intersections of violence against women and children
By Lauren October, 14 April 2022
On 30-31 March 2022 the Children’s Institute (CI) and Sonke Gender Justice co-hosted a two-day capacity building workshop at the Cape Milner Hotel in Cape Town, South Africa. This workshop brought together several organisations from the women and children’s sectors. It aimed to explore gender-transformative programming and how this can be considered within the various organisations.
Why is there a need for gender-transformative approaches to violence prevention?
Gender inequality and violence are mutually reinforcing. Unequal gender norms contribute to violence at individual and societal levels. Furthermore, structural gender inequalities (including social, legal, and economic inequalities) increase vulnerability to violence. These gender inequalities are shared drivers of both violence against women and violence against children.
The image below illustrates the gender integration continuum, and participants were made to think about where the violence prevention programmes within their own organisations fit into this continuum.
The Gender Integration Continuum, adapted from Pulerwitz Population Council's Gender Equity Continuum and USAID IGWG Gender Equity
Using a gender ‘blind’ approach poses barriers to understanding, patterns, perpetrators, and contexts of violence. Whereas gender-transformative programming aspires to redress gender inequalities, remove structural barriers (such as unequal roles and rights), and empower disadvantaged populations.
What was the purpose of the workshop?
The workshop aimed to deepen practitioner understanding of how violence against women and violence against children intersects, and how social and gender norms impact both forms of violence. Participants were encouraged to consider how using gender-transformative approaches in the development and implementation of their violence prevention programmes can help to reduce both forms of violence.
Both the women and children’s sectors were working in siloes. Despite the evidence that there are shared social norms and common drivers of both violence against women and violence against children, there was very little evidence of the sectors working together. Professor Shanaaz Mathews, Director of the Children’s Institute, reported that the purpose of the workshop was to do just that:
“Can we bring the two sectors into one room to start that discussion? The workshop was an opportunity to start thinking about this. We also need to be focusing on joint programming, knowing that not all programmes would have to have a joint objective, but that an intersectional lens in one's work certainly will improve outcomes for both women and children.”
The workshop was delivered in partnership with Sonke Gender Justice to draw on their experience of gender-transformative programming and assessing organisational readiness. This also ensured that the co-hosts had extensive experience in working with both sectors, as well as a combined experience of both research and practice.
What was the impact of the workshop?
Participants reflected that the workshop improved their understanding of the intersections of violence against women and violence against children; that it helped them reflect on how to better incorporate research and practice in their own organisations; and that they are already putting plans in place to challenge the gender and social norms amongst their own staff and organisations.
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Furthermore, participants reported having their thinking challenged around how they work with and recruit men into their programmes; how to make their own work more gender-transformative; and how the spontaneous and often personal reflections of other participants helped to broaden their own thinking.
Professor Mathews spoke about her impressions:
“I think the workshop exceeded my expectations. Everyone who attended was more than 100% invested. It left them with light bulb moments about how they think about gender transformation, not just in their programming but in their own organisations. And I think that was more than what I would have hoped for.”
The Children’s Institute views these workshops as the beginning of a community of practice, where we start thinking about how to get together more frequently in different platforms to encourage organisations to engage in gender-transformative programming. The CI hopes to continue having more workshops and to further these discussions within the community of practice.
To find out more about the reflections of participants, watch an informative video here.