Conference Program

This proposal offers a reflection focused on the role of educational prevention as a fundamental strategy of equality education in reducing gender-based violence, with particular attention to university students and young adults. It places the intervention in the context of higher education as a crucial setting in which intimate relationships, emotional expectations and gender norms are actively constructed and renegotiated. In this perspective, prevention is conceived not only as risk reduction but as a formative process aimed at promoting relational awareness and responsibility among university students in their present and future intimate relationships.

In its most invisible forms, gender-based violence compromises the possibility of building healthy and respectful intimate relationships, normalising power asymmetries and emotional control in everyday interactions. Universities, as transitional environments where young adults develop their identity, autonomy and emotional skills, are strategic contexts for implementing prevention and empowerment programmes.

In this perspective, relationship education becomes essential for recognising early warning signs of violence, questioning harmful norms and preventing the normalisation of violence. It provides students with tools to critically examine relational expectations, power imbalances and implicit gendered assumptions that may shape their intimate interactions. By fostering reflexivity and mutual responsibility, relationship education supports the development of relational patterns grounded in respect, reciprocity and care.

Alongside this theoretical framework, the proposal discusses preliminary results from an educational intervention addressed to a university student population, aiming to support prevention and empowerment in the domain of intimate relationships. The quasi-experimental research design included a pre–post survey and adopted a mixed-methods approach to explore perceptions, gender stereotypes, myths about violence, and dynamics of affective dependence. These dimensions are examined as relational mechanisms that shape what students recognise as acceptable within intimacy, influencing their capacity to name coercion, set boundaries, and take responsible action when problematic dynamics emerge.