While I was writing this book an item appeared in the news: the BBC had sent a freedom of information (FOI) request to UK universities about the use of ‘gagging orders’, otherwise known as non-disclosure agreements (NDAs). NDAs have been a subject of wider media coverage more recently, given that Harvey Weinstein allegedly used non-disclosure agreements to silence his victims and their usage is becoming more prevalent. What the response to the BBC FOI request showed was that in the last two years, around L87 million had been spent on around 4,000 settlements across 96 UK universities. While the FOI was unable to show the exact nature of each incident, be that bullying, sexual harassment or sexual misconduct, what is clear is that NDAs are becoming an increasingly routine form of silencing women, and to determine who can and cannot speak within and about universities. More fundamentally, the sheer existence of NDAs also reminds us that some voices have value, and some are silenced in the interests of that voice which is seen as having value.

NDAs were originally used to stop the sharing of trade secrets, but instead, increasingly they are used, lawyers suggest, to keep serial offenders of misconduct in their jobs. Helena Kennedy demonstrates how we have a legal system designed around, and operating in, the interests of men, and the NDAs work no differently. Women as victims are silenced and, as importantly, offenders remain in post (and this is becoming more prominent in the UK higher education sector). So rather than protect ‘trade secrets’ NDAs are now functioning: 1) to silence the woman who has been subjected to abuse (and it is predominantly women who are subjected to this); and 2) to reinforce cultural ‘norms’, in other words, that it is okay to bully and sexually harass women. Sara Ahmed notes, ‘to name the problem is to be positioned as the problem’. It is the woman who is positioned as the problem as complainant, paid off and silenced, while male perpetrators (and predators) are protected by the signing of confidentiality agreements.