Women around the world continue to face disheartening levels of violence from husbands, boyfriends, dates, colleagues and sometimes strangers.
I’ll never forget the day I passed a house in Brazil surrounded by police. Neighbors speaking on the street shared in hushed tones how they had heard the screams. Rather than a surprise, this woman’s violent death seemed to have followed years of torment at the hands of her husband – so much so that some who lived close-by admitted they had become used to it.
How was this even possible? Our own review of 285 risk factor studies provides some clearer answers to that question. The multifaceted patterns we found are a collective signal that both the problem and the solution to violence against women (including “domestic violence,” “spousal abuse,” “family violence” and “intimate partner violence”) go far beyond patterns specific to either the victim or perpetrator.
Sexual violence, our primary focus here, is one especially horrifying part of the larger picture of violence against women, and often takes place when other kinds of abuse are present. Perhaps if we understood — truly understood, at a deeper level — why such abuse was taking place, we could do something more about it.
In a 2014 review of strategies to prevent sexual violence perpetration, CDC researchers stated that “the vast majority of preventative interventions evaluated to date have failed to demonstrate sufficient evidence of impact on sexual violence perpetration behaviors.”
They went on to call for “an evidence-based, comprehensive, multi-level strategy to combat sexual violence,” suggesting that “addressing a broader range of risk and protective factors for sexual violence may be more likely to be effective.”
The kinds of clear patterns showing up in the risk factor literature really do provide powerful signals for a more effective, evidence-based prevention strategy. Based in our review of these root contributors, we outline below what that might look like.
10 lifestyle patterns that increase protection
1. Helping lift families and communities out of poverty
Since poor women and men are more vulnerable to every kind of abuse, including sexual violence (victimization and perpetration), helping lift families out of poverty is a huge force in reducing abuse risk. That includes connecting adults with meaningful employment, since unemployed men and women are both more at risk.
It’s also true, however, that women finding employment in some quarters of the world can make them more vulnerable – especially in certain isolating professions and when a husband may feel threatened by a woman’s higher status.
Yet financial security for women is clearly a protection generally. After finding herself in an abusive relationship that needed to end, Pamela, 34, told researchers, “I knew I would have to put myself in that position to end the relationship.”
After finally getting a job and her own apartment, she left the harmful relationship since she “stopped depending on him.”
2. Expanding educational opportunities for both women and men
With better educated men less likely to perpetrate violence, and better educated women less likely to be victims, it’s not surprising to see scholars emphasizing the impact of “increasing the educational level in spouses of both sexes” as a way to reduce couple violence.
This same Bengali study observed a “dose-effect relationship” with the risk of family violence “declining with an increasing level of spouses’ education.”
Even focused learning in a particular area can make a difference. According to one U.S. research team, “a few women attributed learning how to drive as a way to get out of abusive relationships.” Monica, 25, reported her abuser didn’t want her to get a driver’s license, “but I was persistent and I got it.”
3. Helping nurture marriages and families that are healthy and happy
Since marriages that are controlling, highly conflicted and unsatisfying make abuse more likely, working to help couples learn cooperative patterns in a harmonious relationship that is enjoyable for both is a natural way to prevent couple violence.
That includes encouraging partner empathy, and teaching attitudes that undermine general hostility, gendered superiority and sexual entitlement.
Since marriages that fall apart completely also heighten violence risk, taking steps to preserve marriages can also be invaluable — as long as those marriages being preserved are not already harmful and abusive.
Even as a child, the quality of one’s family atmosphere and parental marriage is protective against victimization, years later, as an adult. That’s why studies suggest that efforts to reduce harsh conflict and promote “family cohesion” and “emotional expressiveness in the family,” will likely reduce vulnerability to later abuse. This also better ensures that children become adults with a positive mental model of how partners can make joint decisions together.
4. Providing additional support for younger and larger families
While children bring joy into a family, they can also increase stress in a marriage and family. This may be one reason why larger families can be more vulnerable to falling into patterns of violence.
This highlights the importance of parental “training for coping with stress and anger” – along with the value of providing higher levels of support for families facing exhaustion and emotional overwhelm. That includes instances where a mother is pregnant or when a couple is navigating infertility struggles.
