A WOW! e-Brief

Work of Women program @ World Neighbors

March 2007

Overview

World Neighbors Work to End Violence

 

A Conversation with Rainera Lucero and Natalie Elwell

Rainera "Rene" Lucero, World Neighbors program coordinator for the Philippines, and Natalie Elwell, program coordinator for action learning, communication and gender, have worked on preventing and dealing with violence against women in different World Neighbors sites. They recently sat down with WOW! for an informal conversation about their work.

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WOW: Rene, how does domestic violence affect women in the Philippines?

Lucero: Violence is a common problem in the Philippines, especially since most women don’t have their own livelihoods. There is a lot of dependency on men, and because of that, men feel they are very powerful over women, and women feel they are very inferior. So they lack self-confidence. There are a lot of cases, a lot of incidents.

Some women have bruises on their bodies—physical abuse. And some of them also experience mental effects, to some extent. Some of them experience… locally they call it bughat, when women feel weak and always afraid. They will begin to shake at just anything. So it affects them physically and mentally, and then socially they will just tend to shy away from other people.

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WOW: Could you both describe some ways that World Neighbors addresses this issue?

Lucero: Both men and women are brought together and they are given some trainings, some seminars about the rights of women and the laws in the Philippines that protect women, because people aren’t aware of that. And in activities, women are given more space to participate and to discuss with other women their situation. If there are cases of violence, and women want to address that, some communities are organized in such a way that they assist women who are violated to seek help, like going to government offices or to a health center for assistance. Some legal assistance can be provided.

Elwell: We have found globally that improving couples communication contributes greatly to reducing domestic violence. We have several activities that we conduct with couples to help them understand and appreciate each other’s perspectives, to value women’s roles and contributions, to realize the detrimental effects of current practices and to shape a positive and equitable alternative. We have some specific examples written up in case studies. [For an example see Gender & Decision Making - Kenya Case Study available through www.wn.org – Ed.]

It is also clear that poverty is a stress factor in domestic violence. The frustration of not being able to provide for the family or the pressures from lack of resources and debt, combined with a lack of coping skills, often manifests in domestic violence. Helping families increase their agricultural production as well as identify additional sources of income alleviate the pressures of extreme poverty, which in turn, tends to reduce domestic violence.

WOW: What about some of the challenges World Neighbors faces?

 

Lucero: Right after they experience battering, some women decide to separate from their husband. Even if you start helping, eventually, after a week or two, the battered woman will often decide to go back to her husband. That’s usually the case. And the reasons for that are that she cannot stay alone because she doesn’t have any livelihood to support herself. Or because of the situation she could not bring her children with her and provide for their needs, and she feels she cannot live without her children.

Elwell: The Philippines is somewhat advanced, compared to other places we work, in addressing domestic violence. In many places women won’t even leave when they are abused. Domestic violence is considered normal or the wife’s fault. The primary challenge, particularly when we first begin working in communities, is to overcome this mindset—to raise awareness about the causes and consequences of domestic violence on women, families and communities—to the point where they begin to take steps to change their acceptance of and tolerance for it. In the Philippines they’ve moved past that to where they have laws at even the community level. Now the challenge for them is enforcing and supporting those laws.

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WOW: Could you share some examples of strategies that World Neighbors has used related to ending violence against women?

Lucero: In the Philippines there is something called bantay banay, or family watch groups in the community. Some leaders in the community are trained to address this—the legal side of it, the health side of it, the counseling, and things like that. They have some responses to domestic violence at the community level. For example, there is a drunk husband who comes home. The community knows the households or the couples that usually end up fighting. So he returns home and he starts beating her. Some women in the neighborhood would go near the house and try to disturb the beating, for example, by making noise outside the house—just to make them aware that some people are listening, are monitoring what’s going on. Just to disturb them. Usually what they do is they have this bamboo pole, and they just “bang bang bang.” They announce to the community that there is a household where there is fighting. Women go to the house and make some noise to disturb the husband.

If the husband drinks somewhere, sometimes people will warn the wife ahead of time that the husband is out drinking so that she will be aware. In cases like this, the family watch groups would hide the woman and her children in another house until the husband becomes sober.

Elwell: Related to that, in Haiti, the groups supported by our partners will establish “norms.” One in particular that helps to address domestic violence is that no one can harm another group member. Usually husband and wife are members of the group together. So if a husband hits his wife, he will be expelled from the group and cannot take advantage of its benefits, like access to tools, seeds and credit.

Other areas that are at the early stages of addressing domestic violence will conduct awareness raising activities through things like popular theater, where the skits bring issues to light in a non-personal way. The skits make it clear that the abuser is a buffoon to be ridiculed, not a man of power. What’s really powerful about the plays, though, is that they provide an alternative—they don’t just highlight the negative cultural behaviors, they also have skits that show the preferred positive behavior and there’s dialogue about how they got there. One that I attended in Burkina Faso actually engaged the audience after the performance in a dialogue about the situations presented in the skits.

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In the Philippines, some of our partners have gotten involved with a campaign to organize, train and support men against violence against women—like the White Ribbon Campaign. Similarly, in Guatemala one of our partners conducted workshops with men to help them overcome their association between their masculinity and power over their wives—helping them to find more positive expressions of their masculinity.

There are many “causes” of domestic violence. While we help communities identify and address those specific causes, the overarching issue is power. World Neighbors programs work on changing power dynamics through what we call a needs-based approach. Rather than enter a community with a program that presents freedom from abuse as a woman’s right—which usually threatens men’s power and alienates them before they can become part of the solutions, we work with communities to analyze the causes and consequences of domestic violence. Through this work they come to realize the negative effects on women’s reproductive health and on her productivity, as well as the happiness of the family. They also come to realize what triggers domestic violence and what they can do to change their reaction. Finally, they see the need to change this behavior in order to realize a better life—not just for women, but for families and communities. Once the need is realized, the threat to men is reduced and they are supportive of changes, including the attainment of equal rights for women.

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Natalie Elwell is World Neighbors program coordinator for action learning communication and gender. She provides support to World Neighbors field teams to extract and communicate key lessons for learning and sharing, as well as influencing the policies and practices of target audiences. Elwell also provides methodological support for promoting gender equity in integrated programs. Elwell earned her master’s in sustainable development with an emphasis on gender in development from the School for International Training and a bachelor’s in communication from Cleveland State University.

 

Rainera Lucero is the Philippines program coordinator for World Neighbors. Since 2000 she has led World Neighbors program development in that country, working to increase community capacity in managing and sustaining their own development. Lucero joined World Neighbors in September 2000 with a background in reproductive health, community development and natural resource management. She earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology, and a master’s degree in social science.

 

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