Why Do Some Men Use Violence Against Women and How Can We Prevent It?

Why Do Some Men Use Violence Against Women and How Can We Prevent It?

September 10, 2013

Through a regional joint programme ‘Partners for Prevention’, UNDP, UNFPA, UN Women and UNV have worked together to undertake the UN Multi-country Study on Men and Violence in Asia and the Pacific. The study, which collected and analysed data from thousands of women and men across the region, provides the largest multi-country data set on men’s perpetration of violence against women and can inform more evidence-based interventions to prevent such violence. The research was also conceptualized to ascertain men’s own experiences of violence as victims and/or as witnesses and to assess how that may be related to men’s perpetration of different types of violence.

The objectives of the study were to:

1. better understand men’s use of different forms of violence against women (specifically, intimate partner violence and non-partner rape) in the Asia–Pacific region;

2. assess men’s own experience of violence as well as their perpetration of violence against other men and how it relates to the perpetration of violence against women;

3. identify factors associated with men’s perpetration of different forms of violence against women; and

4. promote evidence-based policies and programmes to prevent violence against women.