We assessed dozens of programs for men who use violence. Here’s what we learned
- Written by: Weekend Times
Domestic and family violence is an epidemic. In 2024, the prime minister declared it a national crisis.
Official statistics show time and time again that this violence is overwhelmingly perpetrated
by men. This is unlikely to be news to most of us– we see it play out in our communities, online, and on our screens.
But this isn’t just an Australian problem. The Indo-Pacific region, where Australia and 41 other countries are located, has some of the highest rates of domestic and family violence in the world.
Which raises this question: if we know this is a crisis, and we know who the majority of perpetrators are, why aren’t we seeing a clear reduction in domestic and family violence?
Our research suggests we might be falling short on our long-term investments in our approaches to engaging men who are using violence.
Mapping the full picture
We did a large study of the academic literature, casting a wide net to map out what kinds of programs for men using domestic and family violence are out there. This wasn’t to judge which programs are best, but to understand the full picture.
We screened more than 20,000 articles and found 50 articles discussing 42 unique programs across 14 Indo-Pacific countries, including Australia, India, Bangladesh, and Nepal.
Almost half of the 42 interventions were Australian. This isn’t because Australia leads the world in this work necessarily, but because academic publishing itself tends to favour English-language, Western research. This means we’re likely missing a lot of what’s happening elsewhere in the region.
Going beyond the norm
Most interventions were more creative than you’d think. Almost 75% of the included programs went beyond the standard men’s behaviour change programs.
A standard program uses a classic group therapy model, widely used for decades. It typically runs for several weeks, bringing men together in group sessions to work on changing their attitudes and behaviour.
When the standard model was used, it was most commonly used in Australia. For those interventions that did move outside of the traditional approach, they were often short-term “pilot” programs with limited funding.
Outside of Australia and New Zealand, community-based approaches were common. These types of interventions involve not just the man using domestic and family violence, but the broader community that men are from.
For example, one intervention in garment factories in Bangladesh, called HERrespect, used a model that combined “edu-tainment” in the form of skits and plays and intervention through awareness campaigns.
This and several other workplace-based interventions engage the whole community of workers, reaching men who might never have sought help otherwise.
There were some challenges in running HERrespect, but the program wasn’t funded for long enough to be properly evaluated, which means we can’t say if it was effective in actually reducing violence long-term.
Another example of a community-based intervention is the Indian program Parivartan (meaning transformation). This targeted young male cricket athletes, and their male coaches and mentors.
By including the players and the coaches, the program supported both prevention and intervention within a sporting community, aiming to foster more positive responses to violence. This type of program has been supported by other research to be an effective method for transforming men’s attitudes towards women.
But as of now, there is not enough evidence to say whether these interventions are actually making a difference long term.
Marginalised communities were nearly invisible across all interventions in the review. Only two of the 42 programs considered diverse populations, such as displaced Rohingya refugees in Malaysia, while Indigenous peoples, LGBTQIA+ peoples, migrants and those with disabilities are almost entirely absent in the design of the intiatives.
Committing for the long-term
What these findings tell us is that governments across the Indo-Pacific need to invest long-term in a range of approaches that go beyond the standard men’s behaviour change program.
A cricket coaching workshop in India or a garment factory awareness campaign in Bangladesh might look very different from a group therapy program in Brisbane, but that diversity may be key in genuinely engaging men.
There is no one-size-fits-all solution to domestic and family violence, and our funding and policy settings need to reflect that.
We can also see that more interventions need to be designed with the communities they aim to serve, not just adapted from traditional Western templates. This means co-designing programs with Indigenous communities, LGBTQIA+ people, migrants, and people with disability, rather than treating them as an afterthought.
Rainbow Door is the only domestic and family violence helpline for LGBTQIA+ people in Austalia. The helpline, based in Victoria, can provide support to help LGBTQIA+ people navigate the system safely. The impact of the service was clear during long COVID lockdown periods, although it became apparent that practitioners wouldn’t be able to keep up with the demand, pointing to the need for additional funding and expansion across Australia.
While this service doesn’t focus on men using violence specifically, it is one example of what a purposefully designed service can do for a community.
Australia could also learn a great deal from the approaches being used across the broader Indo-Pacific region, particularly those that engage the whole community, not just the man using violence. What would it look like to bring communities into this work in Australia?
A program that works and genuinely intervenes with domestic and family violence can mean a woman stays safe. A program that doesn’t work, or that never gets funded long enough to find out, leaves that same woman and her children at risk. Our research shows that promising approaches exist across the Indo-Pacific.
Freya McLachlan receives funding from the Australian Research Council. They are affiliated with the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.
