Title: Listening to stakeholders in the prevention of gender-based violence among young people
in Spain: a qualitative study from the PositivMasc project
Version: 0 Date: 29 Mar 2023
Reviewer's report:
According to the authors, this article aims to deepen the current knowledge of the phenomenon
of gender-based violence among young people in Spain by drawing on interviews with
professionals working in the field of GBV prevention. The study is part of the PositivMasc
research project, an EU-funded project that is being conducted in Sweden, Ireland, Israel, and
Spain.
Although the study mentions the socio-ecological perspective, there is scant information
provided in the results section related to this topic.
While I do think that this study is highly relevant, its current approach and scope do not fully
align with its stated objective. After reading the article several times, I find it unclear what the
study's actual contribution is. The qualitative data collected is rich but is discussed in light of
too many aspects, and the research question that the study engages with needs to be re-thought
and re-defined by the authors.
The study states that it aims to identify barriers and preventive challenges to addressing gender-
based violence among young people from the standpoint of stakeholders (lines 118-120). In light
of this objective, the reader expects the study to present and discuss the ways in which these
stakeholders are implementing programs or policies to prevent GBV, including which programs
they are implementing, which types of actors are involved, and what the results are. However,
the results section discusses what stakeholders think are the main prevalent discourses related
to barriers to GBV awareness and the strategies for constructing a GBV prevention discourse.
At this point, my main question while reading was: why, instead of asking young people
themselves about their perceptions of the main barriers, does the study rely on the perspectives
of stakeholders? If the study focuses on the views of stakeholders, one would expect a deeper
exploration of why the programs they are implementing are not effective in reversing GBV or
potential ways to improve them. Moreover, there may be differences in the views of stakeholders
from policy sectors versus those from civil society.
Some of the topics that emerge from the voices of stakeholders include the lack of understanding
of the mechanism of action of different forms of violence, such as sexual harassment; the
persistence of the idea of GBV as something that only happens with physical abuse; boys'
inaction in cases of GBV; barriers to speaking up and remaining silent in cases of GBV; and
acceptance of control practices in relationships. However, it is still not clear in what ways the
programs that these stakeholders are implementing are actually addressing these aspects. This
is something that needs to be addressed for the study to be coherent.
An alternative approach for this study would be to do a critical analysis of the perceptions of
youth regarding GBV, based on the perspectives of professionals and stakeholders working in
the field of GBV. Since this has already been widely explored in scientific literature, authors
need to find novelty in this discussion. A potential question derived from this approach is,
"To what extent are stakeholders and professionals working in the field of GBV designing and
implementing prevention programs based on sound evidence-based understanding of the societal
processes that guide GBV in youth?"
The potential contribution of this paper lies in exploring the understanding of stakeholders about
aspects in which GBV prevention measures are not effective and why. This could inform the
realization that most of the programs that are being implemented are not effective as expected,
not due to the lack of resources, but because they do not address key issues such as how to
break the silence, how to teach bystanders to intervene, and how to avoid blaming all boys as
perpetrators when many of them might also be victims.
Having said that, I suggest that the whole paper is re-think with a clear orientation to a solid
contribution.
Once this is done, there are aspects that need to be carefully addressed:
a) Results section:
Statements such as the following:
Line 221-223: “boys are ‘lagging behind in the process of recognizing harmful gender norms”.
My question being… All boys? What about those who might be also victims of perpetrators?
Line 232-236: “there is a certain degree of comfort and advantage linked to remaining silent on
GBV and avoiding intervening in such matters.” What about potential retaliations of those who
are willing to intervene, but they know that if they do it, they can also be victims?
Line 399-401: “as suggested in the following excerpts, in the case of engaging boys and men,
it is key and more effective to avoid the emergence of blaming attitudes as this might stimulate
more sexist reactions.”
Line 242-244: Interview: “. So, of course, you do not rape, but the culture of rape is there, we
all participate in it.”
In my understanding, authors do not make a clear critical reflection (sometimes it’s even
contradictory) about the above-mentioned type of statements. I expected that this would be done
in the Discussion, but it is not done.  Are we assuming that all boys and men are potential
aggressors? (explained my some stakeholders) Or authors express that programmes need to be
careful at the time of not portraying a blaming culture among all men? (also expressed by some
stakeholders)
In the second section of the results, authors talk about bystander interventions measures.
However, again, there is not a deep reflection about how this can be implemented, or actually,
in which very ways stakeholders are adding this dimension in their measures.
b) Discussion section:
There are several ideas that are brought in the Discussion section that left me puzzled, especially
because there were scantly connected with the results of the qualitative study discussed and
exposed in the previous section:
1. Line 466-467: In the same line as scientific literature, our results show that young people tend
to have a more restrictive understanding of the idea of violence, initially restricted to physical
acts and abuse – In my understanding this should be rephrased, this study does not show what
young people think, it shows what professionals and stakeholders actually believe that young
people think.
2. Line 507-510: In this regard, the programmes that show the best results are those that address
the relationship between violence and hegemonic masculinities as critical factors intertwined
in the process of achieving greater levels of gender equality. This is a great point. However,
this key central aspect of hegemonic masculinities is not mentioned at all in the results section.
What’s the point of bringing it in the discussion?
3. Line 513-517: This requires a deeper understanding of the impact of masculinities on different
forms of violence such as those against LGBTQ identities, as well as addressing their intersection
with other social identities such as class and ethnicity. Specifically, in the context of this study,
there is an important knowledge gap to address GBV in the Roma population based on this
perspective”. The Roma population is brought here, why? Shall we say the same for Muslim
population? Leaving this as it is has the risk of linking GBV with the Roma communities.
Finally, a positive note is that the article expresses that “the professionals stressed the idea that
we are witnessing a generation of young people that generally shows discourse of conscience
regarding the GBV prevention, but this discursive awareness is not guaranteeing whether they,
both men and women, understand the mechanisms of action of the different forms of violence,
such as sexual harassment.” This is good news, and it might inform a different (additional study)
derived from this research project deepening in how actually, against what we might think, there
is GBV prevalence, but at the same time, there are youth that have clear ideas about what is OK
and what is not OK in terms of GBV.