The UK health sector is committed through its NHS Health Plans to reducing teenage pregnancies and drug abuse. Yet, gender violence is not on the agenda. How can initiatives aimed at tackling gender violence amongst youths provide the solid foundations of respect for diversity and self esteem - so critical to stamping out teenage pregnancy and drug abuse?

The Zero Tolerance Charitable Trust recently published the results of a study into young people’s attitude towards violence, sex and relationships in Scotland and England. Focussing on the attitudes of young men towards the prevalence of physical and sexual violence against women, research findings include:

• 1 in 7 thought it would be okay for a man to force a woman to have sex if they had been going out for a long time.
• 1 in 10 thought it was acceptable to force a women to have sex ‘if he is so turned on he can not stop’.
• Young men felt violence was acceptable if ‘he had spent a lot of money on a girl' (6 percent) or if a girl had slept with lots of men (6 percent).
• Hitting women was regarded as ‘unmanly’ or ‘cowardly’ yet ‘provocation’ such as ‘nagging’ was sometimes seen as a justifiable excuse for violence.
• 36 percent thought they might use violence in future relationships.
• There is widespread victim blaming and the belief that women provoke violence.
• Boys expressed feelings that they were victims of their own sexuality as a result of peer pressure.

The Zero Tolerance Trust in Scotland developed an innovative approach to challenging young people’s attitudes towards gender, violence, and domestic abuse. Group norms and peer pressure act as an important factor in encouraging a continuum of abusive behaviour. The school and youth ‘Respect’ programme has now been piloted in in schools in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Essex using participatory techniques to explore the meaning of respect, power relations, and violence in relationships. The primary school programme uses games, jigsaws, role play and discussion to explore communication, cooperation, respect, difference, power, being a girl, and being a boy. Issues of gender violence are explored more deeply in secondary school.

The South Essex Rape and Crisis Centre in England uses interactive theatre techniques: plays explore girls' and boys' vulnerability to peer pressure to enter into sexual relationships and illustrates incidents of abuse and violence. Pupils discuss possible alternative actions or types of behaviour that the characters might have enacted and, as the play is presented a second time, pupils can ‘freeze’ the action and themselves act out their alternative ideas. Alongside such curriculum interventions, a mass media campaign aims to challenge conventional viewpoints. Slogans such as ‘Boys must always be tough, girls just need to be pretty, says who?’ are placed on buses, in youth centres and in other prominent places throughout the community; posters promote consent in relationships.

The Zero Tolerance Trust plans to roll out the 'Respect' educational interventions in schools throughout Scotland in 2002. Recommendations include:

• A whole school approach must be adopted to ensure that the messages of respect are consistent and reinforced by teachers and pupils alike.
• Links with social services need to be developed to ensure support for teachers dealing with disclosures from pupils.
• Primary health care officials, social services and the education sector should discuss the use of the ‘Respect’ initiative as an effective way of addressing issues of teenage pregnancy, STIs and HIV/AIDS, and drug abuse.
• The core principles and approaches of ‘Respect’ should be taught within the teacher training curriculum.

Source(s):
'Young People's Attitudes Towards Violence, Sex and Relationships', Zero Tolerance Charitable Trust by S. Burton and J. Kitzenger with L. Kelly and L. Regan, 1998

Funded by: Scottish Executive Criminal Justice Unit, Home Office Crime Reduction

id21 Research Highlight: 28 January 2002

Further Information:
June Strachan
Zero Tolerance Charitable Trust
25 Rutland Street
Edinburgh EH1 2AE
Scotland
UK

Tel: +44 (0)131 221 9505
Contact the contributor: zerotolerance@dial.pipex.com

Zero Tolerance Charitable Trust, UK

Other related links:
Insights Special: 'Conspiracy of silence? Stamping out abuse in African schools'

'Mixed Messages'

'Breadwinners and homemakers? Children explore gender'

'Young Lives at Risk - Adolescents and sexual health' from Panos

Men's Roles & Responsibilities in Ending Gender Based Violence: envisioning men as part of the solution