Organizations involved
Population Council; Centre for Catalysing Change; the Nehru Yuvak Kendra Sangathan
Summary
The goal of the Do Kadam Barabari Ki Ore (Do Kadam) intervention (2013-2015) was to promote egalitarian gender attitudes and rejection of violence against women and girls among adolescent boys aged 13–21. The intervention was carried out by raising awareness about women’s rights, changing traditional notions of masculinity and female subordination, promoting women’s agency, building support systems to help women at risk of violence, and preventing incidences of violence within participants’ immediate environment. It was implemented among boys who were members of 15 youth clubs in Bihar, India supported by the Nehru Yuvak Kendra Sangatan programme (NYKS) of the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports, Government of India.
Social norms of interest
Norms related to perpetration of violence against women and girls; gender norms
Behaviors of interest
Egalitarian gender attitudes; young men’s rejection of violence against women and girls
Project components
The intervention comprised a mix of gender transformative life skills education and sports coaching. Typically, boys met for two hours a week: one hour was devoted to a gender transformative life skills education program and the other hour to cricket coaching and games sessions. The life skills curriculum was delivered over 42 weekly sessions and covered broad topics such as gender discrimination, notions of masculinity, and violence against women and girls. Sessions were delivered by club members who were selected as peer mentors and who had undergone several pre-program and refresher training programs, often together with core trainers from the implementing agency, C3 India. The cricket coaching and games component was intended to convey a sense of fair play, team spirit, sportsmanship, and resolution of conflict in non-violent ways, aside from improving cricketing skills of the boys.
Social norms measurement
Panel surveys were conducted with boys from intervention and control clubs at baseline and endline; the survey instrument included questions related to boys' individual attitudes about gender roles and violence against women and girls and peer and community norms related to these domains. In-depth interviews were conducted with selected boys at three time points: baseline, midline and endline.
Key findings to date
The intervention succeeded in making the attitudes of boys more gender egalitarian, in changing notions of masculinity, and in enabling them to reject the notion that men and boys have the right to exercise control over women and girls and to perpetrate violence against them. Findings from in-depth interviews confirmed, moreover, that notions of both masculinity and men’s right to perpetrate violence had been considerably tempered over the three interviews, with more boys at the endline expressing the view that violence is unacceptable, and more boys describing various legal and other options for women who experience marital violence.
Attribution statement
Santhya, K. G., Shireen, J. J., Acharya, R., Pandey, N., Gogoi, A., Joshi, M., Kumar Singh, S., Saxena, K., and Kumar Ojha, S. (2019) Transforming the attitudes of young men about gender roles and the acceptability of violence against women, Bihar. Culture, Health & Sexuality, 21:12, 1409-1424.
