Transforming the attitudes of young men about gender roles and the acceptability of violence against women, Bihar

Abstract

Although the importance of working with young men to transform traditional gender norms has been widely acknowledged, programmes for young men remain sparse in highly gender stratified settings such as India, and those that have been implemented have not reached those in rural areas and those out-of-school. Drawing on data from a cluster randomised controlled trial with panel surveys, of a gender-transformative life skills education and sports-coaching programme conducted among young men aged 13–21 who were members of youth clubs, this paper examines the extent to which it transformed the gender role attitudes of young men and instilled in them attitudes rejecting violence against women and girls. The intervention succeeded in changing gender role attitudes and notions of masculinity, attitudes about men’s controlling behaviours over women/girls, attitudes about men’s perpetration of violence on a woman/girl and perceptions about peer reactions to young men acting in gender-equitable ways. Effects were particularly significant among young men who attended regularly, underscoring the importance of regular attendance in such programmes.

Keywords:

• violence against women and girls
• young men
• gender-transformative programmes
• India

Disclosure

We declare that we have no conflict of interest.

Notes

1 Study participants included 13–14-year-old boys as well; for convenience, we refer to them as ‘young men’ in this paper.

2 We conducted and evaluated four interventions, three focused on women and one (this one) on young men

3 These were young men only clubs.

4 The remaining 60 clubs were excluded because the club was non-functional, members were aged above 21 years, there were too few members to form a cluster, the club contained only female members, the club was located in an urban area, or the village in which the club was located shared a boundary with another village containing an eligible club.

5 Although monitoring data on participation were available, we observed considerable variation in self-reports and monitoring data, with the former offering a more conservative measure of attendance

6 The household economic status was measured using an index composed of household asset data based on the ownership of selected durable goods, including means of transportation and access to a number of amenities (see Jejeebhoy et al. 2017 for more details).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by UK Aid under Grant No. 5580 – Violence Against Women, Bihar Research and Evaluation Partner – to the Population Council, New York.