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About What Works
What Works to Prevent Violence Against Women and Girls is an innovative global programme working in 13 countries across the world building the evidence base on What Works to prevent violence in low-middle income settings.
Credit: Aziz Sattori
UK Independent Commission for Aid Impact (2016), DFID’s efforts to eliminate violence against women and girls: A learning review, pp15: 3.2
Violence against women and girls (VAWG) is the most widespread form of abuse worldwide: globally, one in three women is beaten or sexually abused by an intimate partner in her lifetimei. DFID’s £25 million flagship ‘What Works to Prevent Violence’ research and innovation programme, which launched in 2014, engages leading international experts to produce rigorous evidence on the most effective interventions to drive down rates of VAWG. The evidence being generated is a global public good, intended to help DFID, developing country governments and international partners everywhere to improve the effectiveness of their efforts to prevent VAWG.
What Works is driving innovation and evidence in three main areas:
- The first area is rigorously evaluating 15 innovative approaches to prevent VAWG across 12 countries in Africa and Asia. It is also conducting research on VAWG and disability, and supporting costing studies to generate evidence on the value for money of VAWG prevention programming. The global programme is delivered by a consortium led by the South Africa Medical Research Council (SAMRC) in partnership with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and Social Development Direct (SDD). SAMRC also serves as the Secretariat for the overall programme to ensure coordination and synergy between the components.
- The second area is focused on Violence Against Women and Girls in Conflict and Humanitarian Crises led by the International Rescue Committee (IRC) in partnership with CARE International UK and the Global Women’s Institute at the George Washington University. This component is researching the drivers, prevalence, trends over time and effective prevention and response mechanisms for addressing VAWG in conflict and humanitarian settings.
- The third area, led by the National University of Ireland (NUI) Galway in partnership with Ipsos MORI and International Center for Research on Women, is building the business case for action on VAWG by developing new economic research methods for measuring social and economic costs of VAWG and b) generating data on the impacts of VAWG on households, businesses, and economies. The research is based on empirical studies in South Sudan, Ghana and Pakistan.
The What Works Independent Evaluation, led by IMC Worldwide, is assessing performance of all three components through mid-term reviews (latest March 2018), end-term final evaluation, and 6 monthly check-ins on research uptake.
Our Board
The Advisory Board provides independent quality assurance and advice. The members of the Independent Advisory Board are:
- Dr. Claudia Garcia-Moreno, Lead Specialist on Gender-based Violence, World Health Organization (Chair);
- Kalliopi Mingeirou, acting Chief of the Ending Violence against Women, UN Women;
- Markus Goldstein, Lead Economist, World Bank;
- Professor A K Shiva Kumar, Co-Chair of the Know Violence in Childhood Global initiative;
- Mendy Marsh, Specialist on GBV in Emergencies, UNICEF
- Tina Musuya, Executive Director of the Center for Domestic Violence Prevention and Chair of the GBV Prevention Network;
- Michael Mbizvo, Senior Associate and Zambia Country Director
i. UN (2006) The Secretary General’s In Depth Study on all forms of VAWG; UN Women (2012) Fast Facts: Statistics on Violence Against Women and Girls. Both accessed 31 May 2012.
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Life in Dadaab
Component 2 is conducting research in Dadaab refugee camp, assessing a comprehensive case management model where tasks are shared between national staff and refugee community workers to provide services for women who have experienced violence.
Here a young researcher provides us with a glimpse into what it’s really like to live and work in Dadaab refugee camp and on the realities of women and girls who have made it their home.
Not everyone fully comprehends gender-based violence (GBV) and the adversity that comes with it. It is a topic I myself had little knowledge of. GBV is a term for harmful acts against another on the basis of their sex, and includes threats or acts of physical, sexual, or mental harm. Because of the systemic inequalities between men and women, the term GBV is often used interchangeably as referring to violence against women and girls. Deciding to carry out research on women and girls who experience GBV in Dadaab refugee camp was an eye opener.
