Title:
The SASA! Way to preventing violence against women
Authors:
Michau, L.
Year:
2008
Serial number:
3
Journal:
Exchange on HIV/AIDS, sexuality and gender
Pages:
8
-
10
ISSN:
1871-7551
Language:
eng
Subject:
Health and Nutrition
Keywords:
HIV and AIDS
,
women
,
violence
,
empowerment
Abstract:
There is growing recognition that to reduce violence and women’s vulnerability to HIV, the link between these two issues must be addressed. Raising Voices, a Uganda-based organization, believes that the key to preventing the twin pandemics is to address the power imbalance between women and men. The challenge lies in developing methods that convert this concept into a practical, context-appropriate response for use by community activists. The SASA! Activist Kit is Raising Voices’ response to the challenge of meaningfully, provocatively, constructively and effectively tackling the sensitive and charged issue of reframing power dynamics between women and men. In developing the SASA Activist Kit, we explored HIV and AIDS and VAW programmes to learn how others were addressing them. There were a few examples but few that fostered broad-scale social change. Experience shows that changing social norms is the key to long-term, sustainable violence prevention and that the key to changing power dynamics in relationships is about challenging unjust social norms — deconstructing the negative norms and replacing them with positive ones that promote equality and justice.
Organization:
KIT - Royal Tropical Institute
Country:
Uganda
Region:
Africa South of Sahara
,
East Africa
Category:
Practice
Right:
© 2008 KIT
Document type:
E-article
File:
120679.pdf