Campaigns to End Violence against Women and Girls - Virtual ...

Example: It’s Against All the Rules (South Wales, Australia)
The state-wide public education campaign ‘Violence Against Women: It’s Against All the
Rules’ was a project of the Violence Against Women Specialist Unit and part of the NSW
Strategy to Reduce Violence Against Women in New South Wales, Australia. The
campaign ran from 2000-2001, and specifically aimed to build community capacity to
confront the issue of VAW by involving high-profile sportsmen to deliver the message to
young men that such behaviour is unacceptable. Importantly, the campaign sought to
target mainstream community attitudes rather than portray specific groups as
‘perpetrators’ or ‘victims’.
The campaign’s development was grounded on formative research that included 1)
sourcing input from government and community groups with experience of similar
education campaigns, 2) consultation with regional specialists on violence prevention
(who were familiar with grassroots concerns in particular), and 3) analyzing evaluation
reports of other relevant State campaigns. In addition, relationships were established
with agencies running current VAW campaigns (e.g. Freedom from Fear campaign in
Western Australia) as well as proposed future campaigns on community education
initiatives. Campaign materials were pre-tested by formative evaluation methods (focus
groups) to assess strengths and weaknesses of images, messaging, relevance to the
target audience, etc.
Sport was determined as the primary promotional vehicle to target men aged 21-29
years of age, reflecting its importance in Australian culture, and its influence particularly
on men and boys either as participants or spectators. Campaign messaging used ‚sports
language and terms‘ to relate to descriptions of violent acts (e.g. ‚marking‘ in soccer =
stalking), which added to the masculine appeal of the campaign, and helped stress the
fact that the message was being delivered by men to men (and importantly, ‘iconic/role
model’ men to other men).
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Campaigns December 2011