Who Carries Responsibility for Safety? Gender, Care Labour, And Safeguarding

Abstract Book of the 7th International Conference on Gender Studies and Sexuality

Year: 2026

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Who Carries Responsibility for Safety? Gender, Care Labour, And Safeguarding

Dr Gabrielle Hunt

ABSTRACT:

Safeguarding responses to child sexual abuse and other forms of sexual harm in religious organisations are often framed as neutral, technical mechanisms of protection. This paper challenges this assumption, discussing safeguarding as a form of gendered governance that organises care, responsibility, and authority in uneven and politically consequential ways. This paper offers a feminist conceptual analysis of safeguarding design, examining how gendered labour, epistemic authority, and moral regulation shape contemporary approaches to sexual abuse prevention.

Drawing on feminist theories of care ethics, social reproduction, and epistemic injustice, the paper argues that safeguarding labour in religious organisations is disproportionately feminised. Responsibility for recognising risk, responding to harm, and sustaining vigilance is routinely placed on women, while decision-making power, institutional authority, and reputational control remain structurally masculinised. Safeguarding work is thus rendered undervalued, under-resource, and framed as individual responsibility rather than collective accountability or institutional obligation. These dynamics are particularly salient given that sexual abuse in institutional and religious contexts is overwhelmingly perpetrated by men.

The paper further examines how safeguarding operates as a form of regulation, particularly in relation to gender and sexuality. In religious contexts, theological narratives of purity, obedience, forgiveness, and authority shape what can be said about sexual harm, when it can be addressed, and whose voices are deemed credible. Feminist scholarship highlights how discourses of protection can function to manage sexuality through silence, control, and risk aversion, rather than through relational safety and agency. Children themselves are often silenced and are often tightly constrained by adult discomfort with sexuality, fears of liability, or concern for institutional reputation. A consequence is the increased vulnerability to sexual abuse.

Reflexive engagement with youth advisory processes is used as a methodological lens to interrogate these dynamics. The paper also considers how theological and moral frameworks intersect with gendered power to further delimit safeguarding discourse in religious organisations. Narratives of authority, obedience, purity, and forgiveness can simultaneously motivate care and constrain transparency, reinforcing compliance-oriented approaches that prioritise institutional protection over survivor-centred practices.

This paper argues that safeguarding must be understood as a gendered ethical practice rather than a purely procedural one. This reframing foregrounds the need for transparency about power, accountability for the distribution of care labour, and the recognition of youth as legitimate agents. Such an approach offers a pathway toward safeguarding frameworks that are not only effective, but socially just.

Keywords: Safeguarding, Gender And Power, Labour And Care Ethics, Abuse