Social empowerment interventions include efforts to build women’s vocational and life skills; address barriers to social, political and economic inclusion; and build social networks and collective agency. As a result, there are a range of strategies which aim to build individual, group and collective power of women to challenge inequality and subordination across contexts (i.e. in relationships, families and communities). Effectively coordinating multiple strategies can increase the likelihood of wider social proliferation of behaviour and norms change across contexts. Some examples of interventions include:

• Education and Awareness: Educating communities about the consequences of VAWG and fostering awareness about gender-based violence helps create a culture that rejects such behaviours. Knowledge empowers individuals to recognize and challenge harmful attitudes and practices.
• Legal Empowerment: Ensuring that women are aware of their legal rights and providing support in accessing legal avenues empowers them to report and seek justice against violence. Strengthening legal frameworks and enforcement mechanisms is crucial.
• Community Engagement and Mobilisation: Building strong community networks that condemn violence and support survivors creates a protective environment. Community members can play a role in preventing VAWG when mobilised to actively challenge harmful practices and behaviours.
• Promoting Positive Masculinity: Social empowerment involves redefining masculinity to be more inclusive, respectful, and non-violent. Engaging men and boys in conversations about healthy relationships and masculinity helps break down toxic norms.
• Media Influence: Media plays a significant role in shaping societal attitudes. Empowering individuals to critically assess media portrayals of gender and relationships can contribute to a more informed and equitable society.
• Education and Training Programmes: Implementing educational programmes that address gender-based violence in schools helps shape attitudes and healthy relationships from a young age. Training programmes for professionals in various sectors, such as healthcare and law enforcement, can improve responses to violence.
• Political Empowerment: Ensuring that women have equal representation in political and decision-making processes can lead to policies and initiatives that address the root causes of VAWG.

For more evidence-based approaches, Strategy E from the RESPECT framework highlights several interventions which support women’s empowerment.  

Social empowerment interventions are considered gender transformative when they go beyond mere gender sensitivity or awareness-raising and actively work to transform existing gender norms, roles, and power dynamics within society. A gender transformative approach entails a deeper and more systemic approach to addressing gender inequalities. For example, where social empowerment interventions encourage individuals to critically reflect on their own attitudes and behaviours related to gender, and how to tackle the root causes of inequality, this aligns with a gender transformative approach.

To ensure programme design, adaptation, implementation and scale-up of social empowerment interventions is most effective, it’s important to draw on promising practice and common elements of successful approaches relevant across humanitarian and development contexts, and in community or institutional settings (i.e. schools, workplaces), including: 

• Designing programmes with sufficient time and resources: The most effective programmes include at least 10 to 12 social empowerment sessions and encourage and support additional activities by participants after the empowerment sessions. Implementing partners need sufficient expertise and aligned values, principles and approaches to effectively deliver the work. 
• Targeting and tailoring interventions: Interventions should be targeted and appropriately tailored to the lived realities of the group participating in the social empowerment intervention. A situation analysis and needs assessment should be conducted to explore barriers and needs of different groups, and intervention designs should be designed and adjusted accordingly. Activities should also be planned to fit around the lived realities of participants, including domestic and childcare responsibilities, schooling, mobility after dark, safety and travel concerns. 
• Providing safe spaces for programming: For participants to engage in the intervention, meet, socialise, discuss matters of concern and develop skills, it’s helpful to provide specifically designed safe spaces, or specific times set aside in community centres or spaces. These need to be accessible to all participants, including those who have specific vulnerabilities. See how to create Women and Girls’ Safe Spaces. 
• Ensuring strong facilitator training and mentoring: Gender transformative interventions require well-trained facilitators who have learned how to handle different situations and participant questions. It is strongly recommended that facilitators experience the training first as participants.
• Promoting engagement of men and boys: Programmes that also engage men and boys in gender-transformative interventions can support intimate partner violence (IPV) reduction and prevent backlash against women and girls. Read more about how to engage men and boys here.
• Recognising and mitigating against potential backlash: If directly challenging gender roles in patriarchal settings, efforts must be made to mitigate against potential backlash or risk of increasing violence in accordance with the Do No Harm principle. This could include specific strategies for engaging with male partners, or training on how to handle financial conflict within relationships or the household.

A growing body of evidence has shown that combining microfinance with additional social empowerment interventions and a gender transformative approach can prevent VAWG and reduce Gender-Based Violence. For instance:

• Intervention with Microfinance for AIDS and Gender Equity (IMAGE) programme in South Africa: The intervention combined microfinance, participatory gender and HIV awareness education. IMAGE found a 55% reduction in sexual and/or physical violence by an intimate partner or relative among participants.
• MAISHA in Tanzania: Assessed whether implementing a combined microfinance and social empowerment intervention would influence the rate of IPV compared to microfinance interventions alone. The trial combined microfinancing with 10 sessions of the MAISHA intervention—a social empowerment curriculum developed to provide life skills, promote healthy relationships, and help participants develop relationship skills. A 2-year follow up study found that within the microfinance and MAISHA intervention group, there was a reduction in either past-year physical or sexual IPV, or both, although more limited reductions occurred for sexual violence. Participants in the microfinance and MAISHA group were also less likely to be accepting of IPV, or express beliefs that IPV is a private matter, or that a woman should tolerate IPV to keep her family together.
• Gender dialogue groups in Cote d’Ivoire: Researchers evaluated the impact of an economic empowerment and gender dialogue programme on domestic violence and gender norms. They found that adding the gender dialogue component, in which men and women discussed household dynamics, to a savings and loan programme for women was more effective than the savings programme alone at reducing IPV.