How To Reduce Violence Against Women? A Social Psychology Podcast Episode.

Violence against women is sadly nothing new. If you look at social media, the news or talk to women, the threat of violence, being attacked and sexually assaulted is forever present. This leads to a wide range of mental health difficulties, stress and it only makes women feel unsafe in society. Therefore, in this social psychology podcast episode, you'll learn about what causes violence against women, how to reduce gender-based violence and more. If you enjoy learning about social psychology, forensic psychology and how gender bias leads to violence, then this will be a great episode for you. 

Today's psychology podcast episode is sponsored by Forensic Psychology. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca.

Why Am I Talking About Violence Against Women?

I wanted to talk about violence against women in this psychology podcast episode because over the Christmas break in 2025, I learnt some surprising truths. To any woman and female listeners of this podcast, these will not surprise you and looking back at my own life when I had a very femme-focused dating profile, because I'm transgender non-binary, I experienced a lot of disgusting comments too. 

Yet I do understand that this surprise is a reflection of my privilege in society of looking like a straight white male, and so, people treat me as such. 

However, I was watching the brilliant Sarah Macmillan's comedy show Late Bloomer via a streaming service over Christmas and she explained that once she was told off in a shop by an elderly woman for wearing high heels. The elderly woman thought Sarah should only be wearing flat trainers because they're easier to run in and get away from men. As well as Sarah was making a joke about how a friend of hers only had one key and it was useless to put a single key in-between your knuckles to use as a weapon if a man wanted to rape you. 

After the comedy show I went downstairs, I already understood that this was the heart-breaking truth of being a woman and I still asked my mum about her experience of this. She completely agreed and she had been taught from a young age the importance of having keys on you so you can use them as weapons. As well as flat shoes are best because it allows you to run away from men as quickly as possible. 

Personally, I could drone on about how disgusting, heartbreaking and awful this is, and it is true. Absolutely no woman should ever have to feel scared walking down a street. All women have the right to feel safe, secure and protected in their own communities. 

No woman should have to learn from an early age how to protect themselves from men who want to rape them, beat them and hurt them. Everyone regardless of their gender should experience the same level of danger. Which is hopefully none. 

Therefore, I want to do something however small to help protect women and girls. I want to do something to stop gender-based violence and I want to stop sexual violence, women being objectified and I want women to be safe in society. 

I will repeat what I always say. Women are not weak. I know so many clever, intelligent and amazing women who are the furthest thing from weak. Yet they are still in danger, they are still at threat of sexual violence and as a rape survivor myself, I understand how terrifying that is. 

As a result, in the rest of this podcast episode, you'll learn what causes violence against women, how we can reduce this and how we can support women. 

It will take a society to stop violence against women and it all starts with awareness. Hence, why I'm writing this episode.

What is Violence Against Women?

The vast majority of the information for this podcast episode will come from Kumari et al. (2009), because trying to find accessible information on how to reduce violence against women from a psychological viewpoint is surprisingly hard given how violence is a behaviour.

Therefore, violence against women is any act of gender-based violence that leads to women being sexually, physically or mentally hurt as well as suffer. For example, depriving women freedom, sexual assault, beating and threatening women are all examples of violence against women.

In addition, from a human rights point of view, violence against women is unfortunately the most common human rights violation. Since it denies women the security, equal rights, positive self-worth and rights to dignity that so many men have without a second thought. Men easily take their rights for granted, and women cannot afford the same luxury.

At the time of writing this episode, there are massive protests in Iran over the government, the human rights violations and how they treat women. Yet it’s important to remember that violence against women happens in every country, in every city and in every place where humans exist. Violence against women isn’t limited to the Middle East and other cultures that traditionally or overtly see women as second-class citizens.

Why Does Violence Against Women Matter?

Before I dive into the types of violence against women, the causes and how to reduce it, I want to explain the consequences of violence against women. Firstly, there are sexual consequences because women who have been through violence are more likely to experience unwanted pregnancies, sexually transmitted diseases, low birth weight babies and miscarriages.

Secondly, women who experienced violence are likely to have physical consequences. For instance, women experience fractures, concussions, poor health, permanent disabilities, death because they were murdered or suicide.

Thirdly, after violence, women can experience economic consequences because they have to work fewer hours because of illness or injury, their family’s income reduces because the cost of treatment and their economic productivity decreases.

Fourthly, after violence, women experience emotional consequences. For instance, they become emotionally distant and mistrusted by their children, they develop stress, hopelessness, depression, panic disorders, low self-esteem, drug and alcohol abuse and they’re in unhappy relationships with their partner.

All of these take a massive toll on their mental health.

