effects of gender based violence essay

What is gender-based violence – and how do we prevent it?

Each year on 25 November, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women kicks off 16 days of activism against gender-based violence.

Gender-based violence (GBV) is present in every society around the world and takes many forms. As a violation of human rights, we have a moral imperative to stop all forms of violence against women and girls. In crisis, whether conflict or natural disaster, the risk of GBV increases, and so – therefore – does our collective need to act to prevent GBV before it happens or respond to the needs of women and girls when it does.

The IRC has been working specifically to prevent and respond to GBV since 1996, meaning we have over 25 years of experience. 

Women and girls are disproportionately impacted by all forms of gender-based violence. Below, we consider why this happens, and what we can do to prevent it. 

What is gender-based violence? 

Gender-based violence (GBV) is an umbrella term for harmful acts of abuse perpetrated against a person’s will and rooted in a system of unequal power between women and men. This is true for both conflict-affected and non-conflict settings.

The UN defines violence against women as, ‘any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life.

Over one-third of women and girls globally will experience some form of violence in their lifetime . However, this rate is higher in emergencies, conflict, and crisis, where vulnerability and risks are increased and most often family, community, and legal protections have broken down.

Harm caused by GBV comes in a variety of visible and invisible forms—it also includes the threat of violence. 

GBV can manifest in a variety of ways. Some of these include: physical violence, such as assault or slavery; emotional or psychological violence, such as verbal abuse or confinement; sexual abuse, including rape; harmful practices, like child marriage and female genital mutilation; socio-economic violence, which includes denial of resources; and sexual harassment, exploitation and abuse.

What is Intimate Partner Violence (IPV)?

Intimate Partner Violence (IPV), or ‘domestic violence’ is an all-too-common form of violence against women and girls. It refers to any behavior from a current or previous partner that causes harm—including physical aggression, sexual coercion, psychological abuse and controlling behaviors.

Globally, the UN reports  that one in four women have been subjected to physical and/or sexual violence by an intimate partner at least once in their lifetime, and IRC research has shown that it is the most common form of violence against women and girls in humanitarian contexts.

Who is most at risk?

Gender-based violence can happen to anyone. However, it disproportionately affects women and girls. Those in crisis settings are at a double disadvantage due to their gender and their situation.

Women and girls from other diverse and marginalized communities face an even greater risk where gender inequality intersects with other forms of oppression.

Those at higher risk include:

• Women and girls living with disabilities
• Young and adolescent girls
• Older women
• People who identify as LGBTQ+
• Women of ethnic minorities
• Refugees and migrants

While we reference these different identities separately, each person holds multiple identities at once. For example, a woman who lives with a disability might also be an older refugee. 

This is why it’s important to understand the concept of intersectionality — that a person faces different kinds of discrimination and risks due to a combination of their identities like gender, race, religion, age.

It is crucial to understand intersectionality when working to determine and provide prevention and response services. For instance, research has found that adolescent girls living in displacement are particularly at risk  of being overlooked in emergency settings, where they may fall between the cracks of child protection services and those aimed at adult women.

What causes gender-based violence in crisis settings?

Gender inequality, and the norms and beliefs that violence against women and girls is acceptable, cause gender-based violence. There are also many factors that increase the risk of GBV, with women and girls living through crises experiencing an increase in both the frequency and severity of GBV.

This is because the same conditions that contribute to conflict and forced displacement also accelerate GBV. These include:

Research from What Works found that when families are pushed into poverty, harmful practices like child marriages increase . Young girls may be pulled out of education for marriage, to help with domestic tasks or to generate an income. Unemployment and economic distress in the household can increase instances of IPV, as well. 

2. Breakdown of services

A collapse of community structure and the rule of law means women can find themselves without social support and protection systems in violent situations. It can also result in women and girls traveling great distances in search of food, water or fuel, further increasing risk of sexual harassment and assault.

3. Conflict and war

Rising numbers of conflicts globally are driving an increase in conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV). Without the rule of law, CRSV is often carried out with impunity. Armed forces may use rape as a weapon of war. Other forms of CRSV include sexual slavery, forced prostitution, forced pregnancy, forced abortion, enforced sterilization, forced marriage and other forms of sexual violence. 

4. Displacement

Women living in refugee camps and other temporary accommodation can face safety issues that put them at greater risk. This can include having no locks on bathroom doors, joint male and female facilities, and inadequate lighting.

Women living as refugees may have to find new livelihoods, which can lead to an increased risk of exploitation. 

Displaced women and girls in emergencies are often less visible . They’re not always included in national surveys or reports, which means their needs go unmet. 

5. Stress in the home

Intimate partner violence is the most common form of violence women experience in humanitarian settings. IRC research suggests that IPV and child maltreatment and abuse occur more frequently when families experience an inability to meet their basic needs, alcohol and substance abuse and inconsistent income.

Effects of gender-based violence

Violence has a long lasting effect on survivors and their families. Impacts can range from physical harm to long-term emotional distress to fatalities . Rape and sexual assault can result in unwanted pregnancies, complications during pregnancy and birth, and sexually transmitted infections, including HIV.

Social and economic fallout from GBV can lead to a loss of livelihood and increased gender inequalities in the long term. Reporting or seeking services for GBV can lead to further threats of violence, social stigma and ostracization. GBV is also a key barrier to women and girls accessing other lifesaving services, such as food, shelter and healthcare. 

Crises are not short-term occurrences . Climate-related disasters can create recurrent crises and many women and girls who are forcibly displaced can end up living in temporary accommodation for years. 

This exposes women and girls to GBV for longer and can draw out and compound the effects of that violence for decades, hampering long-term resilience and empowerment.

Preventing gender-based violence

While GBV continues to be a huge risk that women and girls face daily, there are ways to prevent it. Some of these include:

• Keeping girls in school
• Empowering women economically
• Using feminist approaches to tackle gender inequality, including in the home
• Providing women and girls with safe spaces
• Giving women cash support
• Engaging male allies
• Including women in decision-making at leadership level
• Supporting local women-led and women's rights organizations

Comprehensive GBV services need to be established quickly in times of crisis to protect women and girls and reduce their exposure to violence, while increasing their chances of recovery and resilience.

Humanitarian organizations should bring a feminist approach to programming , that takes into account the unequal power balance between genders when designing support and interventions for crisis-affected populations. 

Yet, despite knowing the scope of the problem, the serious and at times fatal effects of GBV, and that we can prevent and respond to it, GBV is still not prioritized with enough urgency during humanitarian responses. In 2021,  just 28% of GBV funding requirements were met , the lowest proportion reported over the previous four years and down from 32% in 2020.

The IRC response

The IRC prioritizes the needs of women and girls across its programming. We work to support the resilience and dignity of women and girls exposed to violence in crisis settings in over 50 countries worldwide. 

The IRC delivers essential healthcare, GBV case management and psychosocial support to survivors, including through safe spaces and outreach teams. In 2022, we provided 177,404 women and girls with psychosocial support and registered 43,817 GBV survivors for case management, ensuring that they receive necessary emotional, medical, psychosocial and other support services throughout their recovery journey.

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Gender-Based Violence (Violence Against Women and Girls)

Photo: Simone D. McCourtie / World Bank

Gender-based violence (GBV) or violence against women and girls (VAWG), is a global pandemic that affects 1 in 3 women in their lifetime.

The numbers are staggering:

• 35% of women worldwide have experienced either physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence or non-partner sexual violence.
• Globally, 7% of women have been sexually assaulted by someone other than a partner.
• Globally, as many as 38% of murders of women are committed by an intimate partner.
• 200 million women have experienced female genital mutilation/cutting.

This issue is not only devastating for survivors of violence and their families, but also entails significant social and economic costs. In some countries, violence against women is estimated to cost countries up to 3.7% of their GDP – more than double what most governments spend on education.

Failure to address this issue also entails a significant cost for the future.  Numerous studies have shown that children growing up with violence are more likely to become survivors themselves or perpetrators of violence in the future.

One characteristic of gender-based violence is that it knows no social or economic boundaries and affects women and girls of all socio-economic backgrounds: this issue needs to be addressed in both developing and developed countries.

Decreasing violence against women and girls requires a community-based, multi-pronged approach, and sustained engagement with multiple stakeholders. The most effective initiatives address underlying risk factors for violence, including social norms regarding gender roles and the acceptability of violence.

The World Bank is committed to addressing gender-based violence through investment, research and learning, and collaboration with stakeholders around the world.

Since 2003, the World Bank has engaged with countries and partners to support projects and knowledge products aimed at preventing and addressing GBV. The Bank supports over $300 million in development projects aimed at addressing GBV in World Bank Group (WBG)-financed operations, both through standalone projects and through the integration of GBV components in sector-specific projects in areas such as transport, education, social protection, and forced displacement.  Recognizing the significance of the challenge, addressing GBV in operations has been highlighted as a World Bank priority, with key commitments articulated under both IDA 17 and 18, as well as within the World Bank Group Gender Strategy .

The World Bank conducts analytical work —including rigorous impact evaluation—with partners on gender-based violence to generate lessons on effective prevention and response interventions at the community and national levels.

The World Bank regularly  convenes a wide range of development stakeholders  to share knowledge and build evidence on what works to address violence against women and girls.

Over the last few years, the World Bank has ramped up its efforts to address more effectively GBV risks in its operations , including learning from other institutions.

Addressing GBV is a significant, long-term development challenge. Recognizing the scale of the challenge, the World Bank’s operational and analytical work has expanded substantially in recent years.   The Bank’s engagement is building on global partnerships, learning, and best practices to test and advance effective approaches both to prevent GBV—including interventions to address the social norms and behaviors that underpin violence—and to scale up and improve response when violence occurs.  

World Bank-supported initiatives are important steps on a rapidly evolving journey to bring successful interventions to scale, build government and local capacity, and to contribute to the knowledge base of what works and what doesn’t through continuous monitoring and evaluation.

Addressing the complex development challenge of gender-based violence requires significant learning and knowledge sharing through partnerships and long-term programs. The World Bank is committed to working with countries and partners to prevent and address GBV in its projects. 

Knowledge sharing and learning

Violence against Women and Girls: Lessons from South Asia is the first report of its kind to gather all available data and information on GBV in the region. In partnership with research institutions and other development organizations, the World Bank has also compiled a comprehensive review of the global evidence for effective interventions to prevent or reduce violence against women and girls. These lessons are now informing our work in several sectors, and are captured in sector-specific resources in the VAWG Resource Guide: www.vawgresourceguide.org .

The World Bank’s  Global Platform on Addressing GBV in Fragile and Conflict-Affected Settings  facilitated South-South knowledge sharing through workshops and yearly learning tours, building evidence on what works to prevent GBV, and providing quality services to women, men, and child survivors.  The Platform included a $13 million cross-regional and cross-practice initiative, establishing pilot projects in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Nepal, Papua New Guinea, and Georgia, focused on GBV prevention and mitigation, as well as knowledge and learning activities.

