Drawing on diverse partnerships to identify, address, and measure context-specific gender norms

Intervention approaches that address social norms, both through strengthening positive norms and weakening harmful norms, hold promise in addressing some of the most intractable domains of gender and social inequity, such as gender-based violence and unpaid or devalued caregiving. While the international community increasingly recognizes the importance of norms, culturally and contextually informed normative constructs and measures remain largely absent from programme design, curricula, and evaluation. This Policy and Practice submission from the Uganda-based REAL Fathers Consortium outlines the role of the project’s diverse, global, and multidisciplinary partnerships that serve as the foundation for: the identification of social norms using participatory community-based qualitative approaches (2023–24); validation of qualitative results; linking results to intervention strategies; and the development of measures to assess norms change in quantitative programme evaluation. These approaches provide a roadmap for other interdisciplinary, multicultural implementation and research teams on how to identify and address social and gender norms within local contexts. When applied, these approaches hold promise for more impactful research and transformative programme activities that address root causes of gender inequity

Citizen journalism · Multidisciplinary approach · Normative · Participatory action research · Qualitative property · Qualitative research · Transformative learning · Adolescent Sexual and Reproductive Health · Global Maternal and Child Health · Poverty, Education, and Child Welfare