Leading the Field of Prevention Research: What Works to Prevent Violence Against Women and Girls
The Global Women’s Institute leads the research consortium of the largest global initiative to prevent violence against women and girls.
We have been a leading partner in the United Kingdom’s flagship violence against women and girls prevention program, What Works to Prevent Violence and its successor, What Works: Impact at Scale.
What Works to Prevent Violence: A Groundbreaking Global Initiative to Prevent Violence Against Women and Girls
Research on what works to prevent violence has grown exponentially over the past decade. The Global Women’s Institute has played a key role in this field of research both independently and as part of the UK-funded program What Works to Prevent Violence Against Women and Girls (What Works 1).
Evidence from the flagship What Works program shows that:
- Well-designed programs implemented over two to three years can reduce violence by as much as 50%.
- Several approaches are effective for reducing violence and can be tailored to specific contexts, including school-based interventions, community activism approaches, couples’ programs, parenting programs, targeted support for women, alcohol and substance use interventions and more.
Examples of successful approaches from What Works 1 include:
- A play-based life skills program in Pakistan: A randomized controlled trial with 8,000 students who participated in the intervention found a 59% decrease in peer violence against girls and 33% against boys.
- Community activism approaches in the Democratic Republic of the Congo: Evaluations of the intervention found that women's experiences of any form of intimate partner violence decreased from 69% to 29% and women's experiences of non-partner sexual violence in the past 12 months reduced from 20.7% to 3.7%.
- Working with couples and/or families in Rwanda: A rigorous evaluation showed a 55% reduction in women's experiences of physical and sexual intimate partner violence, sustained over 24 months.
Learn more about the global evidence learned from What Works 1 by reading the latest brief.
What Works to Prevent Violence — Impact at Scale: Building on the Successes of the What Works program
What Works to Prevent Violence — Impact at Scale (What Works 2) is a seven-year initiative funded by the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office that aims to scale up effective prevention of violence against women and girls based on evidence produced by the original What Works program by:
- Expanding effective prevention interventions
- Deepening the impact of effective prevention interventions by extending and combining them across different sectors
- Adapting and replicating effective prevention interventions in different countries and contexts.
What Works 2 supports 14 projects across 12 countries, and is delivered through three main components:
- An Implementation Consortium led by the International Rescue Committee
- A Research and Evaluation Consortium led by the Global Women’s Institute and managed by the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office’s Research and Evidence Directorate
- An Independent Evaluation component to provide ongoing learning and performance feedback
About the What Works Collective
Learn more about our Research Consortium partners — as well as our colleagues from the Implementation Consortium, the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office and our global partners — on the What Works website.
Leading the Research Consortium of What Works 2
We were selected to lead the Research and Evaluation Consortium of the What Works to Prevent Violence —Impact at Scale” (What Works 2), the successor to What Works 1. In this role, we help to deliver impact evaluations and operational research to identify what works to prevent violence in collaboration with our consortium partners, who represent a globally renowned group of researchers committed to preventing violence against women and girls.
The Research and Evaluation Consortium also draws from a roster of 27 institutional resource partners and nearly 200 experts, including the Sexual Violence Research Initiative, CEHAT, Innovations for Poverty Action and local universities based throughout the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office priority countries.
Our Research and Evaluation Consortium Partners
The Equality Institute is a global feminist agency working to advance gender equality and end violence against women and girls. The Equality Institute's purpose is to advance gender equality and support violence prevention efforts to thrive in a rapidly changing world — through research, creative communications and global leadership.
Johns Hopkins University, founded in 1876, is America's first research university and home to nine world-class academic divisions working together as one university.
Established in 1983, the Aga Khan University is a unique hybrid: an institution of academic excellence that is also an agent for social development. The university has campuses and programs in South Asia, Europe and Africa.
The University of Cape Town aims to contribute to policies, laws and interventions that promote equality and realize the rights and improve the conditions of all children in South Africa through research, advocacy, education and technical support.