Ben Cislaghi | London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (original) (raw)
Papers by Ben Cislaghi
The aim of this study was to explore the social and gender norms impacting school-related gender-... more The aim of this study was to explore the social and gender norms impacting school-related gender-based violence (SRGBV), and the potential role of children in challenging these social norms. It was conducted within a larger research initiative in South Eastern Europe, where, along with Albania, seven other countries were included: Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Kosovo, Moldova, Romania and Serbia. Child Hub Europe has partnered with Terre des hommes and the Institute for International Child Rights and Development to address this critical issue through this research.
Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 2022
A growing number of researchers studying intimate partner violence (IPV) employ aggregate measure... more A growing number of researchers studying intimate partner violence (IPV) employ aggregate measures of relevant attitudes to serve as proxy measures for norms around IPV. However, there is a lack of consistency in how these measures are constructed and how their validity is confirmed. The first aim of this study is to demonstrate and validate innovative techniques for exploring social norms proxies in quantitative data and identifying the relative appropriateness of different available reference groups. The second aim is to demonstrate how such an approach can contribute to IPV research. The analysis employed data from the 2016 Tanzania International Men and Gender Equality Survey, including 1008 men and 1008 women ages 15–49 years. An attitudinal score measuring acceptance of IPV and two measures for individual-level descriptive and injunctive norms were constructed. The intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) was used to assess the extent of clustering for the attitudinal score wi...
This paper draws on the findings from two programme evaluations implemented by the Karnataka Heal... more This paper draws on the findings from two programme evaluations implemented by the Karnataka Health Promotion Trust (KHPT). These programmes aim to reduce girl school drop-out and child marriage and to decrease female sex workers’ experience of intimate partner violence. The study found that social norms play an important role in driving violence against women and girls, and in sustaining practices such as child marriage. Understanding how social norms operate will help design better interventions.
Human Rights and Community-led Development, 2018
Advocates for new approaches to development have increasingly called for people-led implementatio... more Advocates for new approaches to development have increasingly called for people-led implementations. However, many models have failed, being both weak in the theory framing them, and in the practice that actualised them in the ground. This chapter weaves together theories to analyse critical flaws in how human rights and human development are enacted in the field. It advocates for human rights education interventions that engage people’s imaginative collaborative potential as they aspire toward the common good. Chapter 2 investigates the challenges of integrating human rights, as international instruments, in the local (especially non-western) setting. It is suggested that Human Rights Education (HRE) can play a key role in their contextualisation. The chapter also explores how individual and collective behaviours are influenced by both cognitive and social factors, drawing on two social science theories, cognitive schema theory and social norms theory. Drawing on key literature on ...
Vaitla, B., Taylor, A., Van Horn, J., and Cislaghi, B. (2017). Social Norms and Girls’ Well-Being... more Vaitla, B., Taylor, A., Van Horn, J., and Cislaghi, B. (2017). Social Norms and Girls’ Well-Being: Linking Theory and Practice. Washington, D.C.: Data2X The state of social norms theory and practice is strong. There is an emerging consensus on how to describe the phenomena central to social norms: group identity, expectations about typical and appropriate behavior, economic constraints, and personal capacities. Governments and civil society practitioners across the globe strive to implement policies and projects to change norms and catalyze improvements in girls’ lives. The linkage of theory and practice is, however, still in its nascent stages. Exploring these connections is the primary objective of this report. We first review the landscape of theory around social norms (“Theory”). We then investigate in detail two projects that have facilitated change around norms and practices of female genital cutting (FGC) and child marriage: Tostan’s Community Empowerment Program (CEP) in West Africa and Population Council’s Abriendo Oportunidades (“Opening Opportunities”; AO) project in Latin America (“Practice”). We conclude by discussing the implications of both theory and practice for the future of social norms change (“The Way Forward”).
