Alcohol has long been a contested risk factor in research and conversations about violence against women. While harmful drinking does not cause violence in a simple or inevitable way, growing evidence shows that it can increase the frequency, severity and unpredictability of violence - particularly when men's drinking is involved.
In this episode, we explore what the research tells us about the relationship between alcohol and violence against women and violence against children, and how alcohol interacts with wider factors such as gender inequality, power, control and poverty. We also examine what we know about alcohol ban policies and their potential to reduce violence, including evidence from Australia and South Africa, as well as the role of the alcohol industry in shaping drinking cultures and ideas about masculinity.
Your host is: Ayesha Mago, Global Advocacy Director, Sexual Violence Research Initiative (SVRI)
This episode’s guests are:
Dr Leane Ramsoomar, Senior Specialist Scientist, Gender and Health Research Unit, South African Medical Research Council
Anne-Marie Laslett, Professor, Centre for Alcohol Policy Research, La Trobe University
🎧 Listen to learn:
➡︎ Why alcohol must be addressed as a risk factor for violence along with other drivers and through a gender transformative lens
➡︎How children are impacted by harmful alcohol use ➡︎ How alcohol interacts with gender, power, control and other risk factors➡︎ What alcohol ban policies can tell us about preventing violence against women➡︎ How alcohol marketing reinforces ideas about masculinity and drinking
⚡Follow SVRI on Instagram.
🌐Check out the SVRI website.
🎥 Watch our film on YouTube.
💬 Connect with the SVRI svri@svri.org and our host, Elizabeth Dartnall
🎙️ An OG Podcasts Ltd production
RESOURCES:
A global review of the impact on women from men's alcohol drinking: the need for responding with a gendered lens - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38700277/
Pooled analysis of the association between alcohol use and violence against women: evidence from four violence prevention studies in Africa - https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/11/7/e049282
Women’s experiences of alcohol-related severe intimate partner violence: Findings from formative research in South Africa - https://www.researchgate.net/publication/399284846_Women's_experiences_of_alcohol-related_severe_intimate_partner_violence_Findings_from_formative_research_in_South_Africa
Addressing harmful alcohol use to reduce intimate partner violence and violence against children in the home - https://prevention-collaborative.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Alcohol-Brief-Digital.pdf