Preventing violence against women and girls in Bihar: challenges for implementation and evaluation

Abstract

While there are a growing number of interventions and evaluations of programmes aimed at changing gender norms and violence against women and girls, there remains a dearth of documentation outlining the challenges faced in conducting these interventions and evaluations, particularly in traditional and low literacy settings. The Do Kadam Barabari Ki Ore (Two Steps Towards Equality) programme sought to understand what works to prevent violence against women and girls in Bihar, India. This paper draws insights from process evaluation data. It describes promising features and challenges of implementation, and characteristics which weaken the potential effects of complex, community based, social sector programmes that aim to change deeply entrenched gender power hierarchies This work was funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID) South Asia Research Hub’s ‘Preventing Violence against Women and Girls in India’ programme