The World Bank regularly convenes a wide range of development stakeholders to address violence against women and girls. For example, former WBG President Jim Yong Kim committed to an annual  Development Marketplace  competition, together with the Sexual Violence Research Initiative (SVRI) , to encourage researchers from around the world to build the evidence base of what works to prevent GBV. In April 2019, the World Bank awarded $1.1 million to 11 research teams from nine countries as a result of the fourth annual competition.

Addressing GBV in World Bank Group-financed operations

The World Bank supports both standalone GBV operations, as well as the integration of GBV interventions into development projects across key sectors.

Standalone GBV operations include:

• In August 2018, the World Bank committed $100 million to help prevent GBV in the DRC . The Gender-Based Violence Prevention and Response Project will reach 795,000 direct beneficiaries over the course of four years. The project will provide help to survivors of GBV, and aim to shift social norms by promoting gender equality and behavioral change through strong partnerships with civil society organizations. 
• In the  Great Lakes Emergency Sexual and Gender Based Violence & Women's Health Project , the World Bank approved $107 million in financial grants to Burundi, the DRC, and Rwanda  to provide integrated health and counseling services, legal aid, and economic opportunities to survivors of – or those affected by – sexual and gender-based violence. In DRC alone, 40,000 people, including 29,000 women, have received these services and support.
• The World Bank is also piloting innovative uses of social media to change behaviors . For example, in the South Asia region, the pilot program WEvolve  used social media  to empower young women and men to challenge and break through prevailing norms that underpin gender violence.

Learning from the Uganda Transport Sector Development Project and following the Global GBV Task Force’s recommendations , the World Bank has developed and launched a rigorous approach to addressing GBV risks in infrastructure operations:

• Guided by the GBV Good Practice Note launched in October 2018, the Bank is applying new standards in GBV risk identification, mitigation and response to all new operations in sustainable development and infrastructure sectors.
• These standards are also being integrated into active operations; GBV risk management approaches are being applied to a selection of operations identified high risk in fiscal year (FY) 2019.
• In the East Asia and Pacific region , GBV prevention and response interventions – including a code of conduct on sexual exploitation and abuse – are embedded within the Vanuatu Aviation Investment Project .
• The Liberia Southeastern Corridor Road Asset Management Project , where sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) awareness will be raised, among other strategies, as part of a pilot project to employ women in the use of heavy machinery. 
• The Bolivia Santa Cruz Road Corridor Project uses a three-pronged approach to address potential GBV, including a Code of Conduct for their workers; a Grievance Redress Mechanism (GRM) that includes a specific mandate to address any kinds gender-based violence; and concrete measures to empower women and to bolster their economic resilience by helping them learn new skills, improve the production and commercialization of traditional arts and crafts, and access more investment opportunities.
• The Mozambique Integrated Feeder Road Development Project identified SEA as a substantial risk during project preparation and takes a preemptive approach: a Code of Conduct; support to – and guidance for – the survivors in case any instances of SEA were to occur within the context of the project – establishing a “survivor-centered approach” that creates multiple entry points for anyone experiencing SEA to seek the help they need; and these measures are taken in close coordination with local community organizations, and an international NGO Jhpiego, which has extensive experience working in Mozambique.

Strengthening institutional efforts to address GBV  

In October 2016, the World Bank launched the  Global Gender-Based Violence Task Force  to strengthen the institution’s efforts to prevent and respond to risks of GBV, and particularly sexual exploitation and abuse (SEA) that may arise in World Bank-supported projects. It builds on existing work by the World Bank and other actors to tackle violence against women and girls through strengthened approaches to identifying and assessing key risks, and developing key mitigations measures to prevent and respond to sexual exploitation and abuse and other forms of GBV. 

In line with its commitments under IDA 18 , the World Bank developed an Action Plan for Implementation of the Task Force’s recommendations , consolidating key actions across institutional priorities linked to enhancing social risk management, strengthening operational systems to enhance accountability, and building staff and client capacity to address risks of GBV through training and guidance materials.

As part of implementation of the GBV Task Force recommendations, the World Bank has developed a GBV risk assessment tool and rigorous methodology to assess contextual and project-related risks. The tool is used by any project containing civil works.

The World Bank has developed a Good Practice Note (GPN) with recommendations to assist staff in identifying risks of GBV, particularly sexual exploitation and abuse and sexual harassment that can emerge in investment projects with major civil works contracts. Building on World Bank experience and good international industry practices, the note also advises staff on how to best manage such risks. A similar toolkit and resource note for Borrowers is under development, and the Bank is in the process of adapting the GPN for key sectors in human development.

The GPN provides good practice for staff on addressing GBV risks and impacts in the context of the Environmental and Social Framework (ESF) launched on October 1, 2018, including the following ESF standards, as well as the safeguards policies that pre-date the ESF: 

• ESS 1: Assessment and Management of Environmental and Social Risks and Impacts;
• ESS 2: Labor and Working Conditions;
• ESS 4: Community Health and Safety; and
• ESS 10: Stakeholder Engagement and Information Disclosure.

In addition to the Good Practice Note and GBV Risk Assessment Screening Tool, which enable improved GBV risk identification and management, the Bank has made important changes in its operational processes, including the integration of SEA/GBV provisions into its safeguard and procurement requirements as part of evolving Environmental, Social, Health and Safety (ESHS) standards, elaboration of GBV reporting and response measures in the Environmental and Social Incident Reporting Tool, and development of guidance on addressing GBV cases in our grievance redress mechanisms.

In line with recommendations by the Task Force to disseminate lessons learned from past projects, and to sensitize staff on the importance of addressing risks of GBV and SEA, the World Bank has developed of trainings for Bank staff to raise awareness of GBV risks and to familiarize staff with new GBV measures and requirements.  These trainings are further complemented by ongoing learning events and intensive sessions of GBV risk management.

Last Updated: Sep 25, 2019

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The Problem of Gender-Based Violence Essay

Introduction, global context of the problem, gender-based violence among adolescents, gender-based violence towards the lgbtq community, ways to mitigate the problem.

With the development of humanity, the problems of gender interaction in society have become less acute compared to the situation in past eras. Nevertheless, despite the success of the struggle for equality and established moral values​, the issue of gender-based violence continues to exist. Women, in this case, are a vulnerable side, although there are cases of violence against men. According to the World Health Organization, the most common causes are domestic disagreements that account for 38% to 50% of women murdered by their intimate partners (5). The situation is aggravated by the fact that gender-based violence occurs not only among adults but also among young people, which creates additional difficulties and is a good reason to draw various stakeholders’ attention. Despite widespread access to information and opportunities to receive help, victims of physical abuse often seek to cope with their challenges individually, and this does not contribute to solving the issue effectively. Gender-based violence is an urgent problem that affects people of different ages, countries, and sexual orientations and requires addressing through the creation of an adequate preventive environment and strengthening measures to persecute aggressive citizens successfully.

As people move towards democratic freedoms and human rights, along with the values ​​of equality and mutual respect, gender-based violence remains a problem in a global context. The situation is aggravated by the fact that, in some world regions, the existing patriarchal foundations do not contribute to creating a favorable environment for dealing with the issue in question. Wood et al. examine the rural region of Tajikistan, the country in Central Asia, and note the distinctive perceptions of violence between men and women, particularly the empowerment of the male population (1). In such archaic conditions, women are not endowed with an opportunity to fight for their rights, and any manifestations of violence against them are permissible at the level of traditional perception and people’s cultural background.

Another factor proving the global context of the problem under consideration is the economic crisis in many world regions. As Dowd argues, gender-based violence develops where the authorities are more concerned about financial problems than social ones (42). Violence between intimate partners is a consequence of social and economic challenges that impede normal life and are a catalyst for aggression (World Health Organization 5). As a result, women often experience physical abuse while living in poverty because low social status is one of the concomitant factors of violence.

Today, a number of agencies work to strengthen the regulatory framework and publicize the problem at the international level. Simister cites the examples of UNECE, the World Health Organization, and some other organizations that aim to disseminate information about the inadmissibility of gender-based violence (190). As Gerlach notes, with the emergence of the United Nations, the first attempts to reduce pressure on women were undertaken globally and across different social spheres (86). However, given the aforementioned challenges, particularly economic difficulties and patriarchal canons, the problem has not been resolved until now. Therefore, in an international context, conducting targeted work to help vulnerable populations and prevent physical abuse has weight as an activity to emphasize the importance of this issue and its urgency in modern society. Notably, the manifestation of violence among young people is an acute problem within the stated topic.

Gender-based violence in adolescence is a particularly dangerous phenomenon since the psyche of young people is not formed comprehensively, and physical abuse based on gender can be a stimulus for the development of severe disorders. According to Mathews and Gould, adolescents who have experienced gender-based violence are prone to intellectual disabilities and even chronic illnesses (61). However, despite these threatening prospects, this form of social conflict exists, and individual social constraints exacerbate it. For instance, Chandra-Mouli et al. state that “the percentage of countries with gender gaps in school attendance increases from 37% for primary education to 54% and 77% for lower and upper secondary education, respectively” (239). Teenage girls become objects of health-harming acts, and the current social regulations cannot address this issue adequately due to the lack of proper control and sustainable policies to protect vulnerable adolescents.

The existing social norms of some groups can also be a negative driver of gender-based violence in relation to vulnerable adolescents. Sommer et al. remark that gender-based stigma may arise, and what is contrary to modern values ​​in a civilized society may be acceptable in individual communities (155). As an example, the authors cite the concept of victim-blaming, according to which a girl is initially guilty of committing violence against her due to her overly defiant behavior, appearance, and other controversial factors (Sommer et al. 155). This practice does not fit into modern social norms, which, nevertheless, does not affect the episodic nature of cases of violence. Moreover, according to the World Health Organization, young boys can also be targets of violence from older girls, and precedents exist (21). As a result, stigmatization manifests itself against both genders, albeit unequally.

The need to ensure the protection of vulnerable adolescents from gender-based violence is felt acutely during military conflicts. Etienne gives dire cases of young females’ abuse by soldiers and notes that such incidents should be regarded as a war crime against humanity and punished to the fullest extent of the law (139). However, even if victims of violence are assisted, they are at risk of developing dangerous mental disorders caused by acute shocks. Ensuring the safety of adolescents from gender-based abuse should be a mandatory practice in a modern democratic world, and this category of the population should be given no less attention than adults. Thus, discussing the ways to mitigate these issues from different perspectives is critical.

Issues related to gender-based violence arising from the topic of sexual orientation are the problems that concern both adults and young people. In particular, the LGBTQ community is vulnerable, and many of its members are forced to face stigma and bias from the sexual majority. Crooks et al. state that schoolchildren who identify themselves as belonging to the LGBTQ community are often harassed and pressured by peers (45). This, in turn, affects their morale negatively and is a favorable factor for the development of concomitant mental disorders. Therefore, countering such a form of bullying is an important aspect of creating a normal environment in which people with equal opportunities can defend their interests.

