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The role of participation and community mobilisation in preventing violence against women and girls: a programme review and critique

Minckas, N; Shannon, G; Mannell, J; (2020) The role of participation and community mobilisation in preventing violence against women and girls: a programme review and critique. Global Health Action , 13 (1) , Article 1775061. 10.1080/16549716.2020.1775061. Green open access

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Abstract

BACKGROUND: Violence against women and girls (VAWG) is a public health problem and one of the most prevalent human rights violations in the world. Recently practitioners and researchers have taken an interest in community participation as a strategy for preventing VAWG. Despite the recent enthusiasm however, there has been little articulation of how participation in VAWG prevention programmes mobilises communities to challenge social norms and prevent VAWG. OBJECTIVES: In an attempt to help address this gap, this article seeks to answer two research questions: (1) How does participation theoretically mobilise communities to prevent VAWG, and (2) how do nominally participatory programmes make use of these theoretical concepts in their (explicit or implicit) theories of change? METHODS: To answer the first question, we draw on two well-recognised theories of participation and community mobilisation - Rifkin and Pridmore's continuum of participation and Freire's steps towards achieving critical consciousness - to clarify theoretical assumptions about how participation can mobilise community to reduce VAWG. To answer our second research question, we present the results from a review of primary prevention programmes that seek to reduce VAWG through community participation. Our analysis examines the explicit and implicit theories of change for these prevention programmes against the assumptions outlined from the theoretical literature. RESULTS: Our results help to better articulate realistic goals for community mobilisation and outline a theoretical basis for how participation as part of programming can effectively mobilise communities to reduce violence. CONCLUSION: We argue that, in order to be both effective and sustainable, the role of external agents in introducing programmes needs to be secondary to the ownership and empowerment of communities in designing and delivering their own strategies for VAWG prevention.

Type: Article
Title: The role of participation and community mobilisation in preventing violence against women and girls: a programme review and critique
Location: United States
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1080/16549716.2020.1775061
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.1080/16549716.2020.1775061
Language: English
Additional information: Copyright © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Keywords: Community psychology, community action, gender, participatory tools, violence
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > Institute for Global Health
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10103369
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