Peer Violence In School, Differences Based On Gender

Physical and Psychological Violence

Violence has been classified based on how it takes form. Physical violence is the most common and the most visible expression according to Ayala-Carrillo (2015) as it leaves immediate traces. This form of violence can have serious consequences, such as injuries, bruises, fractures and even manslaughter. It is mentioned that physical aggression is recurrent and usually its intensity is not progressive but constant. It involves the use of force to injure the victims.

School violence also includes psychological violence. According to Ramírez Muñoz, Hidalgo Moya, and Manosalva Mena (2013), this type of violence is more complex and harder to identify since the victims' level of resistance is higher when mistreatment starts. The author states that as violence continues, the mental state of the victims deteriorates and eventually it may result to physical somatization.

According Ramirez, Hidalgo, and Manosalva (2013), the use of some words and behaviors leads the victim of psychological violence to feel deprecated, disregarded and terrorized. Such words and behaviors can be passive or active. Minor things like giving "nicknames" for fun and making jokes are considered as passive actions since the bully does not mean to alter the bullied emotional state, instead the intention is usually to make a joke. However, Pescador, and Domínguez (2001) mentions that active actions are intense forms of psychological violence in which the purpose of the bully is to intentionally harm his victim. They including mocking, humiliation and demeaning the victim's physical, intellectual or emotional state. Such behaviors intending to hurt and denigrate the victim can take place in the classroom or in cyber space making it difficult to uncover. As victims do not feel secure to talk about it, they usually withdraw into silent and may eventually commit suicide.

School violence by gender

School violence is common among male students as it is thought that aggression is a way of demonstrating strength to peers. Bully students tend to have a chaotic school life, they are often repeaters with low grades, belonging to dysfunctional families and/or single parent families. However, such form of violence may also impact women who have grown up in an environment characterized by physical, verbal or sexual abuse whereas women who have never been exposed to such violence are less likely to suffer from it.

Most cases of homicide are usually committed by men. They perpetrate it against other men or against women to show power and control over the other gender. It is both worrisome and important to understand why such situations appear; how the environment and the culture influence it; and what personal problems may lead a man to commit such tragic act?

Gender stereotypes are deeply marked in this society. Women often feel guilty of being victims of some type of violence because it is still believed that men have the right to exercise power over them and women are expected to behave in a quiet and docile way. However, if a man is assaulted, he is more likely to react with violence because he thinks that he has to be respected due to his gender (Bascón Díaz, Saavedra Macías, & Arias Sánchez, 2013; Díaz-Aguado, 2005).

Usually, in their daily life, women have better adaptation and problem solving skills than men because it is easier for them to relate with other and to create social relationships. For men though, it goes differently as they are expected to behave in an aggressive and violent way making inter-gender relation harder and more conflictual. In school, both genders will defend their points of view, generating competition and even school violence (Lozano, 2018).

Participants

For this study, we selected an intentionally non-probabilistic sample of 1644 participants, made of 820 females and 824 males. Participants are in 10th grade Ecuadorian pupils aged X = 14.38 with S.D. = 0.74.

Process

Once the project approved by high schools' boards, data were collected during class hours over a three-month period. Before being submitted to the questionnaire, the students were explained the objectives of the research and asked to sign a letter of informed consent. Data were stored in a database created with SPSS 22.0 software used for descriptive correlational statistical computation, as well as the drawing of respective tables and graphs.

Instrument

The instrument is a questionnaire about perceived school violence. It is made up of a Likert scale evaluating the level of violence experienced by adolescents. It includes 11 items evaluating physical violence and 15 items related to psychological violence between peers. It also contains information such as gender, ethnicity, religion and nationality. The instrument is considered as reliable as the scale value a is equal to 0.963.

Descriptive Statistics

Table 1 shows the average age and the standard deviation of the pupils, the average of the general scores related to perceived school violence, as well as physical and psychological violence.

School violence perceived by pupils reaches high figures (X=93.72 and S=7.4). Indeed, the average number is close to the maximum value, this means that aggressions in schools are very common. Students report that they have been bullied in all the ways suggested by the instrument and surprisingly enough in a repetitive manner. Psychological violence is the most frequent case of bullying (X=69.93 and S=6.2), while physical violence is less predominant (X=51, 83 and S=4.9). As stated by the authors, psychological violence is not emphasized enough because it is less visible even though it represents the most frequent case of bullying across the population studied.

Comparative and Correlation analysis

Results from table 2 show that women report more violence than men. Even though, men seem to suffer less from each form of violence than woman, average figures for both genders are relatively close.

In order to determine whether there is a significant difference between men and women related to all forms of perceived school violence, we applied the student t statistic to independent samples (see table 3 ). The figures for the different types of violence between men and women were correlated and provide the following statistical result: t=-6.45 and p<0.05. There is a statistical evidence showing greater violence against women, both physical and psychological. Correlating physical violence provides statistical evidence (t=-6.99 and p<0.05) showing that there is greater physical violence towards women. The same applied to psychological violence which provides statistical evidence (t=-4.46 and a p<0.05) showing that men perceive less psychological bullying than women.