Ending gender-based violence: A grand challenge for social work

摘要: Ending gender-based violence (GBV) and promoting violence-free relationships and communities is a Grand Challenge for Social Work. A significant and enduring social problem, GBV affects not only the day-to-day lives of millions of American women, girls, and men, but also family members, colleagues, and friends in their social networks who seek ways to support nonviolence. In this working paper, we turn our attention to the ways GBV manifests in intimate relationships through what is known in the United States as domestic violence or intimate partner violence (IPV). The short-and long-term effects of GBV are serious—sometimes fatal—for one or both partners and related children. Social work’s current measures, though inadequate, indicate changes in GBV are possible and that American society has the resources, tools, and knowledge to move more quickly toward not only healthier nonviolent relationships but also families, neighborhoods, and communities that value safety, empowerment and respect for girls and women. Existing initiatives to prevent GBV and promote violence-free intimate relationships include building healthy teen and parenting relationships, emergency shelter programs, screening to identify those at highest risk of lethal violence, and coordinated community responses to address systemlevel barriers. The field of social work must test fresh approaches and develop new scientific tools to solve this Grand Challenge for current and future generations.