To provide vulnerable categories of the population with protection from gender-based violence, targeted work should be carried out from an early age. Crooks et al. propose to create special youth programs for primary and secondary school children, which include teaching social interaction skills (31). This practice can be useful as a tool to educate children and adolescents about the dangerous consequences of gender-based abuse, and building healthy behaviors is a valuable outcome of such work.

Maintaining an adequate preventive environment at the international level should be supported by responsible organizations and agencies dealing with social regulations. The World Health Organization offers a special algorithm that includes several stages of targeted work, in particular, joining the efforts of different committees, investing in maintaining a stable regulatory framework, and developing individual community practices (19). The aforementioned problem of the perception of gender-based violence within outdated cultural values ​​can be addressed through the involvement of local representatives to implement corresponding security programs at the regional level. These initiatives may contribute to addressing the issue as effectively as possible while taking into account the characteristics of each population group.

With regard to gender-based violence in the LGBTQ community, special measures can be taken. In particular, Crooks et al. pay attention to the program of assistance to schoolchildren with non-traditional sexual orientation as one of the tools to address the problem (45). Such a program aims to give students an opportunity to share experiences and create a communication environment in which bullying gives way to positive interaction. Addressing this form of gender-based violence at an early age is an important aspect of the formation of appropriate social values ​​and norms. As a result, in adulthood, the likelihood of facing open aggression can be minimized due to timely work with the population.

In addition, educating the adult population as a tool for strengthening preventive work is no less important aspect than corresponding regulatory decisions. According to Simister, education is an effective form of combating gender-based violence since, despite distinctive deviant features in different communities, the background of the problem is the same – abuse allowance by the gender factor (70). The more often people hear about the inadmissibility of humiliating others’ honor and dignity, the higher are the chances of reducing the incidence of physical abuse against vulnerable groups. Moreover, through education, stakeholders can not only build but also assess the sustainability of specific measures taken to reduce risks (World Health Organization 21). Therefore, outreach work, complemented by appropriate regulatory constraints, is a valuable practice.

Addressing the issue of gender-based violence by introducing both relevant legal practices and educational projects at different levels is a crucial task due to the dangerous implications of this social problem. Particular attention should be paid to the topic of physical abuse by the gender factor among children and adolescents since their psyche is the most vulnerable, and a number of health problems can develop. The representatives of the LGBTQ community are also under the threat of social pressure and may need support and protection to defend their interests and social rights. The reasons for gender-based violence can be distinctive, but the main prerequisites for the issue are economic constraints and impaired cultural norms promoted in individual communities. According to Etienne, local groups can educate the population successfully and build an adequate preventive environment (139). At the same time, international organizations’ activities are also valuable due to the popularization of the issue globally and an opportunity to attract public attention.

Chandra-Mouli, Venkatraman, et al. “Addressing Harmful and Unequal Gender Norms in Early Adolescence.” Nature Human Behaviour , vol. 2, no. 4, 2018, pp. 239-240.

Crooks, Claire V., et al. “Preventing Gender-Based Violence Among Adolescents and Young Adults: Lessons from 25 Years of Program Development and Evaluation.” Violence Against Women , vol. 25, no. 1, 2019, pp. 29-55.

Dowd, Douglas. Inequality and the Global Economic Crisis: Douglas Dowd . Pluto Press, 2009.

Etienne, Margareth. “Addressing Gender-Based Violence in an International Context.” Harvard Women’s Law Journal , vol. 18, 1995, p. 139.

Gerlach, Christian. Extremely Violent Societies: Mass Violence in the Twentieth-Century World . Cambridge University Press, 2010.

Mathews, Shanaaz, and Chandré Gould. “Preventing Violence: From Evidence to Implementation.” ChildGauge , edited by Lucy Jamieson, Lizette Berry, and Lori Lake, University of Cape Town, 2017, pp. 61-67.

Simister, John. Gender Based Violence: Causes and Remedies . Nova Science Publishers, 2012.

Sommer, Marni, et al. “How Gender Norms Are Reinforced Through Violence Against Adolescent Girls in Two Conflict-Affected Populations.” Child Abuse & Neglect , vol. 79, 2018, pp. 154-163.

Wood, Elizabeth A., et al. “Exploring the Differences Between Men’s and Women’s Perceptions of Gender-Based Violence in Rural Tajikistan: A Qualitative Study.” BMC Women’s Health , vol. 21, no. 1, 2021, pp. 1-15.

World Health Organization. RESPECT Women: Preventing Violence Against Women . World Health Organization, 2019.

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1. IvyPanda . "The Problem of Gender-Based Violence." October 23, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-problem-of-gender-based-violence/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "The Problem of Gender-Based Violence." October 23, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/the-problem-of-gender-based-violence/.

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Effects of violence against women

Violence against women can cause long-term physical and mental health problems. Violence and abuse affect not just the women involved but also their children, families, and communities. These effects include harm to an individual's health, possibly long-term harm to children, and harm to communities such as lost work and homelessness.

What are the short-term physical effects of violence against women?

The short-term physical effects of violence can include minor injuries or serious conditions. They can include bruises, cuts, broken bones, or injuries to organs and other parts inside of your body. Some physical injuries are difficult or impossible to see without scans, x-rays, or other tests done by a doctor or nurse.

Short-term physical effects of sexual violence can include:

• Vaginal bleeding or pelvic pain
• Unwanted pregnancy
• Sexually transmitted infections (STIs ), including HIV
• Trouble sleeping or nightmares

If you are pregnant, a physical injury can hurt you and the unborn child. This is also true in some cases of sexual assault.

If you are sexually assaulted by the person you live with, and you have children in the home, think about your children’s safety also. Violence in the home often includes child abuse. 1 Many children who witness violence in the home are also victims of physical abuse. 2 Learn more about the effects of domestic violence on children.

If you are injured in a physical or sexual assault, call 911.

What are the long-term physical effects of violence against women?

Violence against women, including sexual or physical violence, is linked to many long-term health problems. These can include: 3

• Chronic pain
• Digestive problems such as stomach ulcers
• Heart problems
• Irritable bowel syndrome
• Nightmares and problems sleeping
• Migraine  headaches
• Sexual problems such as pain during sex
• Problems with the immune system

Many women also have mental health problems after violence . To cope with the effects of the violence, some women start misusing alcohol or drugs or engage in risky behaviors, such as having unprotected sex. Sexual violence can also affect someone’s perception of their own bodies, leading to unhealthy eating patterns or eating disorders. If you are experiencing these problems, know that you are not alone. There are resources that can help you cope with these challenges.

How is traumatic brain injury related to domestic violence?

A serious risk of physical abuse is concussion and traumatic brain injury (TBI) from being hit on the head or falling and hitting your head. TBI can cause: 4

• Headache or a feeling of pressure
• Loss of consciousness
• Nausea and vomiting
• Slurred speech
• Memory loss
• Trouble concentrating

Some symptoms of TBI may take a few days to show up. Over a longer time, TBI can cause depression and anxiety . TBI can also cause problems with your thoughts, including the ability to make a plan and carry it out. This can make it more difficult for a woman in an abusive relationship to leave. Even if you think you are OK after hitting your head, talk to you doctor or nurse if you have any of these symptoms. Treatment for TBI can help.

What are the mental health effects of violence against women?

If you have experienced a physical or sexual assault, you may feel many emotions — fear, confusion, anger, or even being numb and not feeling much of anything. You may feel guilt or shame over being assaulted. Some people try to minimize the abuse or hide it by covering bruises and making excuses for the abuser.

If you’ve been physically or sexually assaulted or abused, know that it is not your fault. Getting help for assault or abuse can help prevent long-term mental health effects and other health problems.

Long-term mental health effects of violence against women can include: 5

• Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) . This can be a result of experiencing trauma or having a shocking or scary experience, such as sexual assault or physical abuse. 6 You may be easily startled, feel tense or on edge, have difficulty sleeping, or have angry outbursts. You may also have trouble remembering things or have negative thoughts about yourself or others. If you think you have PTSD, talk to a mental health professional.
• Depression . Depression is a serious illness, but you can get help to feel better. If you are feeling depressed, talk to a mental health professional.
• Anxiety . This can be general anxiety about everything, or it can be a sudden attack of intense fear. Anxiety can get worse over time and interfere with your daily life. If you are experiencing anxiety, you can get help from a mental health professional.

Other effects can include shutting people out, not wanting to do things you once enjoyed, not being able to trust others, and having low-esteem. 1

Many women who have experienced violence cope with this trauma by using drugs, drinking alcohol, smoking, or overeating. Research shows that about 90% of women with substance use problems had experienced physical or sexual violence. 7

Substance use may make you feel better in the moment, but it ends up making you feel worse in the long-term. Drugs, alcohol, tobacco, or overeating will not help you forget or overcome the experience. Get help  if you’re thinking about or have been using alcohol or drugs to cope.

Who can help women who have been abused or assaulted?

After you get help for physical injuries, a mental health professional can help you cope with emotional concerns. A counselor or therapist can work with you to deal with your emotions in healthy ways, build your self-esteem, and help you develop coping skills. You can ask your doctor for the name of a therapist, or you can search an online list of mental health services . Learn more about getting help for your mental health .

Victims of sexual assault can also talk for free with someone who is trained to help through the National Sexual Assault Hotline over the phone at 800-656-HOPE (4673) or online .

What are some other effects of violence against women?

Violence against women has physical and mental health effects, but it can also affect the lives of women who are abused in other ways:

• Work. Experiencing a trauma like sexual violence may interfere with someone’s ability to work. Half of women who experienced sexual assault had to quit or were forced to leave their jobs in the first year after the assault. Total lifetime income loss for these women is nearly $250,000 each. 8
• Home. Many women are forced to leave their homes to find safety because of violence. Research shows that half of all homeless women and children became homeless while trying to escape intimate partner violence. 9
• School. Women in college who are sexually assaulted may be afraid to report the assault and continue their education. But Title IX laws require schools to provide extra support for sexual assault victims in college. Schools can help enforce no-contact orders with an abuser and provide mental health counseling and school tutoring.
• Children . Women with children may stay with an abusive partner because they fear losing custody or contact with their children.

Sometimes, violence against women ends in death. More than half of women who are murdered each year are killed by an intimate partner. 10 One in 10 of these women experienced violence in the month before their death. If you have experienced abuse, contact a hotline  at 800-799-SAFE (800-799-7233) , or learn more ways to get help .

Did we answer your question about the effects of violence against women?

