Community interventions to prevent violence against women must follow best practice

Abstract

Violence against women is preventable, but there is much to learn about how to do this. The evidence base largely comprises evaluations of interventions, which have multiplied in the last two decades. Many funded evaluations are small studies, but community-wide impact requires policy change and interventions delivered at scale. Violence against women practitioners have developed a range of approaches to community-wide interventions, with mixed results. These are often influenced by the SASA! Intervention of Raising Voices in Uganda, which was the first such study to show promise when evaluated, but there have been many subsequent variations, some adaptations, some substantially different in design. In India, a large-scale rigorous evaluation of such an intervention has not previously been undertaken. Nayreen Daruwalla and colleagues’ study represents a bold attempt to test their community-wide intervention delivered at scale in a large study conducted in the slums of Mumbai. The findings provide important lessons for the violence against women prevention evidence base.