The most well known examples of using ‘edutainment’ for gender-based violence prevention are Sexto Sentido, carried out by Puntos de Encuentro in Nicaragua, and Soul City, carried out by the Institute for Health and Development Community in South Africa and eight other Sub-Saharan countries in Africa. Both have used prime time television soap operas, radio programs, school-based work, and other media to address violence against women, gender, sexuality and rights. Some research suggests that Sexto Sentido has had a positive impact (Abaunza, 2002; UNFPA, 2002; Berliner, 2002), but little quantitative evidence of effectiveness has been published or disseminated. However, an ambitious qualitative and quantitative evaluation is underway involving a three-year panel/cohort study among more than 4500 young respondents and at least three rounds of data collection--in 2003, 2004, and 2005 (Guedes, 2004). This study will measure the program’s success in changing attitudes and behavior around gender, stigma, HIV/AIDS and gender-based violence. Soul City has already conducted extensive population-based impact studies of Series 4, which addressed gender-based violence for the first time in 1999 (Scheepers, 2001; Scheepers and Cristophides, 2001; Soul City, 2001; UNFPA, 2002; Singhal et al., 2004). That research found that the series reached 82% of the population in South Africa and had a positive impact on both awareness and knowledge about violence against women. The impact on attitudes appeared to be mixed. Certain attitudes about violence improved slightly (such as whether violence is a private affair), but some stayed the same or deteriorated. For example, there were no changes in the levels of those who believed that men have the right to beat their wives, or in the belief that such beatings are socially acceptable. The evaluation focused on intermediate outcomes such as knowledge, attitudes, and intentions, but not on how these related to outcomes such as levels of actual violence. The program measured a greater impact on HIV/AIDS attitudes and behaviors compared to violence, but researchers pointed out that Soul City had addressed HIV/AIDS in multiple series over several years, while Series 4 was the first series to address violence against women.

# **EDUCATION**

## **Background**

Education and violence are linked in multiple and complex ways. Researchers have found an inverted U- shaped relationship between levels of education and levels of intimate partner violence in the United States and South Africa (Jewkes, 2002c), where women with the most and least education appeared to be less vulnerable to violence compared to women with some education. Jewkes argues that small amounts of education may encourage women to challenge existing gender roles and provoke conflict in the household, without conferring the type of protection seen from higher educational attainment. Conversely, violence itself-particularly sexual harassment and abuse-appears to contribute to lower levels of education among girls relative to boys in many settings. For example, parents’ fears for their daughters’ physical and sexual safety appears to be a major reason for withholding girls from school in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa (Mensch and Lloyd, 1998; Sathar and Lloyd, 1993; UNICEF, 2004).

In theory, educational reform could prevent gender-based violence by increasing school safety, by empowering women through education, and by promoting better attitudes and practices among students with regard to women’s human rights. Unfortunately, a growing body of evidence suggests that sexual harassment is widespread in educational settings in many parts of the world (Mirsky, 2003; Leach et al., 2003; Wellesley Centers for Research on Women and DTS. 2003). Moreover, the response of schools to sexual violence and harassment is often notoriously poor. In a scathing report on sexual violence in South African and Zambian schools, Human Rights Watch (2001) documented a persistent pattern: “ _. . whereby schools discounted [girls’] . . . reports of sexual violence and harassment and failed to respond with any degree of seriousness. Girls were discouraged from reporting abuse to school officials for a variety of reasons, not least of which was the hostile and indifferent responses they received from their school communities.”_ 31