For more information about the effects of violence against women, call the OWH Helpline at 1-800-994-9662 or check out the following resources from other organizations:

• A Head for the Future — Information on traumatic brain injury from the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center.
• The Costs and Consequences of Sexual Violence and Cost-Effective Solutions (PDF, 220 KB) — Publication from the National Alliance to End Sexual Violence.
• Effects of Sexual Violence — Information from the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN).
• Behavioral Health Treatment Services Locator  — Links to mental health services from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).
• Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder — Information from the National Institute of Mental Health.
• Tips for Survivors of a Disaster or Traumatic Event: What to Expect in Your Personal, Family, Work, and Financial Life — Publication from SAMHSA.
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (2015). Intimate Partner Violence: Consequences.
• Modi, M.N., Palmer, S., Armstrong, A. (2014). The Role of Violence Against Women Act in Addressing Intimate Partner Violence: A Public Health Issue. Journal of Women’s Health; 23(3): 253-259.
• Smith, S.G., Chen, J., Basile, K.C., Gilbert, L.K., Merrick, M.T., Patel, N., et al. (2017). The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey: 2010-2012 State Report . Atlanta, GA: National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
• Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center. (2016). Recognize TBI and Concussion .
• Delara, M. (2016). Mental Health Consequences and Risk Factors of Physical Intimate Partner Violence . Mental Health in Family Medicine; 12: 119-125.
• Jina, R., Thomas, L.S. (2013). Health consequences of sexual violence against women . Best Practice and Research: Clinical Obstetrics and Gynaecology; 27: 15-26.
• Beijer, U., Scheffel Birath, C., DeMartinis, V., Af Klinteberg, B. (2015). Facets of Male Violence Against Women With Substance Abuse Problems: Women With a Residence and Homeless Women. Journal of Interpersonal Violence; Dec 4. pii: 0886260515618211.
• National Alliance to End Sexual Violence. (2011). The Costs and Consequences of Sexual Violence and Cost-Effective Solutions.
• Goodman, L.A., Fels, K., Glenn, C., Benitez, J. (2011). No Safe Place: Sexual Assault in the Lives of Homeless Women . National Resource Center on Domestic Violence.
• Petrosky, E., Blair, J.M., Betz, C.J., Fowler, K.A., Jack, S.P.D., Lyons, B.H. (2017). Racial and Ethnic Differences in Homicides of Adult Women and the Role of Intimate Partner Violence – United States, 2003-2014 . MMWR; 66: 741-746.
• Kathleen C. Basile, Ph.D., Lead Behavioral Scientist, Division of Violence Prevention, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
• Kathryn Jones, M.S.W., Public Health Advisor, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
• Sharon G. Smith, Ph.D., Behavioral Scientist, National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
• Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN) Staff
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Education Links

The Effects of Gender-Based Violence on Academic Performance

Evidence from botswana, ghana, and south africa.

Violence in and around educational settings is a global phenomenon. Sexual harassment and abuse may be the most well-known forms of school-related gender-based violence (SRGBV), but it can take many other forms. SRGBV includes violence or abuse that is based on gendered stereotypes or that targets students on the basis of their sex, sexuality, or gender identities. The underlying intent of this violence is to reinforce gender roles and perpetuate gender inequalities. It includes rape, unwanted sexual touching, unwanted sexual comments, corporal punishment, bullying, and verbal harassment. Unequal power relations between adults and children and between males and females contribute to this violence, which can take place in the school, on school grounds, on the way to and from school, or in school dormitories, and might be perpetrated by teachers, students, or community members. Both girls and boys can be victims as well as perpetrators. School-related gender-based violence results in sexual, physical, and/or psychological harm to girls and boys.

All of these forms of violence, including bullying, should be conceptualized as gendered, as they are affected by gender-related stereotypes that persist in society. The present study aims to identify and quantify the effects of bullying on academic performance using the data sets collected from the PIRLS and TIMSS surveys conducted in 2011 in Botswana, Ghana, and South Africa. We adopt an analytical approach that enables differentiation between the influence of bullying and demographic and economic factors on academic performance in an effort to inform educational policy. The data sets are internationally comparative, and enriched by comprehensive background information related to students and their households, teachers, and schools. The exams are administered in the fourth and eighth grades, enabling comparisons between cohorts of students. Over 36,000 students participated in the exams in 2011.

Understanding School-Related Gender-Based Violence

Learn more:, related resources, study of conflict and educational inequality, the effects of school-related gender-based violence on academic performance, usaid africa education regional brief.

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Home — Essay Samples — Social Issues — Gender Inequality — A Discussion on Gender-Based Violence

Gender-based Violence: Effects and Prevention Methods

• Categories: Gender Gender Inequality Race and Gender

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Words: 382 |

Published: Jul 17, 2018

Words: 382 | Page: 1 | 2 min read

Gender-based violence: essay introduction

Works cited.

• World Health Organization. (2013). Global and regional estimates of violence against women: Prevalence and health effects of intimate partner violence and non-partner sexual violence. Retrieved from https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/85239/9789241564625_eng.pdf
• United Nations. (n.d.). Violence against women: Facts everyone should know. Retrieved from https://www.unwomen.org/en/what-we-do/ending-violence-against-women/facts-and-figures
• Heise, L. L., & Kotsadam, A. (2015). Cross-national and multilevel correlates of partner violence: An analysis of data from population-based surveys. The Lancet Global Health, 3(6), e332-e340. doi: 10.1016/S2214-109X(15)00013-3
• García-Moreno, C., Hegarty, K., d'Oliveira, A. F., Koziol-McLain, J., Colombini, M., & Feder, G. (2015). The health-systems response to violence against women. The Lancet, 385(9977), 1567-1579. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(14)61837-7
• Jewkes, R., Flood, M., & Lang, J. (2015). From work with men and boys to changes of social norms and reduction of inequities in gender relations: A conceptual shift in prevention of violence against women and girls. The Lancet, 385(9977), 1580-1589. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(14)61683-4
• United Nations Development Programme. (n.d.). Ending violence against women. Retrieved from https://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/sustainable-development-goals/goal-5-gender-equality/overview/ending-violence-against-women.html
• Krug, E. G., Mercy, J. A., Dahlberg, L. L., & Zwi, A. B. (2002). The world report on violence and health. The Lancet, 360(9339), 1083-1088. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(02)11133-0
• Human Rights Watch. (n.d.). Violence against women. Retrieved from https://www.hrw.org/topic/womens-rights/violence-against-women
• United Nations Women. (n.d.). Gender-based violence. Retrieved from https://www.unwomen.org/en/what-we-do/ending-violence-against-women/facts-and-figures/gender-based-violence
• World Bank. (n.d.). Gender-based violence. Retrieved from https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/gbv

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Research Thesis on Effects Of Gender Based Violence Among Students In Masinde Muliro University, Kakamega, Kenya

2014, EFFECTS OF GENDER BASED VIOLENCE AMONG STUDENTS N MASINDE MULIRO UNIVERSITY, KAKAMEGA, KENYA

Background: A recent global review of 50 population-based studies carried out in 36 countries indicates that between 10 and 60% of women who have ever been married or partnered have experienced at least one incident of physical violence from a current or former intimate partner (Heise.L, 2009). Kenya‟s Demographic and Health Survey in 2003 found that 44 percent of married, divorced or separated women aged 15–49 report they had been physically or sexually violated at least once by their husbands or partners. Purpose of the study: This research however not only focused on the general overview of GBV but specifically arrowed on the effects of GBV amongst campus students in Masinde Muliro University. No such research had been conducted in Masinde Muliro Univeristy and any other public university in Kenya but there was evidence in written articles of the existence of GBV victims amongst the students courtesy of reports from I Choose Life Africa –Masinde Muliro chapter. Methodology: A cross sectional quantitative explorative study design was employed which combined both quantitative and qualitative enquiries. The study was conducted in Masinde Muliro University main campus as the study site with the target population of this study being both the male and female students of Masinde Muliro University. Results: From the results, it was quiet evident that the Females were the ones who faced Gender Based violence more at 96% as opposed to the male who only had 4% of the cases. Conclusion: From the findings and analysis of these results; this research came to the conclusion that GBV is present in MMUST majorly physical abuse of the students by their partners and psychological abuse from the university staff and their colleagues. It also established that There was a correlation between substance abuse and instances of GBV hence curbing substance abuse would help curb GBV.

Related Papers

Wafula J. A.

Dr. Judith A D I K I N Y I Wafula

Studies reveal that Gender-Based Violence (GBV) is increasingly becoming a crisis. This is despite the development spirit entrenched in making the world a global village, Education for All plans and Vision 2030. This paper examines the challenges faced by universities in Kenya in the fight against GBV experienced by their students. It emanates from a study that involved 662 students; 144 lecturers; five deans of students and heads of student counselling; four student leaders and vice chancellors from six universities in Kenya which revealed that universities face challenges that require concerted efforts in tackling. Universities in Kenya have been growing at a rapid pace, from one national university to university colleges and fully fledged universities at varied counties. This expansion bears challenges and the fight against GBV is not exempt. The challenges run from the family structure as evidenced by domestic quarrels, fights and even murders that render it dysfunctional. The genesis of GBV resides in the underlying norm and value systems that make it necessary and legitimate subverting prevention and response efforts [1]. Consequently, GBV is exposed as a display of socio-cultural tendencies that influence the perceptions of gender and is sustained by a culture of silence and denial [2]. Further revelations from UNFPA show that biological factors have no bearing in the intense differences in the behaviours of men and women indicating that the differences are based on the socialization process. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates show that at least one in every three women experience GBV in their lifetime. Additionally, it was found that male survivors experience similar physical, social and psychological violations only that they are less likely to seek medical help due to stigma and prejudice regarding male sexuality or masculinity [3]. Therefore, the paper addresses the challenges and provides recommendations in dealing with the vice. Devolved governments are in a very strategic position of involvement in curbing the vice.

World Journal of Public Health

MICHAEL AVWERHOTA

BMC women's health

Ikeola Adeoye

In Nigeria, there is paucity of information on the IPV burden and experience among young women in courtship and dating relationships. This study assesses the prevalence and correlates of IPV in female undergraduate and postgraduate students in a tertiary institution. The study was a cross-sectional survey. A four-stage sampling technique was used to select 1,100 undergraduate and 255 postgraduate female students from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. Data was collected using a 43-item self-administered structured questionnaire. Descriptive statistics and multivariate analyses were carried out at 0.05 level of significance. The life-time prevalence of IPV was 42.3% (postgraduate: 34.5%, undergraduate: 44.1%; P < 0.05). Lifetime experience of psychological, physical and sexual IPV were 41.8%, 7.9% and 6.6% respectively. Recent experience (within the previous 12 months) of violence was also more frequently reported by respondents who had a previous history of physical (62.5%) (OR =...