Finally, violence against women and girls has a massive negative impact on children. Since after experiencing violence, children have low self-esteem, they live in fear all the time, sleep difficulties, violent behaviour, difficulties in school and this includes poor academic performance, and they’re very sensitive.

What Are The Types of Violence Against Women?

Moreover, violence against women can include four main types of violence. Firstly, you have physical violence where women are slapped, punched, kicked, hit, burnt, cut amongst other methods designed to hurt the body.

Secondly, you have economic violence where a woman is overworked, denied her inheritance, cannot own property, her earnings are stolen or reduced, she is denied an education, she isn’t allowed to work and she doesn’t have equal pay.

Thirdly, women can experience sexual violence where women are raped, sexually assaulted, they experience incest, female genital mutilation, unwanted touching, forced prostitution as well as sexual harassment. As a rape survivor, these are some of the most horrific, outrageous and soul-destroying things that you can do to a person for a wide range of reasons that I’ve discussed previously on the podcast. Or in my book Breaking The Silence.

Finally, you have emotional violence where a woman is threatened, insulted, experiences verbal abuse, constant criticism, humiliation, intimidation and control. I’ll be talking more about emotional abuse in the far future of the podcast, but I’ve also had to deal with that and it is awful. It makes you question your own reality, you feel insane and you feel like your life is falling a part at no fault of your own. 

On the whole, all women are vulnerable to violence based on their gender. Women, all around the world, are at risk of being murdered, raped, tortured and physically and psychologically beaten as well as being economically deprived. All because they’re a woman.

That is wrong on so many levels and this is one of the things that this podcast hopes to address.

What Causes Violence Against Women?

Like most behaviours, there is no single reason or cause for violence against women. This is why I strongly believe it’s important for us to consider a wide range of factors that cause this behaviour, so we can be holistic in our understanding and any interventions we create to decrease gender-based violence.

I’ll talk about the wide range of factors that cause violence against women in a moment, but first, I want to take this opportunity to explain that whilst poverty and alcohol are often identified as factors causing violence. It is true that these can be triggers or contributing factors towards violence, but it is wrong to say these are the root causes.

One set of factors that can cause violence against women are economic factors that focus on controlling and restricting women’s freedom as a method of domestic violence. For example, one way to abuse a woman is to make her economically dependent on a man, limit her access to credit and cash, create discriminatory laws that mean she cannot own property, have inheritance and limit her access to formal as well as informal education and employment. These factors connect to economic abuse that I mentioned a moment ago.

Personally, I think it’s sickening to imagine a world where women do not have the freedom to live their life with independence, they cannot handle their own money and they’re likely to be very scared to “act out” or “stand up” to their abuser in case they take away access to any money at all. An abuser might give the woman a tiny allowance each week, but if she doesn’t behave exactly how he wants, he might take that away from her and leave her with nothing at all.

That is terrifying and abusive for anyone.

In addition, when I was reading the section above, my mind drifted off towards people with special educational needs. As part of safeguarding, you always need to be aware of financial abuse, because it happens, it is common and we always need to be vigilant against it. Especially, because SEN children and elderly people are more vulnerable, they might be dismissed and they might not feel empowered enough to stand up, self-advocate and challenge the injustice that has happened to them. For example, someone steals their money, misuses it or the management of these establishments don’t care about the financial abuse.

Another set of factors that leads to violence against women can be cultural factors because all of us, regardless of our country and culture of origin, are exposed to gender-specific socialisation, expectations of gender roles as well as cultural definitions of what is appropriate gender roles. For example, in the Middle East, the expectation for a woman is to always listen to the male members of the family, if she wants to go outside then she needs to ask permission and she must always wear the hijab. I understand this is a generalisation but I want to make a point in a moment.

Whereas in Western culture, women are strongly portrayed to be needy, weak and emotional wrecks that couldn’t possibly function without the guiding hand of men. The West see an emotional strong, intelligent woman as strange, weird and we need to get rid of her as soon as possible.

These are just two examples of cultural ideas about women that we are exposed to in different parts of the world.

This is even more important when we consider that some gender-specific socialisations towards men paint men as superior, intelligent and better than women in every way. This leads to men believing that they have the right to control women, keep women under their control at all costs and it makes men see violence as an appropriate means of resolving conflict.

A final set of factors that cause violence against women are legal and political factors. For example, in most legal systems around the world, women are a lesser legal status than men. Whether this is in the written law, legal practice or laws regarding divorce, child custody, legal definitions of rape and domestic abuse, inheritance laws as well as how women are treated by the criminal justice system. In my book Breaking The Silence, I discuss how the criminal justice system treats men and women survivors of sexual violence really badly for different reasons because of their gender identity. Therefore, the immense issues with the legal system is one of the ways how women can be traumatised, hurt and emotionally abused.

