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Projects
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One Man Can – Preventing Men’s Use of Violence in Southern Africa
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South Africa | Sonke Gender Justice
This project will refine and test a multi-level model for reducing violence against women and girls (VAWG) in urban South Africa using a cluster randomised controlled trial design. It will expand a gender-transformative programme called One Man Can (OMC) by adding community mobilisation and advocacy, and more squarely focus on preventing violence against women and girls.
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Stepping Stones and Creating Futures
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South Africa | Project Empower
Stepping Stones and Creating Futures aims to reduce rates of intimate partner violence in urban areas in South Africa. The programme runs peer-to-peer training sessions with 18-24 year olds. In these sessions participants develop livelihoods strategies and are involved in discussions, role plays, dramas and games that encourage participants to reflect on social norms around gender and the use of violence.
Little is known about how to reduce men’s perpetration of intimate partner violence. Our team, from Sonke Gender Justice and Wits University, led the Sonke CHANGE Trial in Diepsloot, a township near Johannesburg.The trial tested if the Sonke CHANGE intervention could reduce men’s reports of perpetrating partner violence over two years. A trial means that some areas of Diepsloot were randomly chosen to get the project (called “intervention clusters”), while others did not (“control clusters”). This allowed us to compare behaviors of men living in intervention clusters with men living in control clusters.
Over the last two decades, the global community has come to recognise the profound impact of violence on the lives of women and girls. This fundamentally undermines their health and well-being, and stands as a barrier to women’s full participation in global development and the economic and civic life of their communities. This evidence brief outlines the effective design and implementation elements in interventions to prevent violence against women and girls emanating from the UKAID-funded, What Works to Prevent Violence Against Women and Girls (What Works) programme, a six-year, £25-million investment in VAWG prevention.
Kerr-Wilson, A.; Gibbs, A.; McAslan Fraser E.; Ramsoomar, L.; Parke, A.; Khuwaja, HMA.; and Jewkes, R (2020). A rigorous global evidence review of interventions to prevent violence against women and girls, What Works to prevent violence against women and girls global Programme, Pretoria, South Africa
Violence against women and girls (VAWG) is preventable. Over the last two decades, VAWG prevention practitioners and researchers have been developing and testing interventions to stop violence from occurring, in addition to mitigating its consequences. This rigorous, in-depth review of the state of the field presents what is now known five years on after the UKAID-funded, What Works to Prevent Violence Against Women and Girls (What Works) programme, a six year investment, in advancing our understanding of What Works within the context of the wider evidence base.
Violence against women and girls (VAWG) is preventable. Over the last two decades, VAWG prevention practitioners and researchers have been developing and testing interventions to stop violence from occurring, in addition to mitigating its consequences. This document is an executive summary of the longer review of the state of the field of VAWG prevention, five years on after the UKAID-funded, What Works to Prevent Violence Against Women and Girls (What Works) programme, a six year investment, in advancing our understanding of What Works within the context of the wider evidence base.
Stern, E., Gibbs, A., Willan, S., Dunkle, K., & Jewkes, R. (2019). ‘When you talk to someone in a bad way or always put her under pressure, it is actually worse than beating her’: Conceptions and experiences of emotional intimate partner violence in Rwanda and South Africa. PLOS ONE.
Violence against women and girls (VAWG) is driven in part by gender attitudes, norms on gender inequality and the acceptability of violence, which are socially reproduced and shared. Women’s rights organizations across the global south have dedicated themselves to challenging these. Early evaluations of work they have championed has shown that sufficiently equipped community volunteers, guided in a long-term structured programme, can enable widespread diffusion of new ideas on gender and VAWG and ultimately achieve changes in harmful attitudes and norms across communities.
DFID’s What Works to Prevent Violence against Women and Girls Global Programme (What Works) has generated new evidence on the effect of these interventions in a range of settings – from rural areas and small towns of the Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Ghana, Rwanda, Nepal, to urban informal settlements in South Africa. Rigorous evaluations have shown the potential for preventing VAWG through multi-year, intensive change interventions with welltrained and supported community action teams, that purposefully engage both women and men to effect change.
Gibbs, A., Myrttinen, H., Washington, L., Sikweyiya, Y., & Jewkes, R. (2019). Constructing, reproducing and challenging masculinities in a participatory intervention in urban informal settlements in South Africa. Culture, health & sexuality, 1-16.
Gibbs, A., Hatcher, A., Jewkes, R., Sikweyiya, Y., Washington, L., Dunkle, K., ... & Christofides, N. (2019). Associations Between Lifetime Traumatic Experiences and HIV-Risk Behaviors Among Young Men Living in Informal Settlements in South Africa: A Cross-Sectional Analysis and Structural Equation Model. JAIDS Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes, 81(2), 193-201.
Hatcher, A. M., Stöckl, H., McBride, R. S., Khumalo, M., & Christofides, N. (2019). Pathways From Food Insecurity to Intimate Partner Violence Perpetration Among Peri-Urban Men in South Africa. American Journal of Preventive Medicine.