Melak Mengistab Gebresilassie

Gender based violence is one of the most frequent type of human rights violation against girls and women. Having this background, the major objectives of this research was investigating the types, cause and consequences of this gender based violence against female students in Bahir Dar University. A qualitative study has been used predominantly to have a deep in-sight about the experiences of female students with regard to gender based violence (GBV). A case study design has been used, whereby the researcher investigates the respondents’ perspectives on their experience of GBV. A focus group discussion has also been employed to give depth to the study through analyzing groups’ consensus. Furthermore, in-depth interviews with key informants have been conducted to gather data on the prevailing norms and practices of the University in relation to GBV. Finally, beside the above major techniques, questionnaires have been distributed to female and male students to supplement the qualitative data with quantitative results. The out come of the research confirmed that, different sorts of GBV are committed against female students in Bahir Dar University. Sexual harassment is the most frequent form of sexual violence perpetrated against female students. In addition, attempted rape and rape too were perpetrated against female students mainly outside of the University. Psychological and emotional violence are also inflicted against female students through insult, humiliation and embarrassment. Economic violence, denial of liberty and discrimination in the form of giving priority to male students, are the other types of GBV observed in Bahir Dar University. Female students are also victims of physical violence through slap, battering and kicking. The causes for such types of violence were identified as legal and structural constraints. The legal challenges associated with the University which failed to have a specific policy on the rights of girls and its failure in incorporating the rights of girls within the existing senate legislation. Furthermore, absence of any nationwide law that protects girls against campus based GBV is another challenge. The structural constraints include the discriminatory culture, and poverty which are related to the society. The physical environment, alcoholism and drugs abuses are the other challenges related to the University and the students, respectively. GBV has various consequences on female students’ physical, emotional and psychological health and educational achievements. The study showed that GBV is one the major cause for female students’ lower academic achievements. Finally, the study points out some recommendations.

Busola Odubela Ajibola

Gender-based violence (GBV) is globally recognized as a public health issue. The specific focus of this research is violence against women (VAW), as statistics continue to show that women are more likely to fall victims of violence by virtue of their gender. This study investigates the prevalence, pattern and causal factors for violence against female undergraduates in Moshood Abiola Polytechnic, Abeokuta, Nigeria. In addition, the study examines the causes and effects of this malaise on victims. Possible ways of reducing occurrence of VAW against female undergraduates are also proffered. The study is cross-sectional, analytical and descriptive, in nature. It made use of secondary data source like; academic papers, newspaper publications, online publications ands so on. Data were collected with a pilot tested, semi-structured questionnaire; self-administered by the respondents. Data were analyzed with the Epi. Info software. Respondents were selected using a 3-level multistage sampling technique. Results and conclusion are based on valid responses only.

Science Journal of Public Health

kassahun Gebeyehu

Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences

Zarina Mohd Zain

https://www.ijhsr.org/IJHSR_Vol.7_Issue.11_Nov2017/IJHSR_Abstract.031.html

International Journal of Health Sciences and Research (IJHSR)

Background: Studies have shown that violence against women which is manifested in multiple forms is increasingly seen as a major public health concern. The findings from a study conducted in Kenya indicated that 46% of ever-married women have experienced any type of intimate partner violence. This is a problem affecting people from all walks of life, in Kenya, information on most aspects of gender based violence is inadequate and there is great need for research on all aspects gender based violence and therefore this research seeks to fill this gap by assessing the predisposing factors attending the Nairobi women's hospital, in Nairobi Kenya. Objective: Assessing the predisposing factors associated with Gender-based violence amongst married women attending Nairobi Women's Hospital. Methodology: The study was a hospital based cross-sectional study conducted at gender violence and recovery Centre of Nairobi Women's Hospital in Nairobi, Kenya, where 325 gender based violence victims visiting the facility were recruited to participate in the study. Data was collected using questionnaires and focus group discussions and the predisposing factors to be analyzed were age, marital status, economic status and education level. The data from the questionnaire forms were coded and entered in the Ms-Access, which was then analyzed using STATA version 13and the association was tested using chi-square at 5%confidence level. Data collected from Focus Group Discussions was sorted manually based on themes developed from issues arising from responses, transcribed translated and coded. Results: Age (P<0.0001), marital status (p=0.015), whether the victim was alone during the incidence (P<0.0001), drinking habit of the victim (P=0.011), and whether perpetrator was drunk during the incidence (P=0.026) individually showed statistically significant association with the forms of violence experienced while highest level of education (P=0.575) and occupation (P=0.101) individually showed no statistical association with the forms of violence. Conclusion: Women experience gender-based violence in a number of contexts and roles, and many have accepted their situation and therefore prevention strategies should be implemented to address the spectrum of GBV women victims. Recommendation: Active campaigns to sensitize the community against gender based violence

International Journal of Health Research

Dr. Endalew G E M E C H U Sendo

Background: Sexual harassment has posed a tremendous challenge to African women both in the workplace and educational setting, and this problem has impacted women's self-esteem as well as their academic, social, and psychological wellbeing. One in five college women are victims of acquaintance rape during their academic career and less than 5% of college women who are victims of sexual assault report their victimization. However, there is limited data on sexual violence in the context of higher education in Ethiopia particularly in the study setting. This study, therefore, determined the prevalence and its associated factors among female students of Hawassa University in Ethiopia. Methods: Institution-based cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted from April to June 2013. A multistage sampling technique was used. A total of 336 female students registered as 2nd year and above were involved in the study. Data was collected using anonymous self-administered structured questionnaire. Results: A total of 336 female students took part in the study. Majority of the study participants (N = 298; 88.7%) were in the age range of 20-34 years. The mean age and standard deviation of the respondents were 21.3 ± 1.7 years. Regarding the marital status of the respondents, 307 (91.4%) of them were single. We found that, while 14.3% reported having experienced completed rape since being admitted to the university, 3% had the experience in the past years. Conclusions: This study showed a high prevalence of sexual violence against female students of Hawassa University in Ethiopia. Interventions are, therefore, required by university authorities and other stakeholders, to create a safe learning environment for female students through primary prevention of sexual violence and rehabilitation programs for the victims.

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Social norms and beliefs about gender based violence scale: a measure for use with gender based violence prevention programs in low-resource and humanitarian settings

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Conflict and Health volume  13 , Article number:  6 ( 2019 ) Cite this article

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Gender-based violence (GBV) primary prevention programs seek to facilitate change by addressing the underlying causes and drivers of violence against women and girls at a population level. Social norms are contextually and socially derived collective expectations of appropriate behaviors. Harmful social norms that sustain GBV include women’s sexual purity, protecting family honor over women’s safety, and men’s authority to discipline women and children. To evaluate the impact of GBV prevention programs, our team sought to develop a brief, valid, and reliable measure to examine change over time in harmful social norms and personal beliefs that maintain and tolerate sexual violence and other forms of GBV against women and girls in low resource and complex humanitarian settings.

The development and testing of the scale was conducted in two phases: 1) formative phase of qualitative inquiry to identify social norms and personal beliefs that sustain and justify GBV perpetration against women and girls; and 2) testing phase using quantitative methods to conduct a psychometric evaluation of the new scale in targeted areas of Somalia and South Sudan.

The Social Norms and Beliefs about GBV Scale was administered to 602 randomly selected men ( N  = 301) and women (N = 301) community members age 15 years and older across Mogadishu, Somalia and Yei and Warrup, South Sudan. The psychometric properties of the 30-item scale are strong. Each of the three subscales, “Response to Sexual Violence,” “Protecting Family Honor,” and “Husband’s Right to Use Violence” within the two domains, personal beliefs and injunctive social norms, illustrate good factor structure, acceptable internal consistency, reliability, and are supported by the significance of the hypothesized group differences.

Conclusions

We encourage and recommend that researchers and practitioners apply the Social Norms and Beliefs about GBV Scale in different humanitarian and global LMIC settings and collect parallel data on a range of GBV outcomes. This will allow us to further validate the scale by triangulating its findings with GBV experiences and perpetration and assess its generalizability across diverse settings.

Introduction

Gender-based violence (GBV) remains one of the most prevalent and persistent issues facing women and girls globally [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ]. Conflict and other humanitarian emergencies place women and girls at increased risk of many forms of GBV [ 5 , 6 , 7 ]. The Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) 2015 Guidelines for Integrating GBV Interventions in Humanitarian Action defines GBV as any harmful act that is perpetrated against a person’s will and that is based on socially ascribed (i.e., gender) differences between females and males. It includes acts that inflict physical, sexual or mental harm or suffering, threats of such acts, coercion, and other deprivations of liberty. These harmful acts can occur in public and in private [ 8 ]. There continues to be limited global information on the burden of GBV in humanitarian emergencies. One systematic review found that approximately one in five refugees or displaced women in complex humanitarian settings experienced sexual violence, though this is likely an underestimation of the true prevalence given the many barriers to survivors’ disclosure of GBV [ 9 ]. A recent population-based survey on GBV across the three regions of Somalia examined typology and scope of GBV victimization with 2376 women (15 years and older). The study found that among women, 35.6% (95% CI 33.4 to 37.9) reported lifetime experiences of physical or sexual intimate partner violence (IPV) and 16.5% (95% CI 15.1 to 18.1) reported lifetime experience of physical or sexual non-partner violence (NPV) since the age of 15 years. Women at greatest risk of GBV (IPV and NPV) included membership in a minority clan, displacement from home because of conflict or natural disaster, husband/partner use of khat (e.g., leaves chewed or drunk as a stimulant), exposure to parental violence and violence during childhood. Women survivors of GBV consistently report negative impacts on physical, mental and reproductive health. Often negative health and social consequences are never addressed because women do not disclose GBV to providers or access health care or other services (e.g., protection, legal, traditional authorities) because of social norms that blame the woman for the assault (e.g., she was out alone after dark, she was not modestly dressed, she is working outside the home), norms that prioritize protecting family honor over safety of the survivor, and institutional acceptance of GBV as a normal and expected part of displacement and conflict [ 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 ].

GBV primary prevention in humanitarian settings

GBV primary prevention programs seek to facilitate change by addressing the underlying causes and drivers of GBV at a population level. Such programs have traditionally included initiatives to economically empower girls and women, enhanced legal protections for GBV, enshrining women’s rights and gender equality within national legislation and policy, and other measures to promote gender equality. Increasingly, programs are also targeting transformation of social norms that justify and sustain acceptance of GBV. Social norms are contextually and socially derived collective expectations of appropriate behaviors [ 14 ]. Families and communities have shared beliefs and unspoken rules that both proscribe and prescribe behaviors that implicitly convey that GBV against women is acceptable, even normal [ 15 , 16 ]. This includes social norms pertaining to sexual purity, family honor, and men’s authority over women and children in the family. Community leaders, institutions, and service providers, such as health care, education and law enforcement, can reinforce harmful social norms by, for example, blaming women and girls for the sexual assault they experience, or by justifying a husband’s use of physical violence as a means to discipline his wife. Both behaviors are viewed as essential to protect the family’s reputation in the larger community [ 16 ].

