Recommendations

BUILD ON POSITIVE ATTITUDINAL CHANGE TO FACILITATE TRANSFORMATION OF SOCIAL NORMS

The IMAGES Bolivia survey exposes how the high beliefs around gender equality that most people express are not necessarily reflected in daily realities
It is important that future interventions and initiatives take a deeper social norms behavioral change lens that are integrated it from the onset
Adding a behavioral science lens can close the gap between public opinions and private actions and help find ways to help individuals and communities follow through on their motivation to shift their behaviors and approaches to achieve gender equality.

IMAGES results show the long-lasting impact of both harmful *and* positive attitudes and behaviors in relation to gender equality
- Children who had positive gender equitable relationships modeled for them during their youth, were more likely to engage in them as adults
This momentum is important to build upon via campaigns, interventions and policies that help support men seeing themselves as models or mentors for the future
Interventions such as Program P and Program H in Bolivia offer evidenced-based models to be able to facilitate those conversations and develop healthier, more equitable norms and behaviors.

In order to begin to open up spaces for the redistribution of caregiving, messages or images around care and domestic work should move away from gender specific messaging and also include positive images of male caregivers
- It’s important to promote messages that reinforce that all members of the family, including men, can and should be responsible for care
- Campaigns such as the MenCare Global Fatherhood Campaign can help to support those shifts.
High levels of homophobia and stereotypes of the LGBTQ community also demonstrate the need of elevating gender inclusivity within messages
Building community awareness about the root causes of sexual violence against women will also be important to help support positive progress on behalf of survivors

Childhood exposure to violence and the linkages between violence against women and violence against children demonstrate a need to integrate a more holistic approach to inter-familiar violence.
- Gender-transformative parent training programs that involve both men and women and work to address both intimate partner violence, as well as, illuminate the impacts of violence for children are important steps to being able to break generational cycles of violence
Program P in Bolivia integrates a positive child development approach to allow fathers and mothers to create a healthy vision for their families

Additional support is needed to understand the policies that exist to promote women’s rights, and the communities’ understanding and buy-in for those laws
- policymakers should work to ensure that language, provisions, and parameters of upcoming and existing policy and legislation don’t reinforce existing norms, and look to support shifting policies to become more transformative
Institutions, such as those working with families, children, and women should look to understand internal institutional biases that reinforce gender roles, and work to transform spaces to promote shared responsibilities between men and women
Invest in national level shifts in messaging around caregiving, violence, and gender roles in order to create supportive mechanisms to motivate and shift behaviors.

The IMAGES survey highlighted a key challenge to transformational change- namely men’s high levels of satisfaction with the current division of labor and with their relationships
- It begs the question of whether there is any motivation or incentive to change the nature of household dynamics, from men’s point of view.
- Men’s desire to spend more with children in lieu of work does point at some directions policies (both national and workplace) should lean into to promote equal and non-transferrable paternity leave
- Future research should look to identify those levers or entry points to motivate further change within households
Read more about the results of IMAGES Bolivia here