Effective responses to combating violence against women

1
Effective responses to combating violence against
women

• Claudia Garcia-Moreno

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Many risk factors for IPV and SV are the same as
for HIV

• Gender inequality
• Lack of institutional support/community sanctions
• Social norms (gender roles, masculinity,
  violence)
• Poverty, economic stress, and unemployment
• Relationship characteristics (inequality, power
  imbalance)
• Alcohol and substance misuse
• Risk groups
• Young age
• Prior history of victimization or perpetration
• Sex

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Levels of prevention
Individual
Relationship
Community
Societal
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Limited evidence base

• Few outcome evaluations, even fewer from low and
  middle-income countries
• Few systematic evaluations of the same programme
  over time
• Evaluation designs often weak, relying on
  pre-test and post-test measurements of
  individuals knowledge, attitudes and behavioural
  intent over short follow-up periods and without
  comparison groups (measurement of impact on
  actual violent behaviour and rates of IPV-SV are
  extremely limited)
• Few evaluations of the impact of community and
  society-level strategies.

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Evidence base for prevention programmes
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IPV-SV Primary prevention approaches

• IPV-SV primary prevention approaches include
  strategies to
• promote gender equality to change social norms
  regarding violence, masculinity and gender roles
  
• reduce poverty and to strengthen economic and
  social safety nets
• strengthen law, policy and institutional
  responses to IPV-SV
• promote healthy and equal relationships
• reduce alcohol and drug misuse to have a
  particular focus on young people and
• prevent exposure to violence in childhood.

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Programme responses

• Early childhood and family-based
• School-based
• Interventions to reduce alcohol and drug use
• Public information and awareness campaigns
• Community-based prevention
• Structural and policy approaches (eg. improving
  criminal justice response)
• Working with men and boys

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Examples of prevention interventions

• Community focused
• Soul City
• SASA! Uganda
• Both sexes
• Stepping Stones, S. Africa
• Somos Iguales, Somos Diferentes
• Men
• Program H
• Promundo,
• Yari Dhoshi
• Men as partners
• Women
• IMAGE
• SisterAct

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Elements of success

• Comprehensive
• Participatory, and involves skills building
• Not a one off, multiple sessions follow-up
• Design based on evidence of behaviour change
• Promotes positive relationships
• Reflects development stage of target group
• Relevance tailored to the context
• Evaluated
• Well trained staff

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Activities that could be integrated into HIV
programmes

• Highlight links between VAW and HIV/AIDS in
  existing campaigns BOTH ARE PREVENTABLE and some
  risk factors common to both
• Ensure HIV prevention education/messages/programme
  s explicitly discuss sexual coercion and vaw, and
  do not condone violence
• Educate and give skills to key service providers
  (e.g. VCT counsellors) to be able to address
  gender-based violence
• Foster social norms around gender equality to
  make VAW unacceptable, including sexual coercion,
  and reduce sexual risk taking behaviour (e.g.
  promoting positive norms of masculinity etc.)
• Support/enable VAW groups to address HIV