Although childhood trauma and violence against women are global public health issues, few population-based data from low-income and middle-income countries exist about the links between them. We present data from the UN Multi-country Study on Men and Violence in Asia and the Pacific, exploring the pathways between different forms of childhood trauma and violence against women. In this multicountry study, we interviewed multistage representative samples of men and women, aged 18-49 years, in Asia and the Pacific, using standardised population-based household surveys. Men were interviewed in six countries, and women in four. Respondents were asked questions about their perpetration or experience of intimate partner violence or non-partner sexual violence, childhood trauma, and harsh parenting (smacking their children as a form of discipline). We used maximum likelihood multivariate logit models to explore associations between childhood trauma and violence against women, and fitted path models to explore associations between experience and perpetration of child maltreatment. Between Jan 1, 2011, and Dec 1, 2012, 10 178 men and 3106 women completed interviews in this study, with between 815 and 1812 men per site and 477 and 1103 women per site. The proportion of men who experienced any childhood trauma varied between 59% (n=478, 95% CI 54·0-63·3; Indonesia rural site) and 92% (n=791, 89·4-93·8; Bougainville, Papua New Guinea). For women, the results ranged from 44% (n=272, 37·7-50·8; Sri Lanka) to 84% (n=725, 80·7-86·8; Bougainville, Papua New Guinea). For men, all forms of childhood trauma were associated with all forms of intimate partner violence perpetration. For women, all forms of childhood trauma were associated with physical intimate partner violence, and both physical and sexual intimate partner violence. There were significant, often gendered, pathways between men's and women's perpetration and experiences of childhood trauma, physical intimate partner violence, harsh parenting, and other factors. The data point to both a co-occurrence and a cycle of abuse, with childhood trauma leading to violence against women and further child maltreatment, which in turn increases the risk of experience or perpetration of violence during adulthood. Efforts to prevent both forms of violence would benefit from a meaningful integrated approach. Interventions should promote positive parenting, address inequality and the normalisation of violence across the life course, and transform men's power over women and children. Partners for Prevention. National studies were funded by the UN Population Fund in Bangladesh and China, UN Women in Cambodia and Indonesia, UN Develoment Programme in Papua New Guinea, and CARE in Sri Lanka.

Image-based sexual abuse (IBSA) is a form of technology-facilitated abuse in which intimate (nude or sexual) images of a person are taken, distributed, or threats are made to distribute the images, without a person’s consent. It is an increasingly criminalized form of sexual abuse, and yet little is known about the perpetrators of these harms, including the extent, relational nature and correlates of perpetration. This article reports on the first multi-country survey study to comprehensively investigate IBSA perpetration. An online panel survey of the general community (aged 16–64 years) in the United Kingdom (UK), Australia, and New Zealand (NZ) ( n = 6109) found that self-reported IBSA perpetration was relatively common, with one in six (17.5%, n = 1070) respondents engaging in at least one form of IBSA. Logistic regression analyses identified nine characteristics that significantly increased the odds of having engaged in IBSA perpetration during their lifetime, namely: residing in the NZ as opposed to the UK or Australia, being male, having disability/assistance needs, holding attitudes that minimize the harms and excuse the perpetrators of IBSA, engaging in online dating behaviors, engaging in sexual self-image behaviors, and experiencing IBSA victimization (images taken, images distributed, and images threatened). Policy and prevention implications of the findings, as well as directions for future research are discussed.

This study examined image-based sexual abuse (IBSA) victimisation in the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand (n = 6,109). Findings showed that 37.7% (n = 2,306) of respondents had at least one IBSA victimisation experience since 16 years of age. Logistic regression analyses further identified that demographic characteristics (age, sexuality, disability/assistance), attitudes towards IBSA, and experiential variables (online dating and sexual self-image behaviours, IBSA perpetration) were each predictors of IBSA victimisation. Though gender did not predict the overall extent of IBSA victimisation, the relational contexts and impacts of IBSA remained gendered in particular ways. Implications of the study are discussed with respect to conceptualising gendered violence and future research.

Multi-gender attracted (bisexual+) youth experience a high risk for suicide and mental health problems, but little is known about their protective factors. This study explored the challenges and supporting factors for wellbeing in a sample of diverse bisexual+ young people through semi-structured qualitative interviews. Participants (n = 15) were aged 17–25 years and were multi-gender attracted. The sample included young people who were transgender and gender diverse, culturally and linguistically diverse, Aboriginal, living in regional areas, and on the asexual spectrum. This research demonstrated unique challenges and protective factors for bisexual+ wellbeing compared to other sexual minority youth. In particular, the findings highlight the exclusion and stigmatization that many bisexual+ young people face, including from within the LGBTQIA+ community. These experiences were more pronounced for some bisexual+ youth, including TGD or CALD young people. Consequently, bisexual+ youth often had limited social support and a sense of belonging, which can buffer against the impact of marginalization among lesbian and gay youth. Despite these challenges, young people were resilient, empathetic and tolerant of others. Those who had access to supportive environments, visibility, and information on their diversity found these healing. Wellbeing in bisexual+ youth was impacted by a myriad of intersecting aspects of identity and experience, highlighting the importance of intersectional approaches in understanding minority experiences. The findings underscore the need for targeted and intersectional services for sexually diverse youth to address the wellbeing needs of this diverse group.

Engaging men and boys to address the links between masculinity and gendered violence is a rapidly expanding space for primary prevention, in Australia and globally. There are parallel debates within feminist commentary on violence prevention and in masculinity studies over how to conceptualise and deconstruct masculinity for the long-term transformation of gender inequality. This article analyses semi-structured interviews with Australian prevention practitioners whose work focuses on engaging men and boys, which included initiatives aimed at gender equality, healthy masculinity, preventing violence against women, and domestic/family violence prevention. Interviews highlighted that these practitioners are currently grappling with how to address masculinity as a construct and/or a normative process within their work to achieve gender transformative change. These tensions reflect ongoing concerns over reproducing narrow associations between men and masculinity that perpetuate essentialised identity categories. Importantly, I question whether a focus on ‘positive’ or ‘healthy’ masculinities can effectively go beyond the binary gender relations that underpin gendered violence. The research findings suggest a need for greater reflexive and creative thinking around how men and masculinity are (de)centred within violence prevention to better support gender transformation.

Gender-based violence may be considered a failure or absence of care across the interpersonal, symbolic, and structural levels. Feminist scholars have called for closer attention to an ethic of care as one vital pathway to shared solidarity for social justice and relations of non-violence. Works from Black, Indigenous, queer and disability writers and activists have similarly illustrated the transformative potential of collective care for building community and ending systems of oppression. In this paper, we draw on this critical literature to argue for framing collective care as both a practice and a long-term objective in work to prevent gender-based violence. To illustrate this framing, we share empirical data from two Australian studies: one with young people using social media to prevent gender-based violence, and one with prevention practitioners who work with men and boys. Our findings are organised around four central themes: care as collaboration; transformative care; a politic of care; and collective care in structural change. These findings represent patterns in practice, political approach, and imagined futures among our research participants that we suggest are reflective of ongoing commitments to empathy, compassion, and accountability. These patterns are substantively distinct from much mainstream programmatic and policy approaches to gender-based violence prevention, which often reproduce individualistic frames and are constrained by funding and governance models. We argue that violence prevention is fundamentally a shared project of collective care: supporting one another to recognise, interrogate, and challenge the gendered norms and structures that perpetuate gender-based violence. This work is inescapably relational, political, personal, and motivated by a shared sense of caring for each other.