GBV in academia is a problem with far-reaching consequences for individuals, organizations, and society. Despite decades of policy development and preventive measures, European research shows that victimization persists (Humbert et al., 2022; Rudolfsson et al., 2022). While research of sexual harassment in academia is well established internationally (see, for example, Pilinkaite Sotirovic et al., 2024; Lipinsky et al., 2022; Fedina et al., 2018), an international research overview shows that doctoral students are very rarely extracted as a separate sample in studies on sexual harassment in academia (Bondestam & Lundqvist, 2020). Previous studies indicate that female doctoral students are at a significantly higher risk of sexual harassment than their male counterparts (Teng, 2025; Rudolfsson et al., 2022). A Danish study reports that 14% of female doctoral students experienced unwanted sexual physical contact and 22% unwanted sexual comments (Lesner et al., 2024). There is thus a gap in research on GBV in doctoral education.

Doctoral students have a special position at higher education institutions (HEIs), and their conditions vary internationally. The demographic composition, working conditions, and position of doctoral students in Swedish HEIs are also heterogeneous. Doctoral education varies between HEIs and within different subject disciplines. However, doctoral students often share a precarious and highly dependent position, particularly on supervisors and senior researchers, for their continued academic careers. Similar structural conditions constitute the immediate context for doctoral students in European HEIs.

Quantitatively studying and measuring GBV in academia is associated with methodological challenges (Schredl et al., 2025; Bondestam & Lundqvist, 2020), such as defining and delimiting what the concept GBV should encompass, response bias linked to this, and, how measurement can include contextual factors. There is a risk that large-scale quantitative studies may exclude structural conditions and reinforce individualized perceptions of GBV (Schredl et al., 2025).

This study lies at the intersection of empirical questions about the prevalence of GBV in Swedish doctoral education, methodological questions about what can be learned about GBV in this context, and issues concerning the potential for knowledge-based change in HEI policy and practice. Alongside examining prevalence, we examine the epistemological challenges of measuring GBV in academia and how these relate to research ethics and opportunities for change. The study draws on existing survey data from a large-scale study of GBV in Swedish academia (Rudolfsson et al., 2022), from which doctoral student responses have been extracted to address two overarching, parallel, and interrelated research questions:

(1) What is the prevalence of GBV in doctoral education in Sweden?

(2) How does the survey data (questions, our own analyses, and reporting of results) shape perceptions and knowledge about Swedish doctoral education and GBV?

The aim is both to examine what the existing survey data reveal about the prevalence of GBV among doctoral students in Sweden, including patterns related to socio-demographic markers, and to use our statistical analyses and presentation of results to problematise the presence and absence of contextual factors. We discuss the implications of this in terms of the risk of reproducing both individualised and incident-focused understandings of GBV, and limiting understandings of the structural and relational nature of doctoral education.

The project adopts a broad definition of GBV as a system of violence (Strid et al., 2021), conceptualizing GBV in academia as an organizational and relational phenomenon shaped by academic structures, power relations, and cultural norms (Hearn et al., 2025; Hershcovis et al., 2021; Phipps, 2020).

A cross-sectional, large-scale quantitative survey design was used. This in-depth study of doctoral students in Sweden is based on previously collected and anonymized survey data from an earlier project, in which data collection was carried out by Statistics Sweden (SCB) via a web-based survey of a stratified sample of employees and students at Swedish higher education institutions (n: 100,000) (Rudolfsson et al., 2022). This sub-study is limited to only addressing the responses of the doctoral student population (n: 5173) in the previous study. In total, the sample comprised 15,560 doctoral students and the response rate for doctoral students was 37.7%, which provides a basis with good statistical strength at an aggregate level. The survey data are analyzed in SPSS to explore differences within the doctoral student group. The size of the sample allows for analyses with high statistical precision, but margins of error and confidence intervals have been calculated separately for each analysis, based on the actual response rate and current group size. The analysis includes descriptive statistics as well as multivariate regression models to assess relationships between variables. In addition to quantitative analyses, the study includes a reflexive analysis of methodological and epistemological constraints, examining how reductions in operationalization and survey design condition what can be analyzed, known, and presented. The analytical strategy explicitly incorporates a reflexive assessment of methodological limitations, treating reductions in operationalization and survey design not only as constraints but as analytical objects in their own right.

The need for increased knowledge about doctoral students is pressing. This research contributes to existing knowledge on the prevalence of GBV among doctoral students and differences within this group. The data allow for analyses of whether and how gender, age, background, and discipline covary with exposure to different forms of GBV. Preliminary analyses of victimisation confirm previous European studies showing higher prevalence of GBV among individuals belonging to ethnic minority groups in HEIs (Humbert et al., 2022). This pattern is also evident among doctoral students, with an increased risk of victimisation for both men and women compared to Swedish-born men and women. Notably, women with a foreign background face a particularly elevated risk, while men, regardless of background, show a lower risk of exposure to any form of victimisation. Overall, these findings extend and reinforce existing research on GBV across demographic groups in HEIs. While these results deepen our knowledge of doctoral students’ victimisation by GBV, they also raise methodological, empirical, and ethical challenges. In the survey, contextual factors are difficult to capture due to the incident-based operationalisation of GBV and limited spatial contextualisation. This highlights the need for further methodological work to better understand how disciplinary, organisational, and cultural contexts in doctoral education relate to GBV prevalence. Moreover, sub-samples too small for statistical analysis, such as non-binary and trans respondents, are excluded from knowledge production. Similar limitations apply to forms of GBV with low prevalence; in our material, different forms of rape or attempted rape exemplify this. While such violence is present and reported by respondents, their experiences risk becoming statistically invisible. Finally, the development of well-functioning and equitable doctoral education in European HEIs depends on adequate research that considers methodological aspects, diversity, and knowledge hierarchies within HEIs.

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