Rethinking how we tackle violence against women and girls

One of the longest studies of adult life ever conducted, Harvard's 85-year Study of Adult Development, led today by Robert Waldinger, reached a conclusion that should reshape how we think about public policy:

"Good relationships keep us happier and healthier. Period."

The people most satisfied in their relationships at 50, were the healthiest at 80. Close relationships, it turns out, matter more than money or fame.

So why do we invest so little in helping young people learn how to build them?

In the UK, our response to violence against women and girls (VAWG) has been organised almost entirely around crisis. Refuges, helplines, safeguarding referrals, the criminal justice system, the vast majority of publicly funded services are designed to respond after harm has occurred. The best-known charities in this space rightly focus on supporting survivors and managing risk. This work is vital, but not sufficient.

A growing movement is taking a different approach: investing in the relational foundations that prevent violence from arising in the first place.

Organisations like Tender, LMKLetMeKnow and Everyone's Invited deliver peer-led education that helps young people recognise the difference between healthy and unhealthy relationships. Rather than intervening after harm, these programmes build the emotional literacy, social capital and shared norms that make abusive dynamics far less likely to take root.

This is inherently long-term work, and it sits uneasily within a public service model built around acute intervention. A workshop delivered to a group of 14-year-olds may not show measurable impact on VAWG statistics for a decade or more. It demands patience, sustained funding and a tolerance for outcomes that are hard to attribute. But it is precisely this kind of upstream, capability-building work that holds the greatest potential to reduce VAWG at its source, rather than managing its consequences indefinitely.

The challenge now is evidence. As these programmes mature, we need robust, longitudinal evaluation, including well-defined intermediate outcomes, to build the case for scaling them with public funding. That is how we move relational approaches to prevention from the margins to the mainstream, and begin to break the costly cycle of crisis.

Prevention is not a softer alternative to intervention. It is the missing half of the strategy.

Kirsten Westlake

CEO, Two Magpies Fund

(Originally posted on LinkedIn)