Diverse academic disciplines have developed different theories to explain the complexity of social norms and their influence on behavior. We use social norms theory as elaborated in social psychology [ 17 ]. This theory conceptualizes social norms as beliefs of two types: 1) an individual’s beliefs about what others typically do in a given situation (i.e., descriptive norm); and 2) their beliefs about what others expect them to do in a given situation (i.e., injunctive norm) [ 18 , 19 , 20 ]. For this study, we focus on developing a measure of injunctive norms—defined in this case as beliefs about what influential others (e.g., parents, siblings, peers, religious leaders, teachers) expect individuals to do in the case of GBV.

Even with the multiple challenges of humanitarian settings (e.g., separation of families, insecurity and limited resources), there is an opportunity to develop, implement, and evaluate innovations in GBV programming. In such settings, displacement and conflict have created situations where social rules about who can do what necessarily bend to accommodate new realities [ 16 ]. Women, for example, may be forced to assume new roles in the family and community, such as having decision-making power and control over household financial resources and assets and working outside the home to help support the family. These changing roles then lead to shifts in behavior and potentially power relations in the family and community that challenge traditional norms around male authority and women’s relegation to the domestic sphere. These circumstances can provide an opportunity to initiate GBV primary prevention efforts, such as those that engage community leaders and members in critical reflection on norms that legitimate gender inequality and what actions can be taken by the individual, family, and community to change norms that cause harm [ 15 , 16 ]. Acknowledging the potential of the humanitarian setting as an opportunity for primary prevention programming and recognizing the need to strengthen GBV response systems, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) built on their work to end female genital mutilation using social norms theory [ 19 ] to develop the Communities Care Program: Transforming Lives and Preventing Violence Program (Communities Care) [ 21 ]. The goal of Communities Care is to create safer communities for women and girls by challenging social norms that sustain GBV and catalyzing new norms that uphold women and girls’ equality, safety, and dignity [ 15 , 21 ]. The description of the Communities Care program is published elsewhere [ 15 , 16 , 21 ].

However, a significant limitation for evaluating the effectiveness of GBV prevention programs such as Communities Care is the lack of validated instruments to measure change in norms supporting GBV. Therefore, our goal was to create a brief, valid, and reliable measure to examine change over time in harmful social norms and personal beliefs that maintain and tolerate sexual violence and other forms of GBV in low resource and complex humanitarian settings.

While validated instruments exist to measure attitudes towards gender roles and some types of GBV [ 22 , 23 ], social norms are different from individual attitudes. For nearly two decades, the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), which are nationally representative surveys conducted in low and middle-income countries (LMIC), have provided information on attitudes about the acceptability of IPV or wife beating. Respondents are asked whether a man is justified in beating his wife in five different situations: a wife goes out without her husband’s permission; she neglects to keep the children well fed; she argues with her husband in public; she refuses to have sexual intercourse with her husband; and she does not prepare her husband’s meal on time. Response options for these questions are as follows: “agree,” “disagree,” “refuse to answer,” and “don’t know.” These questions are designed specifically to elicit personal beliefs (attitudes) about IPV; they have generally functioned well in that they capture various levels of endorsement of IPV both within and among settings, and respondents routinely vary their answers based on the transgression mentioned.

Investigators, however, have raised questions about whether the DHS questions reflect respondents’ own personal beliefs on the acceptability of beating or women’s perception of the social norm operative in their setting. Cognitive interviews with women in Bangladesh, for example, suggested that women’s interpretation of the attitude questions switched between personal and normative beliefs, although it is difficult to know whether this happens routinely in other settings, or whether it was a function of the especially low literacy and female mobility of rural Bangladesh [ 24 , 25 ].

Scientists have also warned that changing key features of a scenario (e.g., setting, perpetrator, infraction committed, perceived intentionality) can influence measured attitudes and perceived norms on the acceptability of GBV. For example, in Uganda, researchers randomly assigned participants to answer attitude and norm questions on wife beating using three separate wordings [ 26 ]. The attitude questions compared the traditional wording of the DHS (whether a man is justified in beating his wife for 5 different infractions) to more contextualized scenarios that depicted the wife’s transgression as either willful or beyond her control. To elicit norms related to wife beating, participants were asked about the extent to which they thought other people in their village (reference group) would think the behavior described was justified. Response options for the five questions followed a four-point Likert-type scale: “all or almost all, for example, at least 90% of people in your village,” “more than half but fewer than 90% of people in your village,” “fewer than half but more than 10% of people in your village,” and “very few or none, for example, less than 10% of people in your village.”

The findings demonstrated that when measuring both attitudes and social norms, adding contextual details about the intentionality of a wife’s transgression changed participants’ perception of the acceptability of IPV. In the vignettes, wives who intentionally violated norms about acceptable wifely behavior had a “large” effect [ 27 ] on increasing the number of items for which wife beating was viewed as acceptable. In contrast, the vignette that depicted the wife as unintentionally violating norms of behavior had a “small” effect in decreasing the number of items where IPV was considered acceptable. The study authors interpreted this difference as measurement error, arguing that question wordings without context may mis-represent attitudes and norms on violence. While context does matter, the specific details added in this study were likely critical to its findings. Qualitative studies have repeatedly shown that wife beating in LMIC is understood as “discipline” and its acceptability varies depending on the nature of the transgression (whether it is perceived as for “just cause”), who is doing the “correction,” and whether the beating stays within acceptable bounds of severity [ 24 , 25 , 28 , 29 , 30 ].

In this paper, we describe the formative research and psychometric testing of the Social Norms and Beliefs about Gender Based Violence (GBV) Scale . The Scale is designed to measure change over time in harmful social norms and personal beliefs associated with violence against women and girls among men and women community members in low resource and complex humanitarian settings. The development and validation of the scale was essential for use in measuring change in harmful social norms and beliefs among community members in districts and regions implementing the Communities Care program in two countries with ongoing humanitarian crises, Somalia and South Sudan. The development and testing of the scale was conducted in two phases: 1) formative phase of qualitative inquiry to identify social norms and personal beliefs that sustain and justify GBV perpetration against women and girls across the lifespan in low-resource and humanitarian contexts; and 2) testing phase using quantitative methods to conduct a psychometric evaluation of the new scale in targeted areas of Somalia and South Sudan.

Study settings

The formative and testing phases of the psychometric evaluation was conducted in two countries, Somalia and South Sudan. In Southern Central Somalia, we worked in four districts (Bondhere, Karaan, Wadajir, Yaqshid ) in Mogadishu and in South Sudan, we worked in two regions (Yei and Warrap). Somalia has experienced more than two decades of conflict as well as ongoing emergencies including drought, famine, and a large number of internally displaced people (IDPs). Yei is located in southwestern South Sudan and was the re-entry point for South Sudanese who fled to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Uganda during the Second Sudanese Civil War. Since many people stayed in Yei upon returning, there is conflict between those native to Yei and IDPs from other regions of South Sudan. Warrap is in the northern region of South Sudan and is a gateway between South Sudan and Sudan. Militia activity, cattle-raiding, and conflict over oil, along with the influx of people returning to South Sudan, has caused significant challenges for access to and use of limited resources. The districts and regions in each country were selected based on multiple factors. We focused efforts on districts and regions where GBV reporting systems existed and could be accessed to generate data on case reports and referrals. When engaging GBV survivors and other community members in research on sensitive issues it is essential to have partnerships with diverse service sectors (e.g., health, protection, legal, advocacy) for participants that disclose GBV and request referrals. The evaluation also required safe access to the sites and security while doing the study for both participants and local researchers, therefore this required establishing relationships and obtaining permission from national, regional, and district governmental authorities and ministries as well as traditional leaders in the communities.

Phase 1: Formative phase methods

For the formative phase, we worked with local partners to identify male and female key stakeholders (e.g., religious leaders, youth and women’s group leaders, advocates for GBV survivors, health providers, child protection staff, police officers, traditional leaders, elders, and teachers) to advance our understanding of and identify harmful and protective social norms associated with GBV within and across settings. The focus group guide was developed and translated to the local language in partnership with team members in each setting. Johns Hopkins provided in-depth training to local staff on facilitating focus groups, data collection, human subjects’ protections, working with distressed participants, and providing referrals to services as appropriate. The focus group guide focused on identification of social norms that protect women and girls from sexual violence and other forms of GBV, norms that are harmful (e.g., hide, sustain, or encourage), norms about disclosing and reporting sexual violence and other forms of GBV to authorities, and who are the people in the family or larger community that are influential in maintaining and changing social norms. For example, the team used scenarios created from aggregating GBV experiences in each setting to explore social norms about the situations and the survivor-perpetrator relationship. We varied the perpetrator and circumstances in each scenario from the perpetrator being a family member, a known person to the family but not part of the family, and an unknown person. For each scenario, focus group participants were asked about their beliefs and norms about how the family and community would respond to victims of the sexual assault or other forms of GBV, if the assault would be reported to authorities, and reasons for reporting or not reporting the assault.

Qualitative analysis

A qualitative descriptive approach was used to identify themes related to harmful and protective social norms within and across settings. The transcripts were read by three research team members to identify thematic codes. Themes with sub-themes were identified and defined by exemplars or quotes from the transcripts. The three researchers independently assigned codes and discrepancies in coding were discussed in weekly meetings. The codes and corresponding quotes were used to write items for the scale representing each of the identified themes. The themes, sub-themes, and items were then shared with the in-country teams in a joint Somalia/South Sudan meeting. The relevance of the themes and their interpretation for each context was discussed leading to a refinement of the items. Meeting participants from each country rated the importance of each item and offered suggestions on wording of the items to ensure they were capturing the relevant aspects of the different contexts and cultures.

Results of phase 1: Formative phase

A total of 42 focus groups (22 in Somalia and 20 in South Sudan) with a total of 215 participants (111 in Somalia and 104 in South Sudan) were conducted. The composition of the focus groups varied by stakeholders (e.g., religious leaders, service providers, teachers, police, youth, elders), age (under 30, 31–45, and 46+), marital status, and sex. Themes identified for social norms that are protective against GBV included parents teaching/guiding children, marriage, and respect for female members of the family. Themes identified as harmful social norms included men’s responsibility/right to correct female behavior and the social expectation that a woman will obey her husband and fulfill her gender prescribed duties to his satisfaction, protecting the family’s dignity by not reporting violence/assault to avoid stigma associated with being a victim, husband’s right to force his wife to have sex, lack of status for women, and forced marriage. Mothers, fathers, parents, community and religious leaders, and male relatives were seen as people that influenced behavior and protected women and girls from GBV. Men and women’s behavior also emerged as subthemes associated with harmful social norms, such as indecent dressing, being out in public alone, and drug/alcohol use. Stigma associated with being a GBV victim, blaming women and girls for the violence/assault, and the importance of family honor and respect were identified as norms that prevent victims and families from reporting sexual violence and other forms of GBV to authorities. Items for the new scale were written for each of the themes and sub-themes relevant to harmful social norms and after elimination of redundant items, 30 items remained and were presented to the in-country teams. After discussion about the focus group themes and the items with the in-country teams, a total of 18 items remained. The team then collaborated to develop introductory statements and response scales for each of two domains of the scale, personal beliefs and injunctive social norms. The final scale to be tested in the evaluation phase had two sets of the 18 items, one for each domain.

