Abstract
Violence against women and girls is an important global health concern. Numerous health organizations highlight engaging men and boys in preventing violence against women as a potentially impactful public health prevention strategy. Adapted from an international setting for use in the US, “Manhood 2.0” is a “gender transformative” program that involves challenging harmful gender and sexuality norms that foster violence against women while promoting bystander intervention (i.e., giving boys skills to interrupt abusive behaviors they witness among peers) to reduce the perpetration of sexual violence (SV) and adolescent relationship abuse (ARA). Manhood 2.0 is being rigorously evaluated in a community-based cluster-randomized trial in 21 lower resource Pittsburgh neighborhoods with 866 adolescent males ages 13–19. The comparison intervention is a job readiness training program which focuses on the skills needed to prepare youth for entering the workforce, including goal setting, accountability, resume building, and interview preparation. This study will provide urgently needed information about the effectiveness of a gender transformative program, which combines healthy sexuality education, gender norms change, and bystander skills to interrupt peers' disrespectful and harmful behaviors to reduce SV/ARA perpetration among adolescent males. In this manuscript, we outline the rationale for and evaluation design of Manhood 2.0.Clinical Trials #: NCT02427061
Highlights
IntroductionPerpetration of sexual violence (SV)/adolescent relationship abuse (ARA) is associated with multiple individual and contextual factors, including exposure to adverse childhood experiences, poor conflict resolution and relationship skills, and norms that condone violence perpetration [14]
Among adolescents in the US, non-partner sexual violence (SV) often co-occurs with adolescent relationship abuse (ARA; physical, sexual, or emotional abuse by a partner) victimization [3], and such experiences are associated with poor health, including suicidality, depression, substance use, unintended pregnancy, and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) [4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13]
This study addresses SV and ARA perpetrated against adolescent females as a gendered problem, based on multiple studies demonstrating the relationship between males’ gender inequitable practice and SV/ARA perpetration by adolescent males [15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27]
Summary
Perpetration of SV/ARA is associated with multiple individual and contextual factors, including exposure to adverse childhood experiences, poor conflict resolution and relationship skills, and norms that condone violence perpetration [14]. This study addresses SV and ARA perpetrated against adolescent females as a gendered problem, based on multiple studies demonstrating the relationship between males’ gender inequitable practice (attitudes and behaviors that degrade women and promote ‘rigid masculinity’) and SV/ARA perpetration by adolescent males [15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27]. Health interventions that focus on promoting gender equity demonstrably reduce violence and substance use, increase condom use, decrease transactional sex, and increase communication between couples. [31,32,33,34,35,36,37,38,39]
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