Violence against women and girls (VAWG) has been recognized as a human rights issue and a serious health problem. The high human, economic, and social costs of this form of violence have been widely evidenced. For some decades, efforts have been made to support the victims and stress the need to hold perpetrators accountable (also with re-education programmes). However, while gender and domestic violence against women and girls affects one third (1/3) of adult women (FRA 2015), recent evidence has revealed that dating violence affects 25% (1/4) of girls. This data highlights the generational reproduction of gender violence and calls for primary or universal prevention. Since 2004, appeals have called for primary prevention (Rosewater, 2004), and schools have been elected as the ideal setting for this intervention. The social actors intervening in schools are diverse, ranging from the police, health professionals, NGO activists, and, seldom, teachers, and the interventions are increasing across countries. Nevertheless, evaluation is scarce and rarely has a long-term impact been studied. Gender-based violence is embedded in social structure and cultural premises (Hagemann-White, 1998; Michalski, 2004; Magalhães, 2007). Feminist accounts of men’s violence have examined the intersections between gender and other social divisions such as class, race and nationality (Crenshaw, 1997; Sokoloff & Dupont, 2005; Sokoloff, 2005; Pease & Rees, 2008; Kelly & Rehman, 2012). Programmes promoting change have to address the complexity that encompasses the problem of gender-based violence.

Project BO(U)NDS will perform a longitudinal study based on mixed-methods and hermeneutic comparability between Portugal, Germany, United Kingdom, Greece and Brazil. The assumption is that an intervention programme in school with children, adolescents, and young people is more effective and has long-term effects if the content addresses the structural and cultural basis of gender and domestic violence if they are child-developmentally appropriate and if they use holistic and creative pedagogical approaches. Interventions in schools can be based on normative action, affirmative action or transformative action (Arnot, 2009).

Project BO(U)NDS intends to reach an in-depth comprehension of what works in primary prevention in having long-term effects on young people's lives. Based on focus groups and biographical narratives with young people who have either attended school-based gender violence prevention programmes recently or more than five years ago, the Project intends to see the obstacles and successes of integrating non-violence and gender equality values practices in young people’s lives.

Concomitantly, teachers, facilitators, and educational policy decision-makers will be asked about the difficulties and possibilities to implement holistic, systematic, and effective school-based gender violence prevention programmes.

 

Key-words:
Education; Follow-up study; prevention; gender-based violence.

​Funding:
Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT)

Reference:
PTDC/SOC-ASO/31027/2017

Coordinating institution:
CIIE/Faculdade de Psicologia e de Ciências da Educação da Universidade do Porto

Partner institutions:
ISCTE - Instituto Universitário de Lisboa
UMAR - União de Mulheres Alternativa e Resposta