5. Helping to prevent compulsivity and support addicts in finding freedom
Since drug and alcohol use significantly raises the risk of sexual violence perpetration for men and victimization for women, preventing substance abuse (and encouraging recovery) can make a measurable difference in reducing such intimate violence – and indeed, any kind of abuse. In fact, controlling drugs and alcohol is one of the “situational crime prevention” techniques recognized as effective in reducing crime opportunities.
More specifically, a 2016 CDC sexual violence prevention summary points out that “alcohol policy approaches with the strongest evidence related to sexual violence are those which work to reduce excessive alcohol use by increasing prices or reducing the density of (alcohol-selling) outlets in a community.”
Other CDC researchers had earlier highlighted the evidence for specific policies focused on “alcohol pricing, alcohol outlet density” and “banning alcohol on campus and in substance-free dorms.” Each holds significant “potential as a preventative approach for sexual violence perpetration.”
“Alcohol policy may represent one promising avenue for the prevention of sexual violence perpetration at the community level,” they concluded.
Alcoholism, of course, is only one addiction with strong ties to sexual violence. With over 100 studies linking pornography use with sexual aggression, it also stands to reason that helping people overcome compulsive, out-of-control pornography use will protect everyone around them from the increased risk of acting out sexual impulses — especially on vulnerable women and children.
Any positive teaching or socialization that counters cognitive distortions involving hypersexualized thought patterns will also help — as will training that deepens empathy and compassion generally.
6. Encouraging the value of sexually-exclusive marriages and healthy, non-aggressive masculinity
Since earlier sexual experiences and casual “hook-ups” both raise the risk of sexual violence, research suggests that encouraging the delay of sexual experiences until enduring relationships can form is likely to decrease sexual violence against women (ideally within marriage, since cohabitation also raises the risk of sexual violence according to several studies).
Social norms that discourage extramarital affairs should also help prevent victimization, since affairs and assault are correlated. Impulsivity generally is a risk factor, so any socialization that reinforces genuine self-control and emotional regulation should also help.
Working to protect victims is clearly not enough. As CDC researchers wrote in 2014, “Although risk reduction approaches that aim to prevent victimization can be important and valuable pieces of the prevention puzzle, a decrease in the number of actual and potential perpetrators in the population is necessary to achieve measurable reductions in the prevalence of sexual violence.”
They go on describe the proven impact of “preventing behavioral patterns of aggression and violence, particularly from taking shape in the first place” as “an important step toward achieving population-level reductions in rates of sexual violence.”
In particular, these CDC sexual violence researchers highlight the protective benefits connected with “fostering healthy, positive norms about masculinity, gender and violence among individuals with potential for these social norms to spread through their social networks.”
They highlight especially something many faith communities provide today, namely, the impact of “adult male implementers who can serve as strong role models for healthy, positive definitions of masculinity.”
7. Fostering deeper healing for mental health challenges
Since depression and the vulnerability associated with this and other mental health problems appear to make abuse more likely, more proactive efforts to help those struggling emotionally find more lasting healing should also make a protective difference. That’s true not just for women, who are more likely to be victimized, but also for men who are struggling with significant mental health problems, who have a greater risk of perpetrating if they are chronically sick and unable to find deeper healing.
Rather than relying on psychotropic medication alone, the evidence for sexual aggression and emotional blunting as occasional treatment side-effects calls for a broadening of attention to other lifestyle approaches for working through mental health challenges.
Spanish researchers also recommend that mental health professionals make “routine enquiries about sexual life” for those with more severe mental health conditions, “including questions about sexual drive during manic episodes” in order “to mitigate the physical, psychic and family consequences of promiscuous and risky sexual behavior.”
8. Helping those who have experienced earlier abuse to work through post-traumatic symptoms
Those who have been hurt in the past by earlier victimization – physically, emotionally, or sexually — are at significantly increased risk for future sexual victimization and for perpetrating abuse on others. As the saying goes, “hurt people hurt people.”
This underscores the value of prioritizing trauma healing for any man or woman still weighed down by the complex sequelae of painful earlier experiences — whether they took place as a child or in young adult years.
This is even more urgent when someone has experienced multiple kinds of overlapping abuse, which raises their risk of later sexual violence (and other abuse) even more, and increases the urgency for comprehensive healing support.
9. Expanding robust community connections and durable social support
When women are integrated within and surrounded by a supportive network of friends, family and other community connections, they are less likely to be sexually victimized. And men embedded within the same kind of supportive network are, likewise, less likely to perpetrate sexually against women.
