The Gender, Violence, and Health Centre (GVHC) at the London School of Hygiene
and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) has launched a learning and reflection group on
social norms and gender-based violence (GBV). There is increasing interest among
donors and practitioners to harness insights from social norms theory to catalyse
change around gender inequity and harmful gender-related practices. Little guidance
is available, however, to help practitioners integrate simple norms measures and
change strategies within field-based programming. As theory-based insights open
promising avenues for achieving change, a gap emerged between theory and its
application within development practice.
The mission of this group is thus:
To translate and adapt insights and methods from social norm theory and research
into practical guidance for development practitioners seeking to transform harmful
gender-related practices in low and middle-income countries.
Participants share and discuss individual solutions to common dilemmas around
measurement and practice. Together, we are working on a programme of research
and practice to test strategies that can help people negotiate new positive norms,
and/or dismantle norms that keep harmful practices in place. Our collective
experience will inform the next wave of intervention evaluation and norms
measurement.
As part of the learning initiative, LSHTM convened an expert group meeting in July
2016 on the measurement of social norms sustaining GBV. The meeting focused
on identifying best-practice strategies to diagnose and measure social norms.
Participants were drawn from groups that already had data and research experience
attempting to capture gender-related norms and practices in the field. The meeting
was kept relatively small to ensure productive exchange among the few teams that
have experimented with different strategies for collecting quantitative data on norms
and gender-based violence
