To Challenge Violence Against Women, We Must Confront Gender Inequality and Power

In the aftermath of the revelation that a group of seven men allegedly gang-raped a young woman over several hours at Cornell University while she was unable to provide consent, many people have understandably felt horrified, heartbroken, and outraged. Cases like this one make clear that broader, more urgent action is needed to confront the gendered power dynamics that enable men’s violence against women. Yet despite decades of evidence identifying gender and power as central to this violence, that knowledge has too often been missing in how violence is understood and addressed in the United States — not only in the responses of universities, police, and prosecutors, but also in how we conduct research, assign accountability, and translate findings into prevention efforts.

As public health researchers focusing on the global prevention of violence against women, we are dismayed that U.S. research and prevention efforts have increasingly moved away from this longstanding evidence base. Volumes of research studies have consistently linked gender-inequitable attitudes, harmful masculinity norms that promote male dominance, and peer-group support for such misogyny to men’s perpetration of violence against women. Yet over the past two decades, U.S. research and prevention efforts have too often failed to address the gendered social, economic, and institutional systems that sustain inequality and violence. Prevention messaging continues to place disproportionate responsibility on women to reduce their own risk: watch their drinks; avoid walking home alone; share their location; stay near friends; and be cautious about what they wear, where they go, and whom they trust. Even after #MeToo became mainstream in 2017, this messaging has continued.

More fundamentally, researchers tend to treat distinct forms of violence as if they arise from the same causes. Common checklist measures (items that ask whether specific behaviors occurred, such as slapping a partner) often turn a list of behaviors into a measure of “violence” without capturing the context or the role of inequitable power relations and structural conditions that shape who is targeted, what those behaviors mean, and how violence is experienced. These choices matter because the resulting findings inform prevention efforts. Notably, on college campuses, most U.S. campus prevention programs currently rely on generic bystander or risk-reduction strategies without addressing the gender inequality, peer dynamics, and institutional practices that enable sexual violence.

This erasure does not occur in a political vacuum. In the United States, allegations of sexual assault and misconduct involving powerful public figures have repeatedly been met with denial, partisan defense, and attacks on survivors. At the same time, gender-based violence prevention, women’s rights, and gender scholarship are under siege. This context makes it especially important for researchers and prevention efforts to name, not obscure, the gendered power relations that enable violence against women and shape accountability.

Simply put, addressing violence against women requires changing men’s and boys’ attitudes toward women and girls, challenging norms that support men’s violence, and creating a society that values gender equality. We need approaches that do more than change individual behavior. Our prevention approaches must also encourage critical analysis of masculinity and gender inequality; build skills to recognize and interrupt harmful or disrespectful behavior; promote more equitable relationships; strengthen women’s agency; and seek to transform the institutions that allow violence to persist, including changing how schools, police, prosecutors, and other institutions respond to violence and assign accountability.

A few illustrative examples of relevant public health programs that aim to prevent violence against women include Program H. This has been implemented in multiple countries and engages young men in peer groups to re-examine misogyny, gender, power, sexuality, and violence. Another program, Coaching Boys Into Men, trains middle- and high-school coaches to lead weekly discussions with male athletes about respect, consent, dating abuse, and bystander intervention. By using coaches as trusted role models and team culture as a setting for prevention, the program engages boys directly in challenging the idea that aggression demonstrates strength. A newer U.S.-based initiative, Unscripted, engages college students in challenging harmful forms of masculinity, examining equitable gender relationships, and exploring the relationship between mental health and violence prevention. Findings from Program H, Coaching Boys Into Men, and related programs are promising, including improvements in gender-equitable attitudes, ability to recognize abusive behavior, bystander intentions and behaviors, and, in some cases, reductions in men’s use of violence against women. However, we need substantially more investment in these types of prevention interventions that seek to dismantle inequitable gender norms and attitudes.

Unfortunately, U.S. funding agencies and researchers have underinvested in developing and testing these approaches. Too often, research and prevention efforts have treated violence primarily as the result of individual factors or stressors, leaving out the gendered norms and inequitable power relations that shape men’s violence against women. This framing is increasingly visible in public discourse, including in the proliferation of the “manosphere,” where men’s violence is explained primarily as a consequence of poor mental health or loneliness, while social movements such as #MeToo are portrayed as having gone too far or unfairly targeting men. Both narratives divert attention from gender inequality, power, and the need to hold men who perpetrate violence accountable.

Focusing on men’s mental health is important, but it cannot excuse or justify violence against women and girls. Programs we have implemented in West Africa show that we can promote men’s mental health by strengthening social support among men and challenging patriarchal norms that discourage men from seeking help. This is done while also addressing harmful behaviors and attitudes toward women and girls. It is not one or the other.

These principles should guide prevention efforts more broadly. Too often, prevention programs stop short by only engaging men and boys as potential allies. We need to go well beyond that by engaging men and boys in actually changing the peer, relationship, and community norms that shape harmful ideas about manhood, misogyny, intimacy, sex, and accountability. Research should test which strategies can disrupt deeply ingrained patterns of harmful masculine behavior and move beyond checklist measures of individual acts that obscure how gender and power shape perpetration.

The Cornell case should compel us to act on what decades of research has shown: Preventing men’s violence against women requires research and prevention efforts that address gender inequality, power relations, and the social norms that sustain the status quo. Otherwise, we continue to put women and girls at risk, and cases like the one at Cornell will remain inevitable rather than preventable.