<p>Chapter 3 investigates how local, national, and international events intertwine in influ... more <p>Chapter 3 investigates how local, national, and international events intertwine in influencing people's life, so that it makes little sense to look at development as if it were happening in a vacuum. In particular, it briefly looks at the wider social, political and cultural context of the community where the intervention took place. The chapter looks at the emergence of the human rights discourse in Senegal, examines relevant features of Senegalese culture, explains the structure of NGO Tostan and its educational programme in Senegal, and describes the ethnic group that was studied in the research (the Fulbe), with its moral values and code of conduct.</p>
Poster Presentations, 2019
Health promotion international, Jan 22, 2018
Social norms can greatly influence people's health-related choices and behaviours. In the las... more Social norms can greatly influence people's health-related choices and behaviours. In the last few years, scholars and practitioners working in low- and mid-income countries (LMIC) have increasingly been trying to harness the influence of social norms to improve people's health globally. However, the literature informing social norm interventions in LMIC lacks a framework to understand how norms interact with other factors that sustain harmful practices and behaviours. This gap has led to short-sighted interventions that target social norms exclusively without a wider awareness of how other institutional, material, individual and social factors affect the harmful practice. Emphasizing norms to the exclusion of other factors might ultimately discredit norms-based strategies, not because they are flawed but because they alone are not sufficient to shift behaviour. In this paper, we share a framework (already adopted by some practitioners) that locates norm-based strategies wit...
The tool’s methodology is rooted in a feminist and youth-led participatory action research approa... more The tool’s methodology is rooted in a feminist and youth-led participatory action research approach to diagnosing social norms. It uses participatory and transformative methods to engage young people and other community members not just as research participants, but as agents of change identifying solutions to arising issues. The exercises recognize and examine unequal power inequalities through questions around who makes key decisions, whose opinions matter the most, who the most influential people are and the nature of their influence. hese exercises were developed for Oxfam’s Empower Youth for Work (EYW) programme for primary research from 2017-2019. This version of the tool was originally developed for use in the EYW programme in Bangladesh.
Girls around the world strive to realize their aspirations in the face of discrimination, lack of... more Girls around the world strive to realize their aspirations in the face of discrimination, lack of educational opportunity and access to health services, and the threat of violence. Recent scholarship and advocacy has highlighted a particularly powerful and long understudied force shaping girls' well-being: social norms-rules of behavior rooted in culture. Focusing on social norms expands the typical conversation around social change, placing human relationships within communities at the center of the narrative. A complex range of emotions-love, amity, respect, distrust, fear-demand analytical attention alongside the more commonly studied motivations of economic interest and political power. Norms both engender these emotions and are changed by, or persist because of, them. The state of social norms theory and practice is strong. There is an emerging consensus on how to describe the phenomena central to social norms: group identity, expectations about typical and appropriate behavior, economic constraints, and personal capacities. Governments and civil society practitioners across the globe strive to implement policies and projects to change norms Elizabeth Whelan SUMMARY and catalyze improvements in girls' lives. The linkage of theory and practice is, however, still in its nascent stages.
Human Rights and Community-led Development
Chapter 5 analyses in detail what happened during the HRE part of Tostan programme in the village... more Chapter 5 analyses in detail what happened during the HRE part of Tostan programme in the village. It analyses the different learning strategies used in class and show how they allowed participants to ground the abstract human rights knowledge into their concrete daily life. This chapter also gives an understanding of classroom dynamics and analyse how participants made sense of their experience in class. Chapter 5 might be particularly relevant for practitioners interested in implementing indirect development programmes through HRE, and to scholars studying what works in human development.
Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health
Global Public Health
Violence against children occurs in all countries, affecting children of all ages, genders, race ... more Violence against children occurs in all countries, affecting children of all ages, genders, race and socioeconomic strata. A multiplicity of factors contributes to children's experience of violence. Social and gender norms can act as risk and protective factors exposing children to violence or preventing them from having well-being and healthy development. This Special Symposium was conceived of during the first International Viable and Operable Ideas for Child Equality (VOICE) Conference in 2018 in Bali, Indonesia. The four manuscripts in this Special Symposium illustrate with evidence the importance of social norms to preventing violence against children and the importance of understanding norms in context. The authors find that understanding how geographic location, social cohesion, group roles and identities, age and gendered expectations inform whether, when and which children experience violence, who perpetrates it, and how individuals and communities respond to it. The global COVID-19 pandemic has illustrated how rapidly behaviours can shift towards caregiving and health, as well as against it. If we are to prevent violence against children, and ensure the safety, well-being, and opportunity to thrive for all children, advancing our understanding of norms in relation to violence against children is critical to effective programming and learning.
Human Rights and Community-led Development
How can we best empower people living in the most economically disadvantaged areas of the world t... more How can we best empower people living in the most economically disadvantaged areas of the world to improve their lives in ways that matter to them? This book investigates work of the NGO Tostan as a working model of human development. The study is grounded in the ethnographic study of the actual change that happened in one West African village. The result is a powerful mix of theory and practice that questions existing approaches to development and that speaks to both development scholars and practitioners. Divided into three parts, the book firstly assesses why top-down approaches to education and development are unhelpful and offers a theoretical understanding of what constitutes helpful development. Part two examines…
PloS one, 2018
Gender-related norms and poverty remain important structural barriers to secondary school attenda... more Gender-related norms and poverty remain important structural barriers to secondary school attendance among adolescent girls in southern India. We analyse how gender norms interact with family deprivation and dynamics to result in girls dropping out of school; we identify the main facilitators of school retention and changes to gender socialisation. Longitudinal qualitative case studies with 36 girls were nested within a cluster randomized trial to evaluate the Samata intervention targeting adolescent girls in Bagalkote and Vijayapura districts in northern Karnataka. We used two rounds of in-depth interviews, conducted in 2014 at a time when respondents were in 8th standard at the age of 13 to 14 and sixteen months later. We combined thematic and narrative analyses. Our study found that poverty and socioeconomic realities at the household level strongly affect conformity with discriminatory gender practices such as restricting girls' mobility. The value placed on education by par...
The aim of this study was to explore the social and gender norms impacting school-related gender-... more The aim of this study was to explore the social and gender norms impacting school-related gender-based violence (SRGBV), and the potential role of children in challenging these social norms. It was conducted within a larger research initiative in South Eastern Europe, where, along with Albania, seven other countries were included: Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Kosovo, Moldova, Romania and Serbia. Child Hub Europe has partnered with Terre des hommes and the Institute for International Child Rights and Development to address this critical issue through this research.
Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 2022
A growing number of researchers studying intimate partner violence (IPV) employ aggregate measure... more A growing number of researchers studying intimate partner violence (IPV) employ aggregate measures of relevant attitudes to serve as proxy measures for norms around IPV. However, there is a lack of consistency in how these measures are constructed and how their validity is confirmed. The first aim of this study is to demonstrate and validate innovative techniques for exploring social norms proxies in quantitative data and identifying the relative appropriateness of different available reference groups. The second aim is to demonstrate how such an approach can contribute to IPV research. The analysis employed data from the 2016 Tanzania International Men and Gender Equality Survey, including 1008 men and 1008 women ages 15–49 years. An attitudinal score measuring acceptance of IPV and two measures for individual-level descriptive and injunctive norms were constructed. The intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) was used to assess the extent of clustering for the attitudinal score wi...
This paper draws on the findings from two programme evaluations implemented by the Karnataka Heal... more This paper draws on the findings from two programme evaluations implemented by the Karnataka Health Promotion Trust (KHPT). These programmes aim to reduce girl school drop-out and child marriage and to decrease female sex workers’ experience of intimate partner violence. The study found that social norms play an important role in driving violence against women and girls, and in sustaining practices such as child marriage. Understanding how social norms operate will help design better interventions.
