Narratives of Gender-Based Violence Across Cultures: The Need for an Intersectional Lens When Standing up to Gender Inequality

By Selin Yalcinkaya

"I still get discriminated against because of my gender with working professionals. How do you change that embedded behavior in another person? … We have such systemic, centuries-long challenges with race, gender, identity, and inclusion…because we can’t get at these unconscious biases… These are good people that are doing bad things. There’s a spectrum of bad people doing bad things, but there’s a benign layer to this. You only know what you know. Your mental models have been formed when you are a child. So, you see and hear things, and it takes a lot of work to undo that.” — U.S. WebinHERS Participant

Gender-based violence (GBV) has become a global pandemic. Defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as acts intended to make women suffer physically, sexually, psychologically, or economically, GBV has not decreased in spite of the attention it draws worldwide. In fact, the WHO estimates that at least 29–31% of women ages 15–24 worldwide have experienced physical or sexual violence.

Despite these worrying statistics, the issue is not entirely hopeless. We at Footage are committed to empowering young women at-risk through creative storytelling that inspires sustainable social change. Developed by a group of bright PhD students from Cambridge University, Footage’s Theory of Change is designed to impact the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), such as gender equality.

One of our programs, WebinHERS, engaged marginalized young women from Russia and the U.S. to create culturally and contextually-informed webinars on the topic of GBV. With the goal of demonstrating the intersectional nature of violence, WebinHERS encompassed not only narratives of violence, but also stories on gender identity, race, sexuality, and socioeconomic status. Kimberlé Crenshaw, champion of this term, explains intersectionality as the interaction between multiple marginalized identities. Crenshaw emphasizes that though these identities make the individual complex and unique, they also increase that person’s vulnerability to discrimination.

For example, she says we cannot “forget that black women are both black and female, and thus subject to discrimination on the basis of both race, gender, and often, a combination of the two.” WebinHERS offers its audience this perspective of intersectionality, raising awareness of the need for greater social inclusion across nations.

This intersectional approach necessitates collaboration with organizations working with young women directly affected by GBV, emphasizing the importance of cultural context in ensuring the effectiveness and accuracy of this programming. Footage partnered with organizations that work with young women in both Russia and the U.S. to design the webinars through the use of “cultural probes” in the form of activity books. The information gathered from this human-centered design research process drove the webinars. Through the probes, Footage gained valuable insights on different perspectives on equality, compassion, and belonging, and other psychosocial concepts.

One key question asked to participants from both Russia and the U.S. was: “What does GBV mean to you?” Participants responded with elaborate descriptions of the subject, including personal narratives, as well as more global definitions of GBV. Using this data, we extracted key words and themes from each response and measured the frequency of these themes with basic descriptive statistics. From these measurements, we compared and contrasted the differing perspectives on GBV across the U.S. and Russia.

"[We cannot] forget that black women are both black and female, and thus subject to discrimination on the basis of both race, gender, and often, a combination of the two.”

Across both countries “domestic/sexual violence” was a popular association with GBV in both countries. In Russia, participants cited themes of discrimination and gender inequality most frequently, while in the U.S., participants were focused more on the emotional impacts of GBV, often using terms like, “emotional violence” and “fear.” Participants in the U.S. also cited the systemic, intersectional nature of GBV. For example, one participant said:“As a woman of color, I think about the boxes that we were put in. . . You know, especially if you are coming from a historical place, or when people even didn’t belong to themselves. . . I think this whole idea is systemic, and it’s really in terms of generational—just historical—on how we are programmed. We as women were chadder, we have no power, we had no rights. . . It’s just part of our history.”

Her response illustrates the need to consider sociocultural context when developing programming around GBV. As #BlackLivesMatter protests throughout the U.S. demand justice and revolution in a country built on slavery and racism, race and violence against Black bodies are a critical issues in the U.S.

“Gender-based violence is my personal story as well. Few month ago, I had a fight with my father. He said that all my activism is just stupid. He said that I was just a men-hater and that I humiliate all the men of the world. . . . And it hurts. Almost every day I get nasty messages from men. And I do believe that it is my right to publish such things and to protect myself. Instead of support I hear, ‘Why do you humiliate men?’ It seems to be not a big deal but it is part of a big deal. . . I think we have a long fight ahead.”

In addition to the social factors in each country, the participants’ demographic information is essential to understanding the different perspectives on GBV in Russia and the United States. Regarding sexuality, U.S. participants were approximately 75% heterosexual, while the majority of Russian participants identified as either lesbian or bisexual. Though we are early in the analysis process, this difference in sexuality across countries could explain Russian participants’ focus on inequality when discussing GBV, as their country does not protect them from discrimination on the basis of sexuality.

There were also stark differences in terms of the racial/ethnic identity of the participants. When asked how they would describe themselves racially or ethnically, the vast majority of Russian participants provided ethnic information, while almost all of the U.S. participants supplied racial descriptors. Of the 32 women from the United States, 40% of them identified as White, approximately 20% identified as Black, and the remaining participants were either Asian American, Hispanic/Latinx, Native American, or preferred not to respond to the question. The diversity of this sample might correlate with the focus on the systemic, historical nature of GBV by the U.S. American participants. Footage gathered more demographic information than mentioned above, but this data is especially relevant to understanding participant responses from an intersectional lens.

Of course, there are limitations to this analysis. The coding scheme was developed and coded only by one individual, giving the study low inter-rater reliability. Also these responses cannot and should not be generalized to all women in their respective countries, as we sampled only 54 total participants. This small sample in addition to the reality of each person’s unique experiences makes the idea of GBV all the more individual. That being said, this data was an integral part of designing WebinHERS. Because of this research, we had a better understanding of the culture-specific interests, making the webinars more relevant to their respective audiences. By prioritizing the socio-cultural factors of each individual’s experience with GBV, the likelihood of this programming making a lasting impact on its audience and those in their networks increases.

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