Latest Evidence
Here is a selection of the latest evidence on violence against women and girls (VAWG):
EDUCATION AND VIOLENCE
The effect of keeping girls in schools on rates of sexual violence in East/Southern Africa (Feb 2017) The benefits of keeping girls in school are increasingly wellknown, with potential benefits including increased economic empowerment, delayed marriage and childbirth, improved mental health, and reduced risk of sexual and gender based violence (SGBV). However, empirical evidence on the relationship between education and SGBV is largely observational.
This study uses quasi-experimental methods to explore the links between educational attainment in adolescence on young women’s lifetime experience of sexual violence in Malawi and Uganda. It uses the introduction of Universal (i.e. free) Primary Education as a benchmark for tracking impact.
In Uganda, the findings show a 9% decrease in lifetime sexual violence as a result of one additional year spent in primary school; however, in Malawi, no decrease was observed. These protective effects were found for experiences of sexual violence over the lifetime in Uganda, but not sexual violence over the past 12 months. While other positive impacts were identified in both cases, this finding underscores the importance of understanding context when developing violence prevention programs