Building upon this, political factors can cause violence against women too. For instance, in most political systems around the world, even when a woman is technically in charge, women are underrepresented in positions of political power, the media, in the medical and legal profession. This means that violence against women are not taken seriously and it increases the idea that gender-based violence is beyond the control of the state and it is a massive risk to the government and political forces to challenge the status quo and religious laws. This is even more important in countries where religion itself is linked to violence against women. Like honour killings.

Personally, regardless of your political opinions, I want to indulge you for a moment. A few years ago in the United Kingdom, I remember watching the news during a massive Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) shortage. The UK couldn’t get enough HRT to give to all the women who were struggling whilst they went through the menopause and women were really suffering because of it. And our Parliament was having a debate and a female Member of Parliament pointed out that if HRT was something men needed, the government would move heaven and earth to resolve it. Instead of dragging its heels and doing nothing to solve the shortage, because the HRT shortage wasn’t negatively impacting men.

I completely agreed with her.

Therefore, when you have that sort of institutionalized sexism baked into our political system that treats male problems as more important than female problems, then of course violence against women isn’t going to be treated as seriously, a culture of permission towards violence against women gets reinforced and the lack of convictions in cases involving sexual violence against women only makes the situation worse.

How Do We Reduce Violence Against Women?

When it comes to reducing violence against women, it's critical that we don't just focus on one group of people. We need to create a strategy that impacts everyone across society and most importantly, at every level of society. Everyone, regardless of their age, position and social class, must understand that violence against women is not okay in the slightest. 

This includes the individuals, like the local shopkeeper and your peers at work. Organisations must take a tough stance against gender-based violence so it doesn't become a part of their organisational culture. As well as I would add organisations need to be reflective about their own history of violence against women. Especially, when it comes to the economic abuse against women. For instance, they should reflect on the gender pay gap, need to correct it and reflect on how women are silenced or badly treated across all levels of the organisation. 

Another factor to consider when creating strategies to end violence against women is everyone must be a part of its co-production and everyone must be taught themselves strategies. Women should always be at the heart and centre of these strategies, but men's groups cannot be ignored either. 

This is because men cause the vast majority of violence against women, we need to create, frame and teach these strategies in a way that will make men listen, adopt and change their behaviour. 

We can have the best intentions in the world, but if our strategies don't lead to men changing their behaviour to improve the lives of women. Then they are useless. 

On the whole, this is why raising awareness and advocacy across all levels of society is flat out critical for ending gender-based violence. As well as we need to train healthcare professionals to recognise and identify women who are experiencing violence by giving them the resources they need.

Building upon this, more generally, if we're better able to identify "at risk" families, groups, individuals and communities early on then this can be really helpful in preventing violence against women.

Personally, I think the healthcare point is an important one because when I went for a wide range of education-based job roles, I was always asked at interview about the signs of abuse. I asked them correctly with a rough idea and even the training that I received when I started the job didn't go into much more depth. This means that a lot of people who work with vulnerable children, men and women aren't fully educated on the signs of abuse. 

This leads to the scary question of how many survivors of abuse have all of us met in our lives and not realised because we don't know the signs. 

In addition, to end violence against women, we need to be teaching our children and young people about healthy relationships, the importance of nonviolence, human rights and gender issues. These lessons need to be embedded throughout the entire school curriculum from primary school to 6th form to universities and other training settings. 

Personally, ever since my rape, I've long been an advocate for teaching children what healthy relationships are, what informed consent is and a whole bunch of other relationship skills because research shows it would solve a lot of issues in the world as I've spoken about in other books. And this does get me reflecting as someone who works in education and as an aspiring educational psychologist about how I can teach children these things in the future. 

I understand that it will be difficult to find the right time, to get organisational support and to find good resources because even though these ideas have been around for ages, the resources and the practical side of these suggestions are still relatively new and in development. 

However, there's one girl in a class at my school who only shows affection by hitting, punching, pushing and doing other forms of violence against her boyfriends. To her, this is what love looks like because of her own trauma background. Therefore, it's clear there is a massive need for this education and in the future, I will want and have to find a way to incorporate it into my practice. 

Another way to reduce violence against women is focusing on community-level awareness and mobilising the entire community. Since when an entire community is behind and action, policy or movement then it ensures that it is done and it makes women and girls feel supported. As well as it makes men question their actions and makes them think twice before committing any form of abuse. 

Building upon this, if we look at society-level ways to reduce violence against women besides awareness and public education, then legal reforms are critical. Every country needs laws that uphold the rights of women and give them equal protection under the law, so the law specifically forbids violence against women.