Human Rights and Community-led Development, 2018
Advocates for new approaches to development have increasingly called for people-led implementatio... more Advocates for new approaches to development have increasingly called for people-led implementations. However, many models have failed, being both weak in the theory framing them, and in the practice that actualised them in the ground. This chapter weaves together theories to analyse critical flaws in how human rights and human development are enacted in the field. It advocates for human rights education interventions that engage people’s imaginative collaborative potential as they aspire toward the common good. Chapter 2 investigates the challenges of integrating human rights, as international instruments, in the local (especially non-western) setting. It is suggested that Human Rights Education (HRE) can play a key role in their contextualisation. The chapter also explores how individual and collective behaviours are influenced by both cognitive and social factors, drawing on two social science theories, cognitive schema theory and social norms theory. Drawing on key literature on ...
Vaitla, B., Taylor, A., Van Horn, J., and Cislaghi, B. (2017). Social Norms and Girls’ Well-Being... more Vaitla, B., Taylor, A., Van Horn, J., and Cislaghi, B. (2017). Social Norms and Girls’ Well-Being: Linking Theory and Practice. Washington, D.C.: Data2X The state of social norms theory and practice is strong. There is an emerging consensus on how to describe the phenomena central to social norms: group identity, expectations about typical and appropriate behavior, economic constraints, and personal capacities. Governments and civil society practitioners across the globe strive to implement policies and projects to change norms and catalyze improvements in girls’ lives. The linkage of theory and practice is, however, still in its nascent stages. Exploring these connections is the primary objective of this report. We first review the landscape of theory around social norms (“Theory”). We then investigate in detail two projects that have facilitated change around norms and practices of female genital cutting (FGC) and child marriage: Tostan’s Community Empowerment Program (CEP) in West Africa and Population Council’s Abriendo Oportunidades (“Opening Opportunities”; AO) project in Latin America (“Practice”). We conclude by discussing the implications of both theory and practice for the future of social norms change (“The Way Forward”).
<p>Chapter 3 investigates how local, national, and international events intertwine in influ... more <p>Chapter 3 investigates how local, national, and international events intertwine in influencing people's life, so that it makes little sense to look at development as if it were happening in a vacuum. In particular, it briefly looks at the wider social, political and cultural context of the community where the intervention took place. The chapter looks at the emergence of the human rights discourse in Senegal, examines relevant features of Senegalese culture, explains the structure of NGO Tostan and its educational programme in Senegal, and describes the ethnic group that was studied in the research (the Fulbe), with its moral values and code of conduct.</p>
Poster Presentations, 2019
Health promotion international, Jan 22, 2018
Social norms can greatly influence people's health-related choices and behaviours. In the las... more Social norms can greatly influence people's health-related choices and behaviours. In the last few years, scholars and practitioners working in low- and mid-income countries (LMIC) have increasingly been trying to harness the influence of social norms to improve people's health globally. However, the literature informing social norm interventions in LMIC lacks a framework to understand how norms interact with other factors that sustain harmful practices and behaviours. This gap has led to short-sighted interventions that target social norms exclusively without a wider awareness of how other institutional, material, individual and social factors affect the harmful practice. Emphasizing norms to the exclusion of other factors might ultimately discredit norms-based strategies, not because they are flawed but because they alone are not sufficient to shift behaviour. In this paper, we share a framework (already adopted by some practitioners) that locates norm-based strategies wit...
The tool’s methodology is rooted in a feminist and youth-led participatory action research approa... more The tool’s methodology is rooted in a feminist and youth-led participatory action research approach to diagnosing social norms. It uses participatory and transformative methods to engage young people and other community members not just as research participants, but as agents of change identifying solutions to arising issues. The exercises recognize and examine unequal power inequalities through questions around who makes key decisions, whose opinions matter the most, who the most influential people are and the nature of their influence. hese exercises were developed for Oxfam’s Empower Youth for Work (EYW) programme for primary research from 2017-2019. This version of the tool was originally developed for use in the EYW programme in Bangladesh.
