@megandenisesmith
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Violence against women and girls is normalised in the context I work in but has become further exacerbated during COVID-19 and intimate partner violence in particular. I think couples programmes, economic and social empowerment programmes and community level programmes to challenge these harmful gender norms would be effective. I think we need more medium to long term interventions.
In my community, Mercy would still face some individual factors like if she witnessed violence in her own household and so on but there would be different protective factors in the community and society levels, including different gender norms. There is a lot of stigma around domestic violence among both men and women in my society so Clinton would have experienced more shaming from his peers (hopefully) because violence is not normalised however he also could have kept the violence more to himself and not shared it with his friends when drinking because he would be aware he would stigmatised by it.
Mercy was not able to do other activities that boys would do, the separation of gender roles happens at such an early age. Then she could not continue her education past primary school and did not have the opportunity to work. She got married at a young age and also became a mother who is balancing productive and reproductive roles. She now repeats many of the behaviours she learned because she thinks its in the best interest of her daughter to focus on learning how to become a good wife and mother. The violence she experienced is so ingrained and normalised that she questions how can a law prevent violence from occurring inside the home. Important to note in previous videos that violence was accepted by her mother and female relatives who said its part of being married and can be “good”
If the physical violence is normalised then other forms of violence are likely to be normalised perhaps denial of resources, emotional violence, and so on. She will also have the same expectations for her daughter thereby perpetuating a cycle of violence which will be reinforced by her family and the community.
I think our programme is somewhat accountable to women and girls but could be improved. We are accountable in terms of the participation of women and girls in shaping programme activities and being responsive to their feedback. We use some structured questionnaires as well which help women and girls voice their feedback on activities. We also work with community volunteers, I do think we could improve this though and we are top down in some ways. In other settings I have seen activities really taken up and led by women´s organisations. I do think in Bangladesh we have many structural limitations to ensuring women and girls are taking a lead role in the operations of activities in the way we want to see and there could be much more done in this regard.
Our programme was based on a gender power analysis. We did understand the socio-cultural dynamics and with our interventions we had to be very careful not to cause further backlash against women and girls who would participate in our programme and create new GBV risks. Its important to note that gendered social norms are constantly changing here and our frontline field staff have different yet similar dynamics in their own community that we need to be aware of as well.
I don´t think our programme is very inclusive or intersectional. While we have some women with disabilities who attend activities we miss out on many people and we could reach more. I know we also fail in providing services for gender diverse groups. For example, many Hijra, or third gender individuals are not reached in our programming. I wish our programs responded to the needs of all our beneficiaries irrespective of gender, colour, disability status, sexual orientation but I know its not the reality.
This is what I think we do the best, we really work with women and girls to put them in the driver´s seat of their own safety. We really work to minimise the risk of backlash against them and we do regular risk mapping and safety planning with women, we monitor and address
I think we could improve on this point as well. I think in the beginning when we trained our staff we had them reflect on power dynamics in their own community but our focus was very much on the refugee community including our volunteers. I think it would be good to have our staff reflect on gender transformative approaches in their own day to day life.
I mentioned awareness raising and dialogues with community leaders (parents, teachers, religious leaders, husbands, etc). I think these will be universal prevention activities. Because these activities would not be singling our specific men who are at a higher risk of using violence, the awareness raising activities would be targeting different key groups of stakeholders but not working specifically with men who have a history of perpetrating violence for example.