That is not automatically true, however, especially within a community that somehow normalizes abuse or sexual violence in any way as sometimes justified. But as long as community connections are healthy, these relationships protect against all sorts of abuse, including sexual aggression.
This may be especially important for individuals most vulnerable to being victimized, including women who are younger, older and disabled, as well as women who are ethnic minorities, refugees or immigrants — especially when a language barrier exists, or when they are undocumented.
Gender minorities also need added support due to heightened vulnerability.
Staying alert to instances where a woman is generally isolated — or moving into a situation of unique, temporary isolation — is also crucial.
That can include isolated residences, jobs with unique levels of isolation, or romantic relationships where normal friend/family connections become cut off. Providing proactive, targeted support after a regional violent conflict or a natural disaster is also crucial since these general disruptions can also leave women (and children) especially isolated and vulnerable.
10. Fostering healthy spirituality and religious connection
Religious affiliation, identification and participation is not automatically protective against sexual violence. But studies in various countries make it clear that a certain kind of religiosity clearly is. These studies show repeatedly that faith participation can prevent both perpetration and victimization. This seems, in part, due to pro-social teachings, avoidance of risky behavior and a sense of higher purpose and meaning.
By helping women and men develop “intrinsic” commitments to faith (genuine and not superficial), the evidence confirms they are less likely to be sexually victimized or to become perpetrators. This is especially true when that faith emphasizes the importance of (a) repentance and self-control (avoiding alcohol, drugs and sexual promiscuity) and (b) having merciful, loving relationships (without domineering control).
“Misinterpretation of religious beliefs” was cited in a Pakistani analysis of influences on sexual and other kinds of violence at home, with the authors advocating for “public policy informed by correct interpretation of religion” which they said could prompt “a change in prevailing societal norms.”
After analyzing data from the Philippines, another research team notes that religious institutions may reduce the risk of violence in a relationship “by promoting messages encouraging a commitment to family life, providing counseling in conflict resolution or alcohol-related problems, providing information about resources in the community …. and providing an opportunity for strengthening social networks.”
U.S. researchers likewise talk about religious involvement as providing a tangible way to address intimate partner victimization — considering “whether religious involvement, and the prosocial social bonds associated with religious involvement, can provide viable options to address this social issue and, perhaps, other forms of victimization.”
Multiple, overlapping avenues of prevention
Some of these ten themes are reflected in a 2016 prevention resource released by the CDC called “STOP SV.” This resource highlighted research-based recommendations that include efforts to “provide opportunities to empower and support girls and women, support victims/survivors to lessen harms, create protective environments, teach skills to prevent sexual violence and promote social norms that protect against violence.”
These same researchers stated that the evidence at the time remained “limited and must continuously be built through rigorous evaluation.”
To summarize the practical implications of our own analysis, research suggests that women will have measurably different levels of vulnerability to sexual violence depending on the environments and lifestyles that make up their day-to-day experiences. Given this, some of the best ways to ensure women remain safe may be to proactively encourage life and community patterns proven to protect against both victimization and perpetration, including:
- Healthy marriages that are cooperative and satisfying, surrounded by layers of trustworthy community support.
- An atmosphere where education is prioritized and there are adequate resources to provide for the financial needs of the family, while helping both men and women avoid drugs and alcohol, delay sexual behavior until marriage, and learn how to control anger and impulses.
- A hopeful environment that nurtures healing from past trauma and current mental health challenges, while ideally also providing a grounding sense of higher purpose and spiritual meaning.
According to the evidence, women embedded in this kind of a context will be significantly less likely to be sexually victimized (or abused in other ways) — compared with those living within chaotic settings with poor education, financial deficits, fraying marriages, spiritual detachment, few healing resources, rampant substance abuse, sexual promiscuity and out of control anger.
Just as any vulnerability can be exploited by perpetrators, any time a vulnerability is shored up and turned into a strength, there is more protection against multiple kinds of abuse. Therefore, if we want to get at the roots of sexual victimization, more focus needs to go towards these kinds of protective life patterns, and additional ways to encourage and promote them.
If you or someone you love has experienced sexual assault of any kind and need additional support in the U.S., contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline (1-800-656-HOPE)- with virtual and text-based options available. This is a confidential networking service in the U.S. helping connect victims with local agencies who can offer therapeutic support across the country. Similar kinds of hotlines exist in many countries around the world.