Methods for phase 2: Psychometric testing

At each of the three sites in the two countries detailed above, trained local research assistants (RAs) recruited and consented 200 community members (15 years and older) to complete the Social Norms and Beliefs about Gender Based Violence Scale. The sampling frame was stratified by age group (15–18, 19–24, 25–45, 46+ years) and sex with a target of 25 people per age group/sex combination. As suggested by the in-country teams, male RAs recruited and interviewed male community members and female RAs recruited and interviewed female community members. Each RA recruited participants across age groups. The RA started from a central point determined by the research coordinator each morning. The RA would contact every 3rd house/dwelling counting on both sides of the street/pathway. If nobody was home, the person was not willing to participate, or the person did not match the sampling target for sex/age, the RA went to the next house/dwelling. Once a RA identified and consented an eligible participant in the household and completed the scale, the RA started the process to identify the next eligible participant by going to the next 3rd house/dwelling on the street/pathway. Only one eligible household member completed the scale.

Field procedures

RAs received detailed training on protocols for maintaining participant confidentiality and safety as well as protocols designed to ensure safety and security for the team members. In the field, when a RA identified an adult at a house/dwelling, he/she introduced the study. If that person met the eligibility criteria and agreed to participate, the RA worked with the participant to find a private and comfortable place to provide informed consent and administer the scale. If that person did not meet eligibility, he/she was asked if there was someone living in the household that did meet the eligibility. The RA provided each potential participant with informed consent information using the script provided on the study tablet and approved by the in-country team and the Johns Hopkins Medical Institution Institutional Review Board (IRB). If the eligible participant provided verbal consent the RA continued and administered the scale with brief demographic questions, including marital status, employment, and children in the household. The responses were entered by the RA directly on the tablet. Once finished, the RA thanked the participant for their time and answered any questions prior to moving on.

The 18 items generated from the formative phase were asked in two sets to capture the two domains, personal beliefs and injunctive norms. The injunctive social norms items started with “How many of the people whose opinion matters most to you….” with the response scale of: 1 – None of them, 2 – A few of them, 3 – About half of them, 4 – Most of them, and 5 – All of them. The personal beliefs items started with “We would like to know if you think any of the following statements are wrong and should be changed in your community. We also would like to understand how ready or willing you are to take action by speaking out on the issues you think are wrong” and used the response scale: 1 – Agree with this statement, 2 – I am not sure if I agree or disagree with this statement, 3 – I disagree with the statement but am not ready to tell others, and 4 – I disagree with the statement and I am telling others that this is wrong. The scale was translated into Somali and the translation was reviewed by the Somalia team and revised before it was programmed into the study tablet. In South Sudan, the scale was administered in the Kakwa language in Yei and Dinka language in Warrap. As these are not commonly written languages in South Sudan, the team preferred using the English version of the scale programmed on the tablet and translated into the local language at time of administration. The South Sudan team training included discussions and decisions on correct translation of items in the two languages and then the team practiced administering with volunteers not participating in the study to ensure consistency in real-time translation across RAs and sites.

Psychometric analyses

For each of the two domains of the scale, we examined construct validity with factor analysis using the common factor model with oblique rotation. Factor loadings of .40 or above were considered as loading on a given factor [ 31 ]. Items that did not load on any factor were considered for revision or elimination from the scale. Reliability was estimated with Cronbach’s alpha for each factor subscale. Known groups validity was examined by testing two a priori hypotheses: H 1 : The sites (Somalia, Yei, South Sudan, and Warrup, South Sudan) differ on social norms and personal beliefs due to differences in the extent of GBV programming within the districts of Mogadishu and regions of South Sudan; and H 2 : Men and women participants will differ on social norms and personal beliefs related to GBV. The first hypothesis was tested with analysis of variance and the second with t-tests.

Results of psychometric testing

The team administered the Social Norms and Beliefs about GBV Scale to 602 community members across Mogadishu, Somalia and Yei and Warrup, South Sudan. The sampling frame was successfully implemented by the research team with 50.0% of participants across the settings being female and 50.0% male with an equal distribution across age groups except in Yei, South Sudan. The team in Yei reported having difficulty finding community members in the region over 60 years of age. The lack of older community members could be related to deaths in the Second Civil War from 1983 to 2005. Over half (58.6%) of the participants were married and had children in the home (67.4%). One third (34%) reported working outside the home, 10.1% were looking for work, 21.4% were students, 29.4% were housewives, and 4.7% were too old to work. Table  1 summarizes the characteristics of the participants by country and site.

Factor analysis

The factor analysis for the items in the injunctive norms domain of the scale was based on responses from participants that completed all items ( N  = 587, 97.5%). There were 3 of the 18 items on the injunctive social norms scales that did not load on any factor and were thus removed from the scale. The first item “expect daughters to be married before 15 years of age” likely did not correlate with the other items on the scale because early marriage is seen as a different concept than sexual violence. The second item “think that if an unmarried woman/girl is raped by a man, she should marry him rather than not being married at all” captures two different concepts—marrying the man who raped her and that being better than not being married at all. This complexity likely made the question difficult to answer. The third item “expect a woman not to report her husband for forcing her to have sexual intercourse” did not reflect a consistent social norm. Discussions with the in-country teams revealed that there was considerable debate on this item even among people who agreed on other items. Based on the eigenvalues (first 5 eigenvalues were 4.27, 1.82, 1.23, 0.94, 0.81), the remaining 15 items formed three factors (Table  2 presents the factor loadings for each item on each of the three factors) with each item loading above 0.40 on only one factor. The following titles were given to represent the three factors, later describes as subscales: “Response to Sexual Violence” has 5 items, “Protecting Family Honor” has 6 items, and “Husband’s Right to Use Violence” has 4 items. The “Response to Sexual Violence” and “Husbands’ Right to Use Violence” subscales had the highest inter-factor correlation (0.46) followed by “Response to Sexual Violence” and “Protecting Family Honor” (0.34), then “Protecting Family Honor” and “Husbands’ Right to Use Violence” (0.30). Importantly, these 3 factors were consistent with and reflected the themes identified from the qualitative analyses of the focus groups in Phase 1. A very similar factor structure was found for the personal beliefs domain ( N  = 588, 97.7%). Eigenvalues (first 5 eigenvalues were 4.46, 1.76, 1.46, 0.90, 0.88) suggested 3 factors as illustrated in Table  3 . All items loaded at 0.45 or greater on only one of the three factors. One item, “a woman/girl would be stigmatized if she were to report rape” loaded on the “Response to Sexual Violence” in the personal beliefs domain whereas the corresponding item, “women/girls fear stigma if they were to report sexual violence”, loaded on the “Protecting Family Honor” subscale for the social norms domain. The inter-factor correlations on the personal beliefs domain were also very similar to the injunctive social norms domain scale: “Response to Sexual Violence” and “Husbands’ Right to Use Violence” had the highest correlation (0.43) followed by “Response to Sexual Violence” and “Protecting Family Honor” (0.32), then “Protecting Family Honor” and “Husbands’ Right to Use Violence” (0.26).

Reliability

Cronbach alpha reliabilities, a measure of internal consistency of the scale, were in an acceptable range for all factors/subscales within each domain. Cronbach alphas ranged from 0.69 to 0.75 for the injunctive norms domain and 0.71 to 0.77 for the personal beliefs domain (the last row of Tables  2 and 3 present the Cronbach alphas for each scale).

Descriptive statistics

Scores for each of the factors (subscales) were computed by taking the average of the items within the subscales. The injunctive social norms domain subscales scores range from 1 to 5 with higher scores reflecting more negative responses to sexual violence and GBV, stronger support for social norms that prioritize protecting family honor by not reporting sexual violence or other forms of GBV, and stronger support for norms endorsing a husband’s right to use violence. Personal beliefs subscales can range from 1 to 4 with higher scores reflecting a more positive response to survivors of sexual violence, that protecting family honor and not reporting sexual violence is wrong, and that a husband should not have the right to use violence against his wife. The means, standard deviations, minimum, and maximum observed score for each of the subscales in each domain are presented in Table  4 . In general, the mean for the injunctive social norms subscales reflect participants’ views that “few to about half” of the people who are important/influential to them endorse harmful social norms about GBV with “Protecting Family Honor” being the strongest norm (means range from 2.00 to 2.77). The mean for the personal beliefs subscales reflects that participant beliefs range between “not being sure if they disagree” with the norms to “disagreeing but not being ready to speak out against them.” Specifically, participants’ beliefs ranged between not being sure if they disagree to disagreeing but not ready to speak out against protecting family honor (mean = 2.61) and husband’s right to use violence (mean = 2.90). Participants indicated that they were between disagreeing but not being ready to tell others to telling others that negative responses to sexual violence survivors are wrong (mean = 3.29). Cross domain correlations were − .318 (p < .001) for “Response to Sexual Violence”, −.512 (p < .001) for “Protecting Family Honor”, and − .427 (p < .001) for “Husband’s Right to Use Violence.”

Known groups validity

Analysis of variance with Bonferroni post-hoc tests revealed that the three sites differed significantly on all subscales for the injunctive social norms domain (i.e., “Response to Sexual Violence,” p < .001; “Protecting Family Honor,” p = .039; “Husband’s Right to Use Violence,” p < .001). Women and men participants in Yei, South Sudan, where there are few GBV programs and services, reported social norms that are significantly more accepting of sexual violence and other forms of GBV than Warrap, South Sudan and Mogadishu, Somalia. In terms of personal beliefs, women and men in Yei were also significantly less likely to speak out against harmful responses to sexual violence and other GBV (p < .001). In Mogadishu, Somalia, men and women were significantly less likely to speak out against “Protecting Family Honor” (p < .001) and “Husband’s Right to Use Violence” (p < .001) than the sites in South Sudan. Table  5 summarizes the t-test results examining differences in the subscales for both domains between men and women. Women participants had significantly higher scores on all of the subscales for the injunctive social norms, indicating women were more likely to endorse harmful norms related to “Response to Sexual Violence”, “Protecting Family Honor”, and “Husband’s Right to Use Violence” than men. Men and women did not differ on personal beliefs about “Response to Sexual Violence”, however, men reported that they are more ready to speak out against harmful social norms of “Protecting Family Honor” and “Husband’s Right to Use Violence” than women.

