What Works To Prevent Violence Against Women And Girls? : A rigorous global evidence review of interventions to prevent violence against women and girls
Creators: name: Kerr-Wilson, Alice
name: Gibbs, Andrew
name: Fraser, Erika McAslan
name: Ramsoomar, Leane
name: Khuwaja, Hussain M A
name: Jewkes, Rachel
Publisher: name: figshare
Year: 2022
Subjects: subject: 111799 Public Health and Health Services not elsewhere classified
subject: FOS: Health sciences

description: Violence against women and girls (VAWG) is preventable. To advance the field of VAWG prevention, the UK Department for International Development (DFID) has invested in the What Works to Prevent Violence against Women and Girls programme (What Works), which evaluated 16 VAWG-prevention interventions in 14 sub?Saharan African, Asian and Middle Eastern contexts, over six years (2014–2019). At the start of the programme, What Works reviewed the global evidence on VAWG prevention published between 2000 and 2013 (Fulu, Kerr-Wilson and Lang, 2014). The rigorous, in-depth review of the state of the field presented in this report is an update of the 2014 review and has been undertaken at the end of What Works to summarise what is now known five years on about what works to prevent violence, and to capture the contribution that What Works has made to this wider evidence base. The growth in knowledge and evidence on VAWG prevention has inspired the RESPECT framework (WHO, 2019), which captures the violence prevention strategies known to be effective. In addition to the evidence?informed programming discussed in this review, RESPECT emphasises the importance of strengthening enabling conditions for prevention, including laws and policies supporting gender equality and women’s rights, an effective and accountable justice system, comprehensive services for survivors, and resourcing women’s rights organisations and movements. Methodology This review presents global evidence on what works to prevent women’s experience and men’s perpetration of physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence (IPV) and non-partner sexual violence. Child and youth peer violence is, to a limited extent, also considered, encompassing physical and verbal abuse. Reflecting on the current availability of evidence around interventions, the review does not include violence perpetrated within same-sex partnerships. While many of the evaluations measure additional secondary outcomes, the review’s determination of intervention effectiveness is based exclusively on reduction of physical and/or sexual violence, or peer violence. As a result, this review may categorise interventions differently from other reviews. The review has followed the core principles of a full systematic review to assess the current evidence base around strategies to prevent VAWG. To be included, studies had to: • Be published in the peer-reviewed literature or as working papers between 1 January, 2000 and December 31, 2018, although some exceptions are noted below. • Assess whether the intervention prevented physical IPV, sexual IPV, or non-partner sexual violence experienced by women or perpetrated by men globally, or child and youth peer violence in low- and middle-income countries only. • Be a randomised controlled trial (RCT) or a quasi?experimental study with a comparison group and/or be a study conducted under What Works. In addition to this criteria for identification of studies, we included 11 randomised controlled trials (RCTs) conducted as part of What Works, and the Maisha trial (Kapiga et al., 2019), which all fell outside the review timeframe (to end 2018).1 Systematic reviews (including reviews of reviews) were also drawn upon (particularly, Arango et al., 2014; Ellsberg et al., 2015; Ellsberg et al., 2018). The overall evaluation of which interventions are effective comes from the studies we identified in the review process, plus these additional studies. No limits were imposed based on the geographical scope of the review or the age range of study participants. A search was conducted of PubMed, Google Scholar and Google, as well as searches of websites of bilateral and multilateral donors. The What Works International Advisory Board and expert reviewers from the VAWG-prevention field were also consulted.2 In the report we also describe (but do not include in our assessment of the evidence base) five What Works studies and three additional pre-post-test studies (Mennicke et al., 2018; Reza-Paul et al., 2012; Beattie et al., 2015) that did not have a comparison group.3 Interventions were allocated to a category based on their approach to the prevention of VAWG. Some of the intervention designs spanned more than one category; these have been cross-referenced appropriately (see Annex D for details). Overall conclusions have been drawn on the evidence available for each of the categories of interventions, based on the RCTs and quasi-experimental trials. Within each category there were often diverse intervention and evaluation designs, and implementation varied. Recognising this, the review addresses the question: Is there evidence from well-designed and well-executed evaluations that well-designed, well-implemented interventions4 of this category are effective in reducing VAWG?