Giving Compass' Take:

• A recent study highlighted by Futurity finds that teenagers with more equitable gender attitudes have lower odds of reporting and taking part in violent behaviors.

• How can funders work to bring about the type of cultural shift required to decrease domestic abuse and gender violence? 

• Here's Giving Compass' Gender Equality Guide.

Teenage boys who witness their peers abusing women and girls are much more likely to bully and fight with others, as well as behave abusively toward their dates, compared to teenage boys who don’t witness such behaviors, according to the analysis.

The results appear in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

“The Me Too Movement brought to light how pervasive sexual violence and derogatory behavior toward women is in our society,” says lead author Elizabeth Miller, professor of pediatrics, public health, and clinical and translational science at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

“Our findings highlight the wide-ranging impact that witnessing sexual harassment and dating violence has on our teenage boys, and present an opportunity to teach adolescents to challenge negative gender and social norms, and interrupt their peer’s disrespectful and harmful behaviors.”

This study is the first to gather information from US male adolescents in community-based settings, rather than schools or clinics, about multiple types of violence, including bullying and sexual harassment, and the role of gender norms and peer behaviors.

Read the full article about the impacts of gender violence by Andrea Kunicky at Futurity.