In my opinion, this need for legal reform doesn’t only go for countries or regions, like the Middle East, but so-called progressive countries like the United Kingdom, United States and other Western nations could benefit from this too. There are multiple loopholes, flaws and ways in which the law fails to protect women from different forms of violence.

For example, The equality and Human Rights Commission notes that the UK still receives criticism and concerns from various United Nations bodies because the UK fails to adequately prevent, investigate and remedy violence against women despite the laws being on the books. As well as the UK has a lot of laws to stop violence against women, like Domestic Abuse Act (2021), but official statistics shows that domestic violence is common, but there is a tiny, tiny number of convictions. This suggests that the Domestic Abuse Act doesn’t translate into effective protection for women.

A penultimate way to protect women from violence is the need for reliable data collection as well as analysis. This helps us to understand the magnitude, economic and health costs of violence and its consequences. This is important because the only way to get politicians, policy-makers and those in government interested is to make it about money. For instance, in the UK, all I have heard over the past few years from different governments is the dire need to grow the economy after Brexit and COVID-19. Therefore, if we show the government how violence against women is costing the UK millions of pounds each year, it is decreasing our economic productivity and it is harming economic growth, then I have a suspicion the government would suddenly become a lot more interested.

Finally, we direct service provisions as well as interventions that help survivors of gender-based violence to rebuild their lives.

Overall, when it comes to creating a strategy to reducing violence against women, it should always address prevention, protection, early intervention and rebuilding the lives of the victims and survivors.

Social Psychology Conclusion

At the end of this psychology podcast episode, I’m really happy that we’ve learnt more about violence against women. It goes without saying that I shouldn’t have to do a podcast episode on this topic. Violence against women shouldn’t be a thing and it’s awful, sickening and outrageous. Yet here we are, and it is possible to stop violence against women if we continue raising awareness, take a holistic approach and we create interventions that target all levels and factions within society.

On the whole, violence against women is an extremely common issue that is typically hidden and ignored by the majority of people. This is something that has to change and I hope that podcast episodes like this one and our own actions can help with that. Since violence against women is an issue that covers so many areas. It is physical, legal, economical, psychological, developmental, educational and most importantly, violence against women is a human rights issue.

This is why we need coordinated responses, policies and interventions that are implemented across all levels of society, so we can stamp out violence against women once and for all. Yet some people argue that women need to learn how to be more assertive as well as accept new roles for themselves, so they can live hopefully and optimistically about their future. This means women need to be empowered through their employment, education and we need to tell them that any form of gender-based violence is flat out wrong.

Therefore, my parting message for today will be, ask yourself each morning the following question:

What small or large act could I take today to end violence against women?

If every one of us does a small or large act every day then by the end of the week, month or year, we would have had a massive positive impact on this pressing issue.

I hope you enjoyed today’s social psychology podcast episode.

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Social Psychology References and Further Reading

Bacchus, L. J., Colombini, M., Pearson, I., Gevers, A., Stöckl, H., & Guedes, A. C. (2024). Interventions that prevent or respond to intimate partner violence against women and violence against children: a systematic review. The Lancet Public Health, 9(5), e326-e338.

Barlow, C., Johnson, K., Walklate, S., & Humphreys, L. (2020). Putting coercive control into practice: Problems and possibilities. The British Journal of Criminology, 60(1), 160-179.

Bochenkova, A., Buonanno, P., & Galletta, S. (2023). Fighting violence against women: The role of female political representation. Journal of Development Economics, 164, 103140.

Hatcher, A. M., Page, S., Aletta van Eck, L., Pearson, I., Fielding-Miller, R., Mazars, C., & Stöckl, H. (2022). Systematic review of food insecurity and violence against women and girls: mixed methods findings from low-and middle-income settings. PLOS global public health, 2(9), e0000479.

https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/human-rights/human-rights-tracker/violence-against-women-and-girls-uk-government-action

Kumari, S., Priyamvada, R., Chaudhury, S., Singh, A. R., Verma, A. N., & Prakash, J. (2009). Possible psychosocial strategies for controlling violence against women. Industrial psychiatry journal, 18(2), 132–134. https://doi.org/10.4103/0972-6748.62275

Office for National Statistics. (November, 2025). Domestic abuse in England and Wales overview.

Piper, A. (2019). Understanding economic abuse as domestic violence. Gender Violence in Australia: Historical Perspectives, 1st ed. Clayton: Monash University Publishing, 34-48.

Sharp-Jeffs, N. (2021). Understanding the economics of abuse: an assessment of the economic abuse definition within the Domestic Abuse Bill. Journal of gender-based violence, 5(1), 163-173.

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