Prof. Rachel K. Jewkes

Ponencia	Estrategias globales para reducir la violencia contra la mujer
Fechas	4 Septiembre - 7 Septiembre, 2020
Mesa redonda 4	Violencia contra las Mujeres

Professor Rachel Jewkes is the Executive Scientist for Research Strategy in the Office of the President of the South African Medical Research Council and an Honorary Professor at the University of the Witwatersrand School of Public Health. Previously she was the Director of the SAMRC’s Gender and Health Research Unit. She is the Consortium Director of the DFID-funded What Works to Prevent Violence? Global Programme and the Secretary of the Sexual Violence Research Initiative, the global knowledge hub on gender-based violence research. She is a medical doctor, trained at St Thomas’s Hospital in London, a physical health specialist and holds an MSc and MD from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. She has an A1 rating from the South Africa National research Foundation (NRF). She has worked over three decades in research on violence against women, to build understanding this as a major obstacle to public health and development, and to use research for stronger global policy, prevention interventions and services for survivors. She is an author of over 350 peer reviewed journal articles, reports, training manuals and book chapters. She is a member of the WHO Expert Advisory Panel on Injury and Violence Prevention and Control.

Violence among women (VAW) is reported to have escalated across the globe in Covid-19 lockdown, focusing global attention on a problem which is known to affect 1 in 3 women in their lifetime. Recent research has shown this to be a very low estimate for many women, with research populations showing 20-70% of women subjected to partner violence each year. The DFID-funded What Works to Prevent VAWG Programme gathered data over 6 years on drivers of violence and evaluated prevention programming in 13 countries. Its new analysis of drivers of violence, centrally positions the structural drivers of gender inequalities and related normalisation of use of violence, and poverty, as well as highlighting the importance of poor communication and relationship skills, poor mental health and harmful alcohol use, disability, child neglect and abuse as central drivers. All of these are exacerbated by armed conflict and its aftermath. This analysis importantly informs new strategies for prevention in the growing field of evidence based VAW prevention. Rigorous evaluations now show that VAW is preventable, and two-thirds of the global evidence comes from low and middle income countries. We now have a repertoire of 9 approaches which have been shown in rigorous research to prevent VAW, but it is notable that 'effective approaches' do not always work. A major advance in understanding from the What Works? programme has involved identifying the factors that seem to be critical to success. This hinges on having interventions that are well designed and implemented, ten key elements of good practice have been identified for this. We now know more than ever before about how to prevent VAW, we know it can be done in programmatic time frames and we know how to do it effectively. Our challenge is to roll out this knowledge to meaningfully impact women's lives, whilst extending the research and innovation to develop and test a pipeline of new ideas and adapt valuable programmes to new settings.