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

Abstract

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

Bed Bugs (Hemiptera, Cimicidae): Overview of Classification, Evolution and Dispersion

“…They are considered as responsible for nuisance, among Indian armed forces and a declining cause of general health [108]. In addition, other eight bat parasitic species are reported in India, including C. himalayanus, C. insuetus, C. usingeri, and C. pipistrelli [65,109].…”

A theory of change for community interventions to prevent domestic violence against women and girls in Mumbai, India

“…Participants discussed and refined potential outcomes, how they were related to preventing violence, and how they could be measured. This was accompanied by two activities: an action documentation exercise and a study on gender norms around domestic violence (Daruwalla et al, 2017). The action documentation exercise documented community mobilisation team members' experiences of the kinds of action that community members had undertaken in the past.…”

“…The assumptions underlying the model are numbered and the activities of people involved are numbered and linked with a summary in Table 2. Raw data from interviews and focus groups are available (Osrin, 2017). Overall, the theory envisages counsellors, community mobilisers, community volunteers and groups of women, men, and youth working together to bring about collective and individual change with the ultimate aim of reducing domestic violence.…”

“…Underlying data UK Data Service: Changing gender norms in the prevention of violence against women and girls in India. https://doi.org/ 10.5255/UKDA-SN-852735 (Osrin, 2017).…”

“…This is particularly relevant because we are concerned about the forms of violence that constitute gender-based household because we are concerned about the forms of violence that constitute gender-based household maltreatment: emotional and economic violence, control and neglect. Our previous work suggested that we might focus on three ideas about norm change (Daruwalla et al, 2017). The first is to make use of the mismatch between descriptive and injunctive norms.…”