To strengthen our understanding of violence against women and ultimately prevent it, we need to ensure that the research undertaken is both priority-driven and carried out in such a way that it provides a sound practical and empirical basis for interventions/programmes, policy and advocacy on sexual violence.
The SVRI and the Equality Institute, with support from Wellspring Philanthropic Fund and Sida, have facilitated the development of a Global Shared Research Agenda (GSRA) for research on violence against women in low- and middle-income countries.
Developing a Global Shared Research Agenda has been important in order to:
- Identify evidence gaps and research priority areas
- Assist researchers, funders, practitioners and policymakers planning and fundraising
- Serve as an advocacy tool to signal to stakeholders areas of research
- Serve as a monitoring tool
- Guide SVRI grant-making
Through this work, we aimed to elevate research that facilitates improved responses to and prevention of violence against women and directly addresses inequalities and hierarchies in global research, which places most of the resources and capacity in high-income countries. This provides a practical and empirical foundation for interventions and for policy and advocacy programmes within countries, as well as at regional and global levels. It also increases diversity, involving multiple voices in the process.
Methodology of the Global Shared Research Agenda
The Global Shared Research Agenda process is driven by three groups
- A stewardship group, which includes representatives from the SVRI and The Equality Institute, tasked with the coordination of the process and overseeing design, reporting, analysis, and dissemination.
- An advisory group of over 40 experts in the fields of prevention of and response to violence against women, across multiple geographical contexts and from diverse backgrounds.
- A global expert group made up of more than 500 people from both low- and middle-income countries and high-income countries working on prevention of and response to violence against women, including practitioners, frontline service providers, indigenous people, grassroots organisations, people with disabilities, LGBTQI+ populations, and culturally and linguistically diverse groups.
Developing the Global Shared Research Agenda was a new process. We understand that while the outcome of this process is hugely valuable, the process itself, and what we learn from it, are just as valuable.”
– Advisory group member
The development of the Global Shared Research Agenda process was highly participatory and iterative, providing many opportunities for feedback from the different governance and advisory group members. We adapted a research priority setting method called the Child Health and Nutrition Research Initiative (CHNRI). This approach considers the views of multiple stakeholders, not just technical experts, so all views are treated equally without some voices being more dominant than others. It does this by ‘crowdsourcing’ multiple opinions on an issue, surpassing the ‘expert’ judgement of any one person.
With this method, we challenged traditional barriers to funding and aimed to bring a more nuanced and equitable way to setting an agenda.
Top 5 Research Questions
- What types of interventions can effectively prevent multiple forms of violence and why?
- What types of interventions are most effective for preventing intimate partner violence (including “honour”-based violence) against women facing multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination (including age, poverty, disability, ethnicity, race, sexuality etc)?
- How are new feminist social movements (e.g. Metoo, Ni una menos etc.) and meninist social movements (Men’s Rights Activists or MRAs, incels etc) positively or negatively influencing individual, social and policy perspectives related to the experience and perpetration of violence?
- What intervention works to prevent sexual harassment in institutional settings (in-person or online), including in the workplace and educational settings, and why?
- What are the impacts (including disability-related impacts) of under-researched forms of intimate-partner violence on women and girls, including emotional and economic intimate-partner violence, revenge porn, and “honour”-based violence?
