Cargando…

You can’t burn the house down because of one bedbug: a qualitative study of changing gender norms in the prevention of violence against women and girls in an urban informal settlement in India

Background: The contribution of structural inequalities and societal legitimisation to violence against women, which 30% of women in India survive each year, is widely accepted. There is a consensus that interventions should aim to change gender norms, particularly through community mobilisation. Ho...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Daruwalla, Nayreen, Hate, Ketaki, Pinto, Preethi, Ambavkar, Gauri, Kakad, Bhaskar, Osrin, David
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: F1000 Research Limited 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5680532/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29164180
http://dx.doi.org/10.12688/wellcomeopenres.11805.2
_version_ 1783277780571521024
author Daruwalla, Nayreen
Hate, Ketaki
Pinto, Preethi
Ambavkar, Gauri
Kakad, Bhaskar
Osrin, David
author_facet Daruwalla, Nayreen
Hate, Ketaki
Pinto, Preethi
Ambavkar, Gauri
Kakad, Bhaskar
Osrin, David
author_sort Daruwalla, Nayreen
collection PubMed
description Background: The contribution of structural inequalities and societal legitimisation to violence against women, which 30% of women in India survive each year, is widely accepted. There is a consensus that interventions should aim to change gender norms, particularly through community mobilisation. How this should be done is less clear. Methods: We did a qualitative study in a large informal settlement in Mumbai, an environment that characterises 41% of households. After reviewing the anonymised records of consultations with 1653 survivors of violence, we conducted 5 focus group discussions and 13 individual interviews with 71 women and men representing a range of age groups and communities. We based the interviews on fictitious biographical vignettes to elicit responses and develop an understanding of social norms. We wondered whether, in trying to change norms, we might exploit the disjunction between descriptive norms (beliefs about what others actually do) and injunctive norms (beliefs about what others think one ought to do), focusing program activities on evidence that descriptive norms are changing. Results: We found that descriptive and injunctive norms were relatively similar with regard to femininity, masculinity, the need for marriage and childbearing, resistance to separation and divorce, and disapproval of friendships between women and men. Some constraints on women’s dress and mobility were relaxing, but there were more substantial differences between descriptive and injunctive norms around women’s education, control of income and finances, and premarital sexual relationships. Conclusions: Programmatically, we hope to exploit these areas of mismatch in the context of injunctive norms generally inimical to violence against women. We propose that an under-appreciated strategy is expansion of the reference group: induction of relatively isolated women and men into broader social groups whose descriptive and injunctive norms do not tolerate violence
format Online
Article
Text
id pubmed-5680532
institution National Center for Biotechnology Information
language English
publishDate 2017
publisher F1000 Research Limited
record_format MEDLINE/PubMed
spelling pubmed-56805322017-11-21 You can’t burn the house down because of one bedbug: a qualitative study of changing gender norms in the prevention of violence against women and girls in an urban informal settlement in India Daruwalla, Nayreen Hate, Ketaki Pinto, Preethi Ambavkar, Gauri Kakad, Bhaskar Osrin, David Wellcome Open Res Research Article Background: The contribution of structural inequalities and societal legitimisation to violence against women, which 30% of women in India survive each year, is widely accepted. There is a consensus that interventions should aim to change gender norms, particularly through community mobilisation. How this should be done is less clear. Methods: We did a qualitative study in a large informal settlement in Mumbai, an environment that characterises 41% of households. After reviewing the anonymised records of consultations with 1653 survivors of violence, we conducted 5 focus group discussions and 13 individual interviews with 71 women and men representing a range of age groups and communities. We based the interviews on fictitious biographical vignettes to elicit responses and develop an understanding of social norms. We wondered whether, in trying to change norms, we might exploit the disjunction between descriptive norms (beliefs about what others actually do) and injunctive norms (beliefs about what others think one ought to do), focusing program activities on evidence that descriptive norms are changing. Results: We found that descriptive and injunctive norms were relatively similar with regard to femininity, masculinity, the need for marriage and childbearing, resistance to separation and divorce, and disapproval of friendships between women and men. Some constraints on women’s dress and mobility were relaxing, but there were more substantial differences between descriptive and injunctive norms around women’s education, control of income and finances, and premarital sexual relationships. Conclusions: Programmatically, we hope to exploit these areas of mismatch in the context of injunctive norms generally inimical to violence against women. We propose that an under-appreciated strategy is expansion of the reference group: induction of relatively isolated women and men into broader social groups whose descriptive and injunctive norms do not tolerate violence F1000 Research Limited 2017-11-07 /pmc/articles/PMC5680532/ /pubmed/29164180 http://dx.doi.org/10.12688/wellcomeopenres.11805.2 Text en Copyright: © 2017 Daruwalla N et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Daruwalla, Nayreen
Hate, Ketaki
Pinto, Preethi
Ambavkar, Gauri
Kakad, Bhaskar
Osrin, David
You can’t burn the house down because of one bedbug: a qualitative study of changing gender norms in the prevention of violence against women and girls in an urban informal settlement in India
title You can’t burn the house down because of one bedbug: a qualitative study of changing gender norms in the prevention of violence against women and girls in an urban informal settlement in India
title_full You can’t burn the house down because of one bedbug: a qualitative study of changing gender norms in the prevention of violence against women and girls in an urban informal settlement in India
title_fullStr You can’t burn the house down because of one bedbug: a qualitative study of changing gender norms in the prevention of violence against women and girls in an urban informal settlement in India
title_full_unstemmed You can’t burn the house down because of one bedbug: a qualitative study of changing gender norms in the prevention of violence against women and girls in an urban informal settlement in India
title_short You can’t burn the house down because of one bedbug: a qualitative study of changing gender norms in the prevention of violence against women and girls in an urban informal settlement in India
title_sort you can’t burn the house down because of one bedbug: a qualitative study of changing gender norms in the prevention of violence against women and girls in an urban informal settlement in india
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5680532/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29164180
http://dx.doi.org/10.12688/wellcomeopenres.11805.2
work_keys_str_mv AT daruwallanayreen youcantburnthehousedownbecauseofonebedbugaqualitativestudyofchanginggendernormsinthepreventionofviolenceagainstwomenandgirlsinanurbaninformalsettlementinindia
AT hateketaki youcantburnthehousedownbecauseofonebedbugaqualitativestudyofchanginggendernormsinthepreventionofviolenceagainstwomenandgirlsinanurbaninformalsettlementinindia
AT pintopreethi youcantburnthehousedownbecauseofonebedbugaqualitativestudyofchanginggendernormsinthepreventionofviolenceagainstwomenandgirlsinanurbaninformalsettlementinindia
AT ambavkargauri youcantburnthehousedownbecauseofonebedbugaqualitativestudyofchanginggendernormsinthepreventionofviolenceagainstwomenandgirlsinanurbaninformalsettlementinindia
AT kakadbhaskar youcantburnthehousedownbecauseofonebedbugaqualitativestudyofchanginggendernormsinthepreventionofviolenceagainstwomenandgirlsinanurbaninformalsettlementinindia
AT osrindavid youcantburnthehousedownbecauseofonebedbugaqualitativestudyofchanginggendernormsinthepreventionofviolenceagainstwomenandgirlsinanurbaninformalsettlementinindia