The psychometric properties of the Social Norms and Beliefs about GBV Scale (final scale is presented in Additional file  1 ) are strong. Each of the three subscales, “Response to Sexual Violence,” “Protecting Family Honor,” and “Husband’s Right to Use Violence” within the two domains of the scale illustrate good factor structure, acceptable internal consistency, reliability, and are supported by the significance of the hypothesized group differences. These three factors represent social norms that are known from previous research to maintain the high rates of GBV in many global settings [ 28 ]. The “Response to Sexual Violence” subscale captures the individual, family, and community response of blaming the victim for GBV. Most often a woman or girl is blamed for the sexual assault or other form of GBV and the family and larger community can respond with rejection and judgement of her behavior, which can result in the family not supporting or abandoning the victim. It reflects the acceptance of sexual violence and other forms of GBV as expected or even normal and that women and girls need to limit their movement and actions to prevent men from assaulting them, as men are not able to control their behavior if they are “tempted” by women. High scores on the injunctive norms domain of this subscale represent that the respondents believe that their influential others expect people to endorse victim blaming responses to sexual violence and other forms of GBV. The “Protecting Family Honor” subscale identifies the stigma associated with being a member of a family/clan where a women/girl experiences GBV and the importance placed on addressing the violence within the family/clan rather than reporting it to authorities. The priority is to protect the family and victim’s reputations rather than the safety and well-being of the woman or girl. High scores on the injunctive domain of this subscale represent that the respondent believes their influential other expects people to prioritize protecting family honor over safety and well-being of victims. The “Husband’s Right to Use Violence” subscale reflects social norms that support a husband’s use of violence to discipline his wife and to have sex with her even when she does not want to. It also reflects a norm that associates a man’s use of violence against his wife with illustrating his love for her. High scores on the injunctive norms domain for this subscale indicates that the respondents believe their influential others expect people to endorse a husband’s right to use violence against his wife. High scores on the personal beliefs domains for each of the subscales reflect a greater willingness to speak out against social norms that endorse GBV.

Validity of the injunctive norms subscales was supported by significant relationships with other variables (i.e., site and sex) as hypothesized during the development of the scale. The three sites were significantly different on the injunctive norms domain of the scale. Although all three sites experienced a high degree of conflict, the amount of humanitarian services to support GBV survivors and programming to raise awareness and change harmful social norms towards GBV varied. Mogadishu districts participating in the study had relatively active programming, with Warrap and Yei reporting few international and local NGOs with capacity to provide diverse GBV services and programs. Yei, South Sudan was found to have significantly stronger norms that endorse negative “Response to Sexual Violence” and other forms of GBV than other sites. The beliefs of participants from Yei also indicated less support for changing harmful social norms about GBV than other sites in the study. Participants in the four districts of Mogadishu scored the lowest on the personal beliefs subscales of “Husband’s Right to Use Violence” and “Protecting Family Honor.” This finding indicates that participants were less willing to speak out against social norms that support husbands’ rights to use violence against their wives or norms that support not reporting sexual violence to protect family honor than the South Sudan sites. Important to interpreting the findings are the differences in context, culture, and religion across the sites which inform social norms and personal beliefs.

Generalizability is one of the indicators of trustworthiness of the Social Norms and Beliefs about GBV scale  – the ability to interpret and apply the scale in a broader context to make it relevant and meaningful to GBV prevention programs being implemented and evaluated in diverse low-resource and humanitarian settings. Importantly, the 36-item two domain scaled applied with community members by local teams in diverse districts and regions within Somalia and South Sudan resulted in a valid and reliable 30-item scale to measure personal beliefs and injunctive social norms. The psychometric phase included randomly selected women and men across multiple age groups (15 years and older), living in both urban and rural communities, and included community members living in settlements and camps for displaced persons. Thus, the scale has the potential to be used in not only humanitarian settings, but also GBV prevention programs in other low-resource and fragile settings.

Although this psychometric evaluation has several strengths, including a mixed methods design to develop the scale and a large sample size to test the scale across diverse sites, it has limitations. The study does not include a separate validation sample to conduct a confirmatory factor analysis. Further, we did not test the relationship between the Social Norms and Beliefs about GBV Scale and community members’ reports on experience, perpetration, or witnessing of GBV in the participating communities. The research team decided in collaboration with local partners not to ask participants in the evaluation phase about personal experiences with GBV for either the scale development or testing. The local colleagues felt community members would be more comfortable and likely to participate in the scale development and testing if they were not asked about their own experiences and thus also increasing generalizability.

The study presents a mixed methods approach to developing a brief scale with strong psychometric properties to measure change in harmful social norms associated with GBV. The Social Norms and Beliefs About GBV Scale is a 30-item scale with three subscales, “Response to Sexual Violence,” “Protecting Family Honor,” and “Husband’s Right to Use Violence” in each of the two domains, personal beliefs and injunctive social norms. The scale to our knowledge is one of the first to demonstrate good factor structure, acceptable internal consistency, and reliability, and be supported by the significance of the hypothesized group differences by setting and sex. We encourage and recommend that researchers apply the Social Norms and Beliefs about GBV Scale in different humanitarian and global LMIC settings and collect parallel data on a range of GBV outcomes. This will allow us to further validate the scale by triangulating its findings with GBV experiences and perpetration and assess its generalizability across diverse settings.

Abbreviations

Demographic and Health Surveys

Democratic Republic of Congo

• Gender-based violence

Inter-Agency Standing Committee

Internally displaced persons

Intimate partner violence

Institutional Review Board

Low and middle-income countries

Non-partner violence

Research assistant

United Nations Children’s Fund

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Acknowledgements

We acknowledge our committed and talented implementing partners in South Sudan, two national NGOs, Voice for Change in Central Equatoria State and The Organization for Children Harmony in Warrup State. In Somalia, the Italian NGO, Comitato Internazionale per LoSviluppo dei Popoli (CISP) Mogadishu and other regions of the country.

United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) provided the funding for the Communities Care program.

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The Communities Care program toolkit is available through United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). Requests for research data and materials can be obtained by contacting UNICEF.

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Nancy Perrin, Amber Clough, Rachael Turner, Lori Heise & Nancy Glass

UNICEF, New York, NY, USA

Mendy Marsh

Comitato Internazionale per lo Sviluppo dei Popoli (CISP) Somalia, Nairobi, Kenya

Amelie Desgroppes, Ali Abdi & Francesco Kaburu

Voice For Change, Yei, South Sudan

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UNICEF, Geneva, Switzerland

Masumi Yamashina

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Contributions

NP, NG, MM, AC, SRH, SH, FK, AD, MY designed the study. MM, SRH, NP, RT, LH, NG and AC identified the theoretical framework for the formative and psychometric phases of the study. NG, NP, and LH conducted the psychometric analysis. MY, CYP, AA, AC, NP and NG implemented and interpretation the study findings in South Sudan and SH, BR, AD, AA, FK, AC, NG and NP implemented and interpretation of the study findings in Somalia. NP, NG, RT, AC and LH finalized the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Nancy Glass .

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The appropriate federal and state government ministry in each of Somalia and South Sudan and the Johns Hopkins Medical Institution Institutional Review Board (IRB) approved the study protocol and oral consent. The government ministry provided a letter of approval to Johns Hopkins and the local implementing partners to use as they reached out to authorities and key stakeholders to implement the research in each participating community.

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Perrin, N., Marsh, M., Clough, A. et al. Social norms and beliefs about gender based violence scale: a measure for use with gender based violence prevention programs in low-resource and humanitarian settings. Confl Health 13 , 6 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13031-019-0189-x

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Received : 07 September 2018

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Published : 08 March 2019

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s13031-019-0189-x

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• Global health
• Humanitarian
• Social norms

“That never happens here”: Sexual and gender-based violence against men, boys, LGBTIQ+ people

"Many humanitarian agencies not only overlook the needs of females, but also completely overlook men, boys and sexual minority groups as sexual and gender-based violence survivors in their needs assessment, discussions with communities, during data collection and follow-up community-based and humanitarian response programming.(ii)"

Sexual and gender-based violence  (SGBV) against women and girls in armed conflict, detention or humanitarian crises is horrific, widespread and well documented. They are not alone.

There is now increasing recognition of the diversity of victims/survivors of sexual and gender-based violence in conflict settings and other humanitarian emergencies.

A new report – "That never happens here": Sexual and gender-based violence against men, boys and/including LGBTIQ+ people in humanitarian settings "  – highlights the crushing impact and prevalence of SGBV against other overlooked groups.

The report calls for better understanding within the humanitarian community and improved responses to the needs of men, boys and/including LGBTIQ+ victims/survivors.

It also issues a series of recommendations – and a call to action – for states, humanitarian agencies and the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement.

"The consequences of sexual and gender-based violence for any person, regardless of gender, age, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, and other diversity factors, are extensive and devastating.

They often include physical, psychological and socioeconomic dimensions, causing both immediate and long-term harm."

The report draws attention to many undisclosed experiences and unmet needs. They include the following:

• The impact and prevalence of SGBV against men and boys in conflict-affected settings, within the context of migration and in detention, has likely been severely underestimated.
• Due to social and cultural norms linked to masculinity, there are persistent gender stigmas associated with SGBV for male victims/survivors.
• Diversity factors such as sexual orientation, gender identity and expression may influence to what extent a person is at risk. For example, transgender women and girls – who were assigned male at birth but do not identify as men or boys – may be specifically targeted by SGBV as a measure to "correct" their gender identity.
• A gay man in a context where a non-heterosexual sexual orientation is grounds for detention may face an increased risk of SGBV, including while detained.
• Boys in humanitarian settings are at risk of a wide range of SGBV. They may be exposed to sexual violence by weapons bearers, exploited sexually or abused at the hands of humanitarian workers or peacekeepers, or trafficked for the purposes of sexual exploitation.

While sexual violence against men, boys and/including LGBTIQ+ people is prohibited under international humanitarian law (IHL), domestic law is less uniform.

Hence the report's appeal for states to take concerted action towards building inclusive and non-discriminatory domestic legislation prohibiting SGBV and ensuring all victims/survivors have access to justice.

Other recommendations call on states, the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement and other humanitarian actors to:

• Establish and sustain programmes and services which include men, boys and/including LGBTIQ+ victims/survivors
• Address harmful service-provider attitudes through training and awareness initiatives.

"As with women and girls, men, boys and LGBTIQ+ survivors require a multi-sectoral and survivor-centred response, with access to medical, psychosocial and counselling services which respond to trauma, including mental health, sexual and reproductive health services," says May Maloney, the head of ICRC's addressing sexual violence team.

"Safety and security, adequate shelter, livelihood support and legal responses are also essential to meeting their needs."

The report stresses that increased attention to the unmet needs of men, boys and/including LGBTIQ+ victims/survivors must not result in a de-prioritization of resources for women and girls , for whom comprehensive services remain largely insufficient.

(i) This report uses "men, boys and/including LGBTIQ+ persons" throughout, in order to draw attention to specific groups who may be at risk of SGBV (in the context of armed conflict, other situations of violence, detention, and before, during, and after other humanitarian crises, including natural disasters), beyond women and girls, who remain disproportionately targeted.

(ii) IFRC, 'The Responsibility to Prevent and Respond to Sexual and Gender-Based Violence in Disasters and Crises', p. 11

• Addressing sexual violence
• IHL and human rights
• Violence against women