Preventing violence against women and girls

Efforts to prevent and reduce men's violence against women increasingly include an emphasis on engaging men and boys in primary prevention. Boys and men have been addressed as participants in education programs in schools and universities, as community leaders, as activists, and as policy makers. There is a substantial body of evidence that violence prevention interventions focused on men and boys, if done well, can change the attitudes and behaviours associated with perpetration. Efforts to address men's violence against other men also have begun to apply gender-conscious frameworks which recognise the pivotal influence on violence of dynamics of masculinity. Violence prevention work among men and boys show growing sophistication and diversity in its strategies and increased attention to the need to shift structural and institutional relations. At the same time, this work can be conceptually simplistic or politically delicate, and there is much that is unknown about effective practice.