Recently, one woman’s horror and heroism has brought a much needed change in the conversation about rape in our society. Brock Turner’s rape of a woman at Stanford University, and his unacceptable 6-month sentence, reveals not just a horrendous, all too common sexual assault, but a broken system that continues to protect male abusers, blame victims and condone violence against women. This case is so significant because the survivor’s brave and heart-wrenching account starkly brings to light the problem of rape culture (and white male privilege).
Rape culture is a term that was coined by feminists in the United States in the 1970’s, but rape culture exists in every country in the world. It refers to the normalisation or trivialisation of sexual violence against women in society.
I was half way across the world from my family in the Philippines when Typhoon Haiyan wreaked havoc two years ago. As a Filipina citizen it was hard to see the footage; to hear my family talk about the devastation and the people they couldn’t get in touch with. In some ways it was even harder knowing what was going to happen next.
Violence against women, recognised globally as a fundamental human rights violation, is widely prevalent across high-, middle-, and lowincome countries. It imposes direct and indirect costs and losses on the well-being of individuals, families and communities, businesses, national economies, social and economic development and political stability. Recently, there has been a growing interest in deriving the associated costs of violence against women. This has coincided with an explosion of costing studies in recent years, particularly after 2000. In this review of the evidence, we provide an assessment of what we have learned and we establish the gaps which still need to be addressed in future costing studies.
This project contends that the failure to eliminate VAWG constitutes a drag on national economies and on inclusive human development. There is thus strong incentive for investment by government and other stakeholders to address VAWG – the cost of inaction is signifi cant. This project aims to build knowledge about the impacts of VAWG and thus to mobilise political will to eliminate violence worldwide. Through the development of new costing methodologies that can be applied within different national contexts, this project will provide policy makers with the tools to estimate the impact of VAWG. To develop such tools, it is necessary to collect data and evaluate methodologies within a range of political, economic, cultural and social contexts. This study is therefore being conducted in three countries in the Global South that exhibit marked differences in terms of context: South Sudan, Pakistan and Ghana.
In Pakistan, the project aims to fi ll the gaps in our understanding of the socio-economic impacts of VAWG, focusing on intimate partner violence (IPV) and non-partner sexual violence (NPSV). The project will go beyond costs to individuals by providing estimates of the loss to the overall economy of Pakistan. In addition, we examine costs arising from the impact of VAWG on social cohesion and political stability.
This project contends that the failure to eliminate VAWG constitutes a drag on national economies and on inclusive human development. There is thus strong incentive for investment by government and other stakeholders to address VAWG – the cost of inaction is signifi cant. This project aims to build knowledge about the impacts of VAWG and thus to mobilise political will to eliminate violence worldwide. Through the development of new costing methodologies that can be applied within different national contexts, this project will provide policy makers with the tools to estimate the impact of VAWG. To develop such tools, it is necessary to collect data and evaluate methodologies within a range of political, economic, cultural and social contexts. This study is therefore being conducted in three countries in the Global South that exhibit marked differences in terms of context: South Sudan, Pakistan and Ghana.
In Ghana, the project aims to fi ll the gaps in our understanding of the socio-economic impacts of VAWG, focusing on intimate partner violence (IPV) and non-partner sexual violence (NPSV). The project will go beyond costs to individuals by providing estimates of the loss to the overall economy of Ghana. In addition, we examine costs arising from the impact of VAWG on social cohesion and political stability.
The magnitude of GBV incidence in Papua New Guinea is considered by some to be of epidemic proportions. The social, emotional and physical costs of GBV are widely recognised, as are national-level economic costs. But the impact at individual firm level is less well understood. This toolkit seeks to provide NGOs, academia or businesses with the means to assess the financial implications of GBV in the private sector.
Download: Costing the impacts of gender-based violence to business (1.5MB, PDF)
We know that allocation of resources is political. To make decisions, we need to show the cost of doing nothing.
- Nata Duvvury, Economist and lead technical advisor to the costing of violence against women studies.