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Women’s movement building and feminist movement building are important for bringing together diverse women’s rights organisations (WROs), activists, feminists, grassroots organisers and allies to achieve change on a larger scale. Movement building helps identify common goals, share lessons and networks, and moves away from working in siloes. Movement building also helps to amplify the voices of structurally marginalised and discriminated groups of women and girls, including women and girls of different ages, ethnicities or religions, disabilities, sexual orientations and gender identities, and…

Over the last two decades, as more evidence has emerged to show that VAWG is preventable, a greater number of national governments have expressed interest in making progress to prevent VAWG in their countries. Equally, both governments and private sector organisations have understood that VAWG has negative effects for women, their families, businesses and the national economy. These actors have all realised that larger-scale progress on prevention requires a multi-sectoral and multi-stakeholder response across the public, private and civil society sectors - and this requires building capacity…

Long–term sustainable progress to reduce violence against women and girls (VAWG) requires national-level commitment and action. An essential part of this is the development and implementation of a policy and legal framework which protects women and girls' rights, enables their full and equal participation, and criminalises all forms of VAWG. It also requires political will, institutional capacity and the allocation of resources to drive and sustain change. When designing a VAWG programme, it is therefore important to start with an analysis of the current national policy, legal and…

Programmes to increase women’s economic empowerment aim to increase women’s access to and control over economic resources. There are a range of different interventions that can support women and their households including cash transfers, savings and loans groups, access to microfinance, and providing entrepreneurship or vocational skills training to improve livelihoods. The evidence suggests that there are many benefits from women’s economic empowerment at an individual, household and community level; however, the effect on women’s experience of intimate partner violence varies.  

On the…

Existing evidence points to the importance of healthy relationship dynamics - between couples, parents/caregivers and children, and with other household members, as well as in dating relationships - to prevent violence against women and children. Healthy relationships, characterised by positive communication, gender-equitable attitudes and the ability to resolve tensions without violence or abuse, are important in creating a respectful non-violent environment. It is important to support married and co-habiting couples and caregivers to improve their relationships with each other and their…

Community mobilisation efforts focus on engaging and empowering local communities to actively participate in transforming harmful social norms, attitudes and beliefs which drive violence against women and girls (VAWG). These approaches try to engage a critical mass of people across a community in an effort to foster whole-of-community change. They often focus on raising awareness of women’s rights, holding powerholders to account, and building collective action among community members, activists, leaders and service providers to challenge and transform the underlying causes of violence against…

Social empowerment is a multifaceted approach that involves changing societal attitudes, providing resources, and creating an environment where individuals - particularly women and girls - have the power to make choices for their own well-being.

Social empowerment interventions can contribute significantly to prevention efforts as they address some of the underlying factors that contribute to VAWG. For example, they can help build women and girls’ self-confidence, assertiveness and negotiation skills. They can also encourage critical reflection about harmful gender norms and violence…

While there is no single approach to the prevention of violence against women and girls (VAWG), there is a growing global evidence base on programme approaches which have been effective, or show promising results, in reducing the rates of violence against women and girls (VAWG). In general, a successful VAWG prevention strategy requires a multi-sectoral, coordinated approach that addresses the root causes and key risk factors for specific types of violence. This includes interventions to create an enabling environment for prevention in terms of high level political commitment, laws, policies…

Influencing refers to a range of systematic efforts to engage with relevant institutions at different levels to address the structural causes of violence against women and girls (VAWG). This might include work to challenge unequal gender and power relationships, develop or strengthen laws to end VAWG, and transform harmful attitudes, behaviours and social norms. Influencing can take many forms and can include strategies for capacity building (for individuals and/or institutions), direct advocacy with duty bearers to change laws, policies and processes, convening and mobilising stakeholders…

Developing a monitoring and learning plan is critical for ensuring programme success. It helps to guide implementation and keep a VAWG programme on track and describes processes and activities that different programme parters will carry out to collect, manage, analyse and report data on an ongoing basis throughout the programme implementation. It can help to identify any implementation issues at an early stage, understand how changing circumstances are affecting the programme, allow for timely learning about what is working, and support decisions about any necessary programme adaptations. A…