creating equal opportunities for all or a considerable number of employees distinguished by one or more grounds referred to in Article 18^3a § 1, by reducing the actual inequalities for an advantage of such employees to the extent determined in that provision.

Moreover, the following provisions can be found in the Act of 3 December 2010 on the Implementation of Certain Provisions of the European Union in the Field of Equal Treatment, the so-called ‘Anti-Discrimination Act’:

Artcle 11 [Actions not constituting a breach of the principle of equal treatment].

Taking actions in order to prevent unequal treatment or align disadvantages related with unequal treatment, that result from one or more reasons, referred to in art. 1, shall not constitute breach of the principle of equal treatment.

The application of compensatory measures is also provided for in the CEDAW ratified by Poland:

Article 4

Adoption by States Parties of temporary special measures aimed at accelerating de facto equality between men and women shall not be considered discrimination as defined in the present Convention, but shall in no way entail as a consequence the maintenance of unequal or separate standards; these measures shall be discontinued when the objectives of equality of opportunity and treatment have been achieved.

Furthermore, as early as 2014, the CEDAW Committee recommended that Poland implement temporary compensatory measures for girls and women in academic community (see more in the footnote) (1):

However, it must be clearly stated that the solutions adopted in the Gender Equality Plan do not actually provide for full-scale ‘positive discrimination’, such as ‘extra points for being of the underrepresented gender’. The only element remotely related to compensatory favouritism is the provision that if two candidates holding the same qualifications apply for the same job, being of the underrepresented gender becomes the determining factor. Attention is paid to various issues when dealing with identically qualified people, i.e., whether the person will fit in the team. We encourage you to consider the diversity criterion in this process. It is neither an order nor a ban, but an encouragement.

Over the next three years, we want to look closer at how recruitment processes in the organisational units take place and ensure they attract a diverse range of candidates. As stated in the planned action – we aim to create a transparent recruitment procedure in cooperation with the organisational units so that, taking into account units’ needs, people who will enrich the scientific and teaching potential of the university are admitted.  The implementation of the procedure will be conditional on the approval of the unit to be affected.

The values that the University of Warsaw is guided by are equality and respect for diversity. The decision to study at the UW means accepting the university’s mission and activities. Hence, the Equality Course will ultimately be a compulsory element of the study programme proposed by the university. It is now an optional general university course (so-called OGUN), which is very popular with students.  It is worth noting that an essential component of the Equality Course is the acquisition of skills to keep oneself and others safe, as discrimination can happen to anyone. That is why it is so important for the UW to make the university community aware of this content.

The Gender Equality Plan for the UW was developed in the deliberative formula, with the participation of interested representatives of the academic community, and the project was reviewed by recognised authorities in the field of anti-discrimination: Prof. Eleonora Zielińska (Faculty of Law and Administration, University of Warsaw), who deals with anti-discrimination law, Prof. Bożenna Chołuj, PhD, member of the Rector’s Committee for Preventing Discrimination, and Agnieszka Kozakoszczak, expert and co-author of the ‘Anti-discrimination Standard for Polish Universities’. In fact, if there were any real concerns that the provisions of the Equality Plan might discriminate against anyone (e.g., based on gender), this would certainly have been noted while drafting the document.

(1)

Education

1. The Committee acknowledges the reforms of national curricula for basic compulsory education, which include measures to advance equal opportunities for women and men. However, it remains concerned about structural barriers negatively affecting the enrolment of girls and women in non-traditional educational and vocational fields; gender segregation in the educational system, as evidenced by the disparity in the number of schools for boys and schools for girls; the absence of mandatory, comprehensive, age-appropriate education on sexual and reproductive health in school curricula; and the low number of women in management positions in educational institutions and in professorship positions. The Committee is also concerned about the continued placement of Roma girls in special schools or classes, the high dropout rates of Roma girls from primary education and their low school attendance.
2. The Committee recommends that the State party:

(a) Eliminate structural barriers and negative stereotypes that potentially deter girls’ enrolment in non-traditional educational and vocational fields at all levels of education;

(b) Consider adopting temporary special measures to promote girls’ take up of technical subjects and to accelerate the appointment of women to the highest positions in academic institutions.

See also: Linguistic recommendations (available in Polish)