Masculinities, Faith and Peace Project Baseline Report: Quantitative Data Analysis Report.
Key Social Norms Take-aways: The Masculinities, Faith, and Peace (MFP) baseline study highlights key gaps between personal attitudes and perceived social norms related to family planning (FP), gender roles, and intimate partner violence (IPV) in Plateau State, Nigeria. Individuals often hold more progressive views than they believe others in their community do, suggesting misperceptions that […]
Masculinities, Faith, and Peace in Nigeria
Key Social Norms Take-aways: The Masculinities, Faith, and Peace (MFP) project in Nigeria highlights how faith-based, community-led dialogue can shift entrenched social norms around gender roles, family planning, and intimate partner violence. By reframing religious narratives through an inclusive and interfaith lens, MFP successfully challenged norms that equated masculinity with virility and sanctioned violence against […]
Transforming Masculinities and Promoting Family Planning in Faith-based Communities: Midline Ethnography Report.
Key Social Norms Take-aways: The MFF (Masculinité, Famille, et Foi) midline ethnography demonstrates the central role of faith institutions in shaping and potentially transforming gender norms related to family planning (FP), gender-based violence (GBV), and masculinities in Kinshasa, DRC. While participants were generally receptive to MFF messages, many continued to interpret gender equality as complementary […]
Age and Agency: Evidence from a Women’s Empowerment Program in Tanzania
Key Social Norms Take-aways: This study highlights that community-level social norms around child marriage—specifically, the average perceived appropriate age of marriage and norms around girls’ education and labor—significantly influence individual girls’ marriage expectations and transitions. Norms function both through collective expectations and the behavior of others in the community, reinforcing early marriage in contexts where […]
Designing for two: How enhancing human-centered design with behavioral nudges unlocked breakthroughs to promote young women’s psychological safety and access to reproductive care in Tanzania
Key Social Norms Take-aways: The Malkia Klabu intervention in Tanzania demonstrates how social norms that stigmatize adolescent girls’ access to sexual and reproductive health (SRH) can be strategically shifted through context-sensitive, peer-driven, and incentive-based approaches. The program capitalized on AGYW’s peer networks to normalize SRH-seeking behaviors, reduce gatekeeping by shopkeepers, and foster a sense of […]
More Than Brides Alliance: Endline Evaluation Report
Key Social Norms Take-aways: The More Than Brides Alliance (MTBA) endline evaluation shows that shifting social norms—particularly around the value of girls’ education, the ideal age of marriage, and gender roles in relationships—is central to reducing child marriage. While individual-level knowledge and attitudes improved across intervention sites, broader normative change was uneven and highly context-specific. […]
The impact of an intervention to prevent intimate partner violence against women in Tanzania: findings from the MAISHA cluster randomised controlled trial
Key Social Norms Take-aways: This study provides strong evidence that adolescent girls’ perceptions of gendered social norms—particularly around marriage and education—are predictive of their expectations for their own futures. Norms around when girls should marry, whether education is valuable for them, and whether they are expected to work or stay home shape their aspirations and […]
Étude des effets de l’intervention de l’École des Maris sur les dynamiques de genre pour améliorer la santé reproductive au Niger
Key Social Norms Take-aways: This report explores the deeply rooted norms in Niger that limit women’s autonomy, particularly in decision-making around marriage, reproduction, and economic participation. Although there are many burdens associated with early and forced marriage, social norms and gender roles continue to pressure girls into early unions. Notably, while some community actors advocate […]
An Entertainment-Education Initiative on Television A glimpse into production process
Key Social Norms Take-aways: The evaluation of Kyunki… Jeena Isi Ka Naam Hai illustrates that long-running entertainment-education programs can contribute to shifts in social norms and health behaviors at scale, particularly when built on a robust theoretical foundation and broadcast consistently over time. The show significantly influenced collective perceptions around key reproductive, maternal, newborn, and […]
Community activism as a strategy to reduce intimate partner violence (IPV) in rural Rwanda: Results of a community randomized trial
Key Social Norms Take-aways: The evaluation of Indashyikirwa reveals that efforts to shift social norms around intimate partner violence (IPV) must be deeply grounded in the local context and allowed adequate time to take root. While the intervention was built on a norms-change framework, community-level change did not occur within the study’s timeframe. This highlights […]