Shifting gender norms for a fairer world

In rural Guatemala, childrearing and health fall under a woman's purview. Padres Presentes (Engaged Fathers), implemented under Breakthrough ACTION Guatemala (2020-2025) was designed to challenge restrictive gender norms and engage fathers to be more active participants in their families' lives. Grounded in an active-participatory methodology that draws on learning from experience and culturally meaningful concepts, the program centers local experience, connection, and relationships. Sessions were led by local SBC officers, held in trusted community spaces, and scheduled by consensus in evenings or weekends, exemplifying locally driven design and delivery. Sessions brought fathers together to discuss, reflect, and challenge the status quo, encouraging them to talk to their wives, make joint decisions, share responsibilities, and build stronger relationships with their family. A pre-post evaluation using the 24-item Gender Equitable Men scale assessed changes in gender equitable attitudes among 72 participants. Findings revealed substantial positive shifts: mean scores decreased from 0.53 to 0.48 (p<0.01), indicating more gender-equitable attitudes overall. Item-specific analyses showed declines in the acceptability of wife-beating, sexual stereotypes, male-dominated decision-making, and stereotypes around childrearing. These results demonstrate that Padres Presentes effectively shifted gender-equitable attitudes among fathers, positioning them as pillars of positive support within the home. The persistence of certain beliefs such as the belief that domestic violence is a private matter underscores the need for continued engagement with fathers. Overall, Padres Presentes offers a replicable, community-led pathway to engage men and advance gender equity and family well-being.

The persistence of early marriage in Jharkhand's Gumla district highlights deep-rooted gender norms that restrict girls' autonomy and limit their access to education, health, and economic opportunities. Data from the National Family Health Survey (2019–21) show 21% of girl and women are married before 18 year of age, 7.2% begin childbearing by 15, 31.5% experience spousal violence. To address these challenges, C3 implemented the Moving Towards a Child Marriage-Free Society initiative from 2021 to 2024.
The program applied a comprehensive SBCC approach to influence attitudes, norms, and practices at individual, community, and institutional levels, reaching over 4,500 adolescent girls. Central components integrated life skills and SRH education, academic reinforcement, and peer-driven dialogue, while engaging boys to promote gender-equitable norms. The initiative built multi-level partnerships with faith-based leaders, youth champions, parents, teachers, health workers, elected representatives, and local administrators to foster shared accountability. Through participatory communication such as community dialogues, folk events, and media storytelling, it created enabling environments that encouraged reflection and collective action to support girls' empowerment and delay early marriage.
Assessment findings demonstrated measurable progress: 99% of participating girls remained unmarried, 12th grade completion increased by 8%, school re-enrolment rose by 54%, and awareness of key issues-education incentives, legal age of marriage, and adolescent health services-improved by 9%, 48% and 18%, respectively. These outcomes underscore the transformative potential of sustained, multi-layered SBCC strategies in challenging harmful gender norms, empowering adolescents, and fostering long-term social change toward gender equity.

Despite rapid diffusion of smartphones and low-cost data, India faces a persistent gender digital divide - women are 11% less likely to own mobile phones and 40% less likely to use mobile internet than men. This gap is driven not only by access constraints but by deep-rooted injunctive and empirical social norms that restrict young women's digital autonomy. 
In 2023–24, BBC Media Action, in collaboration with the Penn Social Norms Group (University of Pennsylvania), implemented a formative social-norms diagnostic study in nine non-metro cities across Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, and Maharashtra with young women (18-25) and their gatekeepers.  
The collaboration used mixed methods research (structured surveys, vignettes, FGDs, IDIs, and field immersions) to examine the underlying normative barriers to women's smartphone use. We identified four prevalent norms that limit women's phone use: 
Strict adherence to gendered roles; 
Women's limited voice and agency;  
Sexuality and marriage expectations governing behavior;  
Protective paternalism ("women are vulnerable, must be protected"). 
Leveraging these insights, we developed a transmedia "multiverse" SBCC design that reframes smartphones as enablers of capability and safe mobility, models allyship and negotiation with gatekeepers, and coordinates normative expectations via story arcs across platforms. By creating safe digital spaces, the approach aims to "break the digital forcefield" in small-town media ecologies, with measurable pathways for norm shift and women's self-efficacy.

In Mozambique, 61% of children under 5 are at risk of poor development (Countdown to 2030). Early child development (ECD) interventions can improve child development but are difficult to implement at scale. Evidence suggests that mass media campaigns are a cost-effective, scalable way to change behaviours. DMI is implementing a national radio campaign to promote ECD behaviours amongst caregivers of children under 3 years in Mozambique.

Qualitative research, comprising 27 focus group discussions across 4 provinces, was conducted to explore caregivers' perceptions of the campaign and early signs of behaviour change.

The campaign increased caregivers' knowledge about ECD and is shifting male caregivers' attitudes towards their role in caregiving. Previously, fathers perceived "God's different duties" for men and women. However, men now recognise that interacting with their children is important for themselves and their children. Despite the positive changes, remaining barriers include a lack of time to play with children and fatigue after working.
Key lessons from the research are:
Mass media has the potential to change parental knowledge, attitudes, and behaviours in Mozambique, at scale and at a relatively low cost.Message broadcasting should continue to consolidate the behaviour change reported, providing reminders and reinforcement to form longer-term habits. Longer-form, interactive programmes can be used to help support caregivers in behaviour change, providing a way to ask questions and troubleshoot challenges.Social change is crucial. Messages should target male caregivers and other key influencers, continuing to shift social norms and provide social support for change.