Girls around the world strive to realize their aspirations in the face of discrimination, lack of... more Girls around the world strive to realize their aspirations in the face of discrimination, lack of educational opportunity and access to health services, and the threat of violence. Recent scholarship and advocacy has highlighted a particularly powerful and long understudied force shaping girls' well-being: social norms-rules of behavior rooted in culture. Focusing on social norms expands the typical conversation around social change, placing human relationships within communities at the center of the narrative. A complex range of emotions-love, amity, respect, distrust, fear-demand analytical attention alongside the more commonly studied motivations of economic interest and political power. Norms both engender these emotions and are changed by, or persist because of, them. The state of social norms theory and practice is strong. There is an emerging consensus on how to describe the phenomena central to social norms: group identity, expectations about typical and appropriate behavior, economic constraints, and personal capacities. Governments and civil society practitioners across the globe strive to implement policies and projects to change norms Elizabeth Whelan SUMMARY and catalyze improvements in girls' lives. The linkage of theory and practice is, however, still in its nascent stages.
Human Rights and Community-led Development
Chapter 5 analyses in detail what happened during the HRE part of Tostan programme in the village... more Chapter 5 analyses in detail what happened during the HRE part of Tostan programme in the village. It analyses the different learning strategies used in class and show how they allowed participants to ground the abstract human rights knowledge into their concrete daily life. This chapter also gives an understanding of classroom dynamics and analyse how participants made sense of their experience in class. Chapter 5 might be particularly relevant for practitioners interested in implementing indirect development programmes through HRE, and to scholars studying what works in human development.
Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health
Global Public Health
Violence against children occurs in all countries, affecting children of all ages, genders, race ... more Violence against children occurs in all countries, affecting children of all ages, genders, race and socioeconomic strata. A multiplicity of factors contributes to children's experience of violence. Social and gender norms can act as risk and protective factors exposing children to violence or preventing them from having well-being and healthy development. This Special Symposium was conceived of during the first International Viable and Operable Ideas for Child Equality (VOICE) Conference in 2018 in Bali, Indonesia. The four manuscripts in this Special Symposium illustrate with evidence the importance of social norms to preventing violence against children and the importance of understanding norms in context. The authors find that understanding how geographic location, social cohesion, group roles and identities, age and gendered expectations inform whether, when and which children experience violence, who perpetrates it, and how individuals and communities respond to it. The global COVID-19 pandemic has illustrated how rapidly behaviours can shift towards caregiving and health, as well as against it. If we are to prevent violence against children, and ensure the safety, well-being, and opportunity to thrive for all children, advancing our understanding of norms in relation to violence against children is critical to effective programming and learning.
Human Rights and Community-led Development
How can we best empower people living in the most economically disadvantaged areas of the world t... more How can we best empower people living in the most economically disadvantaged areas of the world to improve their lives in ways that matter to them? This book investigates work of the NGO Tostan as a working model of human development. The study is grounded in the ethnographic study of the actual change that happened in one West African village. The result is a powerful mix of theory and practice that questions existing approaches to development and that speaks to both development scholars and practitioners. Divided into three parts, the book firstly assesses why top-down approaches to education and development are unhelpful and offers a theoretical understanding of what constitutes helpful development. Part two examines…
PloS one, 2018
Gender-related norms and poverty remain important structural barriers to secondary school attenda... more Gender-related norms and poverty remain important structural barriers to secondary school attendance among adolescent girls in southern India. We analyse how gender norms interact with family deprivation and dynamics to result in girls dropping out of school; we identify the main facilitators of school retention and changes to gender socialisation. Longitudinal qualitative case studies with 36 girls were nested within a cluster randomized trial to evaluate the Samata intervention targeting adolescent girls in Bagalkote and Vijayapura districts in northern Karnataka. We used two rounds of in-depth interviews, conducted in 2014 at a time when respondents were in 8th standard at the age of 13 to 14 and sixteen months later. We combined thematic and narrative analyses. Our study found that poverty and socioeconomic realities at the household level strongly affect conformity with discriminatory gender practices such as restricting girls' mobility. The value placed on education by par...