By Chrissy Hart, Senior Advisor, Together for Girls
By Chrissy Hart, Senior Advisor, Together for Girls
Over the past several years, Together for Girls has conducted secondary analyses of the Violence Against Children & Youth Surveys to understand the prevalence, consequences, and gender-specific experiences of violence in and around schools. This work was done in partnership with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and AidData with support from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and Global Affairs Canada.
We recently published COVID-19 and the Opportunity to Build Safer Learning Environments. This brief presenting findings from our research on violence and schools, implications for school violence as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, and recommendations and resources for policymakers, practitioners, advocates, and civil society focused on understanding school violence, its gendered characteristics, and tools and solutions for creating safer school environments.
Our research shows that across the globe, many students experience school-related gender-based violence (SRGBV). SRGBV includes any act or threat of sexual, physical or psychological violence occurring in and around schools, perpetrated as a result of gender norms and stereotypes, and enforced by unequal power dynamics.
Our research also reveals that students who experience SRGBV and other forms of violence in and around schools are not getting the support and services they need.
Gender unequal norms and attitudes that condone violence drive gender-based violence in and around schools. However, VACS data show that these attitudes are less common among those who complete more years of education.
Our research underscores the opportunity that school environments provide to interrupt gender unequal attitudes, the norms that condone violence, and to ultimately prevent gender-based violence, and in doing so, improve educational, health and economic outcomes for students, particularly adolescent girls. Secondary education can play a role in reducing the likelihood of girls experiences intimate partner violence, becoming pregnant, and experiencing early and forced marriage.
*To learn about attitudes toward gender, survey respondents were asked if they believed a series of questions about gender roles, such as “only men, not women, should decide when to have sex” or “a woman should tolerate violence to keep her family together.”
**Statistically significant difference between those who completed primary school or less and those who attended or completed secondary school or more †Data among 14-24 year-olds Lesotho
Amidst the pandemic-driven crises for quality education and violence against children lies an opportunity: the COVID-19 pandemic upended education systems around the world, but in rebuilding from the pandemic we have a unique opportunity to create better schools, ensuring that every student is safe from the virus and from violence.
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