Engaging with communities to prevent violence against women through community settings

Research suggests that preventing violence against women needs to address gender inequality at all levels of an ecological model. Working at the community level opens up opportunities for engaging and mobilising people across diverse genders, ages, backgrounds and cultures through the various settings where they live, work, study and play. This Symposium showcases community mobilisation initiatives for primary prevention of violence against women in three different settings across Melbourne: playgroups, community houses and a university. We explore both shared and separate threads in these projects, including their common focus on involving communities in disrupting gendered power inequalities, while adapting these to the specific community contexts. We also explore the complexities of undertaking this work within a longer term goal that seeks to build critical mass and social change within and across communities.

1. The Momentum project
The Momentum project employed community engagement and mobilisation strategies in a university-based initiative to prevent violence against women. Young men were trained and mentored to develop and deliver primary prevention projects within their local communities. This paper explores the development of the young men as allies. It has been argued that male-led projects require safeguards against reinforcing unequal power relations. A women’s reference group, consisting of young female peers, was incorporated in the project design. Thus, we also examine strategies to embed accountability in the Momentum project from the perspective of the young women engaged in the reference group.

2. Playing the equality game.
Talking with mothers of young children from diverse communities in Melbourne’s North-West about bringing up their young children within the context of respectful relationships can be a powerful tool for prevention of family violence. Conversations were held in twenty playgroups from a variety of language and cultural backgrounds exploring the twin issues of respectful couple relationships and bringing up children together. Thematic analysis identified open communication, respect and shared values as common aspects of those issues across cultural groups. An extension of the project includes preschool children in conversations about gender equity and gender equality across and within cultures.

3. Taking Action in Our Community
Taking Action in Our Community (TAC) aims to mobilise communities in Outer Eastern Melbourne in preventing violence against women through community houses. TAC is informed by SASA!, a Ugandan Randomised Controlled Trial that demonstrated the potential effectiveness of community mobilisation for preventing violence against women, and was subsequently adapted for implementation in twenty countries. Using action research, TAC is translating such learnings while developing models from the ground up. Stage 1 shows 15 houses leading local conversations on gender equity. Messages subsequently displayed on ‘clotheslines’ will be their first co-ordinated action. Collaborative planning following evaluation will build future stages.

Chair: Peter Streker
Presenters:
1. Kim Shearson, Daisy Bottomley, & Amy Livingstone (Victoria University)
2. Colleen Turner & Surmeli Aydogan (VICSEG New Futures)
3. Catherine D’Arcy (EACH/Deakin University)
Authors: Dr Lisa Hanna, PhD, Deakin University and Olivia Stephenson, Deakin University