In surveys, participants were asked to finish this sentence, “If a man I know, either a date or acquaintance, tried to force me to have sex with him, I would….” The group on the left is the control group; on the right, the women who received the intervention. These numbers show results one week after the intervention, and a year later. Women who took the program were more likely to say they would use force – the most effective strategy for stopping an assault.

The study tracked sexual assault among participants. The numbers above show actual counts of reported non-consensual sexual activity up to one year later. In all categories, the rates for the group receiving the intervention were consistently lower. The rate of rape was reduced by half. Researchers believe this is because women learned to avoid risky situations, and were more likely to stop coercive behaviour before it escalated.

“The keys in the eyes are not going to work around your girlfriend’s boyfriend,” Prof. Senn likes to say. She cites studies that show women are the least likely to use force against acquaintances and friends, that perpetrators are more likely to lead with charm and alcohol than overt aggression. The course covers how to escape a choke hold, and ways to get out from underneath someone on a bed, but focuses on how to prevent situations from going that far. The most powerful part of a woman’s body, participants are told, is her voice. One of the central messages in the course: Don’t worry about being polite. Trust your instincts.

“As women we are really taught not to offend, not to be rude to people,” says Heidi Fischer, now 25, who participated in the study during her first year at the University of Guelph. “It’s about getting in touch with your gut.”

The course has four goals: to teach women common scenarios for sexual assault, how to recognize potential predators, how to evade danger (including through self-defence), and how to think about sexuality and relationships in terms of their own desires and boundaries.

Prof. Senn says the course stresses that learning skills does not mean women are to blame when an assault occurs; they also receive information on their rights, and how to file a complaint. (Ninety per cent of participants attended at least three of the three-hour sessions. Researchers offered small cash incentives, as is standard in trials, and guaranteed anonymity in the surveys. While researchers couldn’t follow up on assaults, women were given material after completing surveys reminding them how to seek help.)

Natalie Hope, 22, took the course in her freshman year at the University of Guelph. “I realized there were so many times as a teenager that I was blind to what was going on,” she says. “I really felt it was something I should have learned sooner.” One take-home lesson: Don’t disappear from your girlfriends; tell everyone where you are going. “We had a code phrase,” Ms. Hope says. “If someone said, ‘Oh, I like your shoes,’ it meant ‘I am uncomfortable, get me away.’” The course helped clarify her own comfort zone. Today, “I feel in control because I know what I expect.” (Galit Rodan for the Globe and Mail)

The participants interviewed for this story could all give examples of ways they had used what they learned. They mentioned covering their drinks, being aware of their environment, speaking up sooner when a situation felt risky even if it meant offending someone. Six months after taking the course, Ms. Boyes was alone in a car with a first date, when he started to make her uncomfortable. “He was getting pretty pushy, and I told him to take me home,” she says. “I am not sure I would have been that direct before.”

“I pay more attention to what I am doing, how I am acting toward people,” says Jenna Harris, 21, who is going into her fourth year at the University of Windsor. “I make sure I don’t lead someone on,” including accepting drinks from a stranger. She practises the buddy system at parties and bars, and she is more careful about her own alcohol consumption, because, she says, “if you are responsible for your friends, you are responsible for yourself as well.”

While they called the material “empowering,” and described sharing what they learned with friends, the women also said they felt conflicted. “It’s keeping me safe, but it’s not keeping everybody safe,” Ms. Fischer says. “Why are we teaching women to be afraid, women to be cautious, instead of teaching men not to be perpetrators?”

Attacking the root, however, has proven more difficult. During frosh week at many North American universities, for instance, freshmen often receive a one- or two-hour workshop about consent. But according to a convincing stack of studies documented by the U.S. Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, this “education” has little to no influence on what happens during the alcohol-saturated parties that follow. Many programs were too short, the CDC concluded, to have any lasting impact, and tended to focus on areas such as legal implications, as if rape is caused “by a lack of awareness of the laws prohibiting it.” Bystander programs which encourage male and female students to shut down sexist jokes or step in at parties when they see risky behaviour have produced promising results, but cultural change, as Prof. Senn points out, is a long-term solution.

Many of the programs are offered too late – especially for young women like Lindsey Boyes. This was a common complaint among participants: Why hadn’t they learned this when they were first exploring their sexuality, and short on confidence?

There is convincing evidence in the research for introducing these types of program much earlier. The CDC research found that the three interventions that proved most successful at reducing harassment and assaults were offered in middle school and high school – suggesting, researchers said, that these younger ages may represent a “critical window” to promote safer behaviour.

But getting the program into schools can be challenging – as Ontario recently learned with the controversy around its new sex education curriculum, which includes information on consent. Prof. Senn had already faced that hurdle, when she offered the program to Windsor high schools; while the public board declined, she says, the Catholic board allowed the program provided she drop the final class on sexuality and relationships. Prof. Senn says the waiting lists to attend were so long they had to add extra sessions. Given that about half of the rapes women experience happen before they are 18, she says, “adapting the program for girls in high school is a priority.”

The program is not the full answer, researchers say, but it’s an immediate real-world approach. “We shouldn’t just sit around and wait for a cultural shift that isn’t happening,” says Lise Gotell, a women’s study professor at the University of Alberta who is familiar with the new Canadian study, and aware of the criticisms levelled at a women-centred approach. The larger lesson lies with the intervention’s success. “When constraining women’s actions is still the major way that we can respond to the threat of sexual assault,” she says, “that is an indication of how much more we have to do.”

The program will be offered free to Canadian universities, though schools will have to cover the cost of facilitators, for whom training guidelines are now being developed. In an ideal world, says Prof. Senn, “this program would be available to all first-year women students until we don’t need it any longer – that is, when sexual violence ends.”