Andrew Gibbs, Kristin Dunkle, Leane Ramsoomar, Samantha Willan, Nwabisa Jama Shai, Sangeeta Chatterji, Ruchira Naved & Rachel Jewkes (2020) New learnings on drivers of men’s physical and/or sexual violence against their female partners, and women’s experiences of this, and the implications for prevention interventions, Global Health Action, 13:1, 1739845, DOI: 10.1080/16549716.2020.1739845
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.
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.
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.
A critical task of the past 25 years of research on violence against women and girls (VAWG) has been to develop an understanding of the drivers of men’s perpetration of intimate partner violence (IPV) – physical and/or sexual violence against their female partners – and the risk factors that shape women’s experience of IPV. In this brief, we reflect on the evidence produced through What Works, as well as the wider body of literature that has emerged in the past six to ten years. We also provide a comprehensive review of new knowledge of the drivers of, and risk factors for, men’s violence against their wives or girlfriends.
Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a significant and pervasive health and human rights issue for women around the world; one in three women experience physical and/or sexual violence at the hands of a partner within their lifetime. A similar proportion of women is affected in Nepal.1-3 Nationally, 11.2% of women who have ever been married report having experienced physical and/or sexual violence in the past 12 months. In rural Nepal, where gendered norms around dominance, aggression and sexual rights of husbands over their wives are entrenched; over half of young married women report violence from an intimate partner in their lifetime.4
The Change study took place in the Terai region which has rates of IPV that are higher than the national average.5 Approximately one quarter of the 1,800 women surveyed in the Change baseline study had experienced IPV in the past 12 months, with 18% reporting sexual IPV and 16% reporting physical IPV.
This brief presents the evaluation findings of the Rural Response System’s community mobilisation and social norms change intervention tested under the What Works to Prevent Violence Against Women and Girls programme. It is intended to inform the work of ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs), like-minded local NGOs for women and children, leaders in the broader community, and donors working to prevent violence against women and girls (VAWG) in Ghana.
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.