CADD CORNER: Gender-based Violence Continues to be a Challenge for Our Society and Profession

By Jeffrey L. Edleson, Dean and Professor, Berkeley Social Welfare

You can’t help but wonder “What are they thinking?” when you listen to some of those hoping to be our next president. The sad fact is that the war on women is alive and well in this country. Women’s health care is under attack as are efforts to address violence against women both on campuses and in our communities.

Gender-based discrimination and violence continues as a major challenge for our society and others around the globe. I recently co-authored a working paper titled Ending Gender-Based Violence (GBV) for the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare’s Grand Challenges series. My social work colleagues, Prof. Taryn Lindhorst of the University of Washington and Prof. Valli Kalei Kanuha of the University of Hawaii, and I argue that gender-based violence is not an epidemic, but rather endemic — at a high and continuing level — in American society. We also argue that the scientific evidence indicates there are tested, multi-pronged strategies able to end or greatly reduce gender-based violence over the next decade if there is the community and political will and support to do so.

Social work practitioners and scholars stand at the forefront of these initiatives and have made a significant impact in efforts to expand social responses aimed at ending GBV. Promoting an end to GBV and encouraging violence-free intimate relationships requires not only “downstream” crisis responses involving criminal justice and social services but also “upstream” universal and selective prevention efforts. No single initiative or “best practice” will end GBV and promote the alternative behaviors of violence-free living. In short, a full array of coordinated efforts —“full-stream efforts” as I have called them — is needed to move the needle toward increasing violence-free relationships and decreasing victimization and perpetration. Efforts and innovations are needed across the board, in social work research, practice, policy and education.

Any effort to end GBV will necessarily have to focus on transformation at the social and community as well as individual and family levels. Macro-level interventions aimed at changing beliefs, attitudes and perceptions of social norms are one type of intervention that has shown promise. Changing norms along with offering concrete actions to support bystanders in intervening when they witness or suspect GBV have resulted in decreasing reports of sexual assault according to early research studies. Prevention programs are under development to target and engage young men and their peers who are at the greatest risk of perpetrating violence against women.

Addressing GBV necessarily requires cross-sector, inter-disciplinary, and inter-professional collaborations on multiple levels of the social ecosystem, particularly among members of the criminal justice, advocacy and health systems. Social workers and others are already very involved in these efforts. However, efforts to prevent and intervene in GBV have expanded well beyond criminal justice responses into health care, religious, educational and other settings. There is significant room for innovation by social workers in nearly every approach to ending GBV, from modifying social norms to developing new data-driven prevention efforts and interventions at the individual, family, community and social levels.

GBV is a significant and enduring social problem that not only affects the day-to-day lives of millions of American women, men and children, but also family members, colleagues and friends in their social networks who seek ways to support non-violence. The short and long-term effects of GBV are serious, sometimes fatal for one or both partners and related children. The field of social work must develop and test fresh approaches and develop new assessment tools to solve this grand challenge for current and future generations that deserve violence-free and healthy communities.

Note: This column is drawn from Edleson, J.L., Lindhorst, T. & Kanuha, V.K. (In press). Ending Gender-Based Violence: A Grand Challenge Working Paper. Cleveland, OH: American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare (http://aaswsw.org). Dean Edleson is an elected Fellow of the Academy.