Shifting Culture to End Gender-Based Violence

As the world marks the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence, the global community faces a critical truth: laws, services, and crisis responses—while essential—cannot end violence on their own. Across countries and communities, violence persists not because of a lack of frameworks or statutes to prevent it, but because of the deeply entrenched norms and cultural attitudes that legitimise power imbalances, control and entitlement. These norms shape everything from how families raise boys and girls, to how digital spaces are built and moderated, to whether survivors feel safe coming forward.

For those of us committed to long-term gender and rights work, investing in the cultural and narrative conditions is the foundation that makes meaningful and sustained prevention possible. 

Without a culture that normalises women and gender-diverse people being out and about for leisure, sports and work – violence continues to be rationalised. Without challenging the social norms that legitimise segregation, policing, and moral judgement – gender based violence (GBV) will continue unabated. For sustained change, we have to shift the conditions that make violence of all kinds socially permissible.

Why culture and narrative work is indispensable

Gender based violence is not only an individual or interpersonal issue. It is a community-level phenomenon sustained by shared beliefs—about masculinity, shame, sexuality, mobility, and the limits placed on women’s agency. These beliefs are so normalised that they become invisible and therefore, often go unchallenged. As a result, intervention efforts tend to surface only after harm has occurred, placing the burden on survivors and service-delivery systems that are already overstretched. Too often, this is where the conversation stops: culture is viewed as elusive, unchangeable, or outside the scope of intervention. But culture is neither vague nor static; it is dynamic, actionable, measurable, and ultimately the operating system that governs whether laws translate into justice, whether survivors feel supported, and whether prevention becomes possible.

A preventive approach requires shifting the narratives that determine:

• What behaviours a society recognises as violence?
• How do communities respond when harm occurs?
• Who feels responsible for preventing it/taking action?
• What dignity, consent, and safety mean in evolving digital and physical spaces?

Without this cultural groundwork, even the best-designed laws or helplines struggle to create durable change.

Tech-enabled GBV – The new frontline of gendered harm

As young people—especially in the Global South—move into digital spaces at unprecedented speed, technology has become both a site of liberation and a site of new harm. Tech-enabled GBV—doxxing, impersonation, stalking, image-based abuse, and coordinated harassment—thrives in environments where misogyny is normalised and where society underestimates the severity of digital harm.

The biggest challenge is that even when women and girls face constant violence and abuse online, they seldom feel safe or confident enough to report it – reinforcing existing patterns of those perpetrating the violence and abuse.

And the ramifications go far beyond the incidents themselves. For example, when technology harms, silences and distorts women leaders – both young women leaders and experienced leaders in the public sectors such as political life, law, or finance – it causes ripples of harm across society. Because when women leaders don’t feel safe, or confident, their public professional lives are impacted and diminished. Tech-enabled GBV closes the doors for opportunities and creates unsafe environments for both public and private lives. Therefore, leaving future and current women leaders with little to no space for self determination, identity and voice.

Most current interventions focus on safety tools or legal redress. What is urgently missing is narrative infrastructure that:

• Makes all kinds of digital violence visible, serious and socially unacceptable
• Builds bystander responsibility in online communities
• Engages men and boys on healthy digital masculinities
• Brings tech platforms (including AI developers), creators, schools, parents, and youth into shared problem-solving

This is where cultural strategies become indispensable complements to legal and institutional ones.

What Purpose has learned: stories that challenge norms, unlock systems

Purpose’s work consistently demonstrates that shifting norms is not only possible—it is measurable and catalytic. We’ve seen that when communities see new archetypes of cultural norms and narratives, leadership and behaviours then attitudes shift faster.  Our experience from public mobilisation campaigns such as Khud Se Pooche (Ask Yourself), which addressed the violence and disrespect women faced in the health system, showed that narrative change was most effective when paired with participatory design and trusted local voices. In Brazil, Para Cada Uma (For Each One) expanded the definition of violence by questioning cultural norms of what was considered violent behaviour. Around the world norm-shifting work creates the enabling conditions for policy, legal and behavioural change which is the bridge most GBV efforts currently lack.  

Our Difference She Makes campaign, which elevates women’s leadership in law across Africa, illustrates how narrative and visibility can reshape assumptions about authority, legitimacy, and women’ s role in decision-making. By combining data-driven storytelling, cultural content, and trusted messengers, we have seen communities expand their understanding of who holds power, who deserves to be heard and whose leadership shapes societies.   

The same principles apply to GBV: visibility reduces stigma; new cultural symbols and stories destabilise old assumptions and attitudes; storytelling unlocks pathways for institutional reform and collective narratives expand the space for action.

To make sustained progress on GBV, we must invest not only in systems that respond to violence, but also in the narrative and cultural ecosystems that determine whether violence is tolerated in the first place. This means resourcing work that meets communities where they are, engages new messengers, leverages digital culture, and builds shared responsibility across genders and generations.

Because when norms shift, prevention becomes possible. And when prevention becomes possible, systems change can finally take root.