The role of participation and community mobilisation in preventing violence against women and girls: a programme review and critique

Background Violence against women and girls (VAWG) is a public health problem and one of the most prevalent human rights violations in the world. Recently practitioners and researchers have taken an interest in community participation as a strategy for preventing VAWG. Despite the recent enthusiasm however, there has been little articulation of how participation in VAWG prevention programmes mobilises communities to challenge social norms and prevent VAWG. Objectives In an attempt to help address this gap, this article seeks to answer two research questions: (1) How does participation theoretically mobilise communities to prevent VAWG, and (2) how do nominally participatory programmes make use of these theoretical concepts in their (explicit or implicit) theories of change? Methods To answer the first question, we draw on two well-recognised theories of participation and community mobilisation – Rifkin and Pridmore’s continuum of participation and Freire’s steps towards achieving critical consciousness – to clarify theoretical assumptions about how participation can mobilise community to reduce VAWG. To answer our second research question, we present the results from a review of primary prevention programmes that seek to reduce VAWG through community participation. Our analysis examines the explicit and implicit theories of change for these prevention programmes against the assumptions outlined from the theoretical literature. Results Our results help to better articulate realistic goals for community mobilisation and outline a theoretical basis for how participation as part of programming can effectively mobilise communities to reduce violence. Conclusion We argue that, in order to be both effective and sustainable, the role of external agents in introducing programmes needs to be secondary to the ownership and empowerment of communities in designing and delivering their own strategies for VAWG prevention.