Gender-norms, Violence and Adolescence: Exploring how Gender Norms Are Associated with Experiences of Childhood Violence among Young Adolescents in Ethiopia

"[V]iolence prevention programming should prioritise shifting community norms, particularly in rural areas, in order to promote adolescent girls' and boys' right to bodily integrity."

Gender norms - learned during childhood and reinforced by family and community interactions - perpetuate power imbalances based on gender. As with violence against women, childhood violence has its roots in unequal power dynamics and can be affected by inequitable gender norms. However, although violence against women and violence against children share overlapping risk factors, researchers behind the Gender and Adolescence: Global Evidence (GAGE) study have recognised the need for more research on the role of gender norms in experiences of childhood violence, specifically. Using data from GAGE study, this paper explores how adolescent and household attitudes and community-level gender norms influence experiences of violence among young adolescents in Ethiopia.

GAGE follows 20,000 adolescents and their caregivers across six countries over nine years (2015-2024), using qualitative and quantitative research methods to better understand what works to support the development of adolescents' capabilities. This paper, as part of the wider GAGE study, focuses on the roles of power, gender, and social norms within a context of multiple relationships interacting between differing domains. GAGE's conceptual framework (see Related Summaries, below) builds on the socio-ecological model and explores the factors that affect adolescent health and social outcomes, including the role of parental attitudes and community norms in shaping adolescent capabilities and broader wellbeing.

The paper uses GAGE baseline data collected in Ethiopia in 2017 and 2018. The quantitative dataset includes responses from 5,448 girls and boys aged 10-12 from three diverse regions of Ethiopia (rural Afar, rural and urban areas of Amhara, and rural and urban areas of Oromia). The qualitative data were gathered through individual and group interviews using interactive tools with 192 adolescent girls and boys and 158 caregivers who were predominantly selected from the quantitative sample.

The primary independent measures explored in this paper are inequitable gender attitudes (IGAs) and inequitable gender norms (IGNs), measured at the level of the individual and household (attitudes) and the community (norms). The primary outcome utilised was experience of household violence in the past 12 months.

Selective results:

• More than half of adolescents reported experiencing some form of violence in the past year (66.3%), with little variation between girls (65.6%) and boys (66.9%). Overall, adolescents reported higher rates of psychological (61.2%) compared to physical (49.8%) violence. Children in rural areas (67.1%) reported more violence than those in urban locations (59.4%) (p < .05).
• At the individual level, adolescents agreed with IGAs (a higher score on the scale indicates more inequitable attitudes), with a mean score of 6.578 on a 16-point scale. There was no statistical variation in these scores between boys and girls. However, qualitative data suggested that boys' gender attitudes were more conservative than those of girls. There was a wider divide between respondents from urban (5.526) and rural areas (6.701) (p < .001), with adolescents in rural areas holding more inequitable views.
• At the household level, female caregivers (7.110) generally held more inequitable attitudes than the adolescent cohort (6.578). There were differences between caregivers from urban (5.414) and rural (7.312) areas (p < .001).
• At the community level, urban communities reported less inequitable (7.438) norms than rural communities (8.071) (p < .001). For instance, norms in urban communities emerged as less supportive of physical punishment, leading parents to adjust their parenting styles. A female participant in a discussion in Batu Town explained that this shift in attitudes was being promoted in parent–teacher meetings: "When they were a child sometimes I beat them but now I don't beat them, mostly I bark at them. The current generation doesn't want to be beaten by parents, so not beating children is becoming a trend."
• For boys and girls, community norms were significantly associated with experiences of household and psychological violence, while individual attitudes were not. There was no association between gender attitudes or norms and experiences of physical violence in sub-analysis.
• While in the quantitative survey IGAs and norms has similar impacts on boys and girls, the qualitative research highlights that there were gendered differences in reasons for violence. When younger adolescent girls were verbally insulted or physically punished, it tended to be because they were not living up to local norms around femininity and mastery of domestic chores.

Qualitative results highlight reductions in violence in older adolescence, possibly due to gendered shifts in social expectations for caregiver behaviours toward an adolescent girl versus boy after puberty. Another explanation for this reduction is the fact that exposure to harsh physical punishment and psychological treatment pushes some adolescent girls and boys out of the caregiver household due to "running away, distress migration or suicide attempts".

In short, this study finds that "community norms are more influential than individual attitudes for experiences of household violence for this age group. This highlights the importance of programming and communications outreach efforts that prioritise shifting wider gender and adolescent-age related norms, as part of a package of interventions to reduce violence against children. This package could include improved reporting systems, capacity strengthening for social workers, healthcare workers and justice officials to identify and respond to violence against children in the home, and parenting awareness sessions on positive disciplinary approaches."