ABSTRACT
Incidents of violence against women and girls currently feature frequently in international news and, since 2010, have ignited a global policy discussion. The role of education in perpetuating and challenging gender violence has been a key theme of these discussions, but recent reviews have questioned whether we are any nearer to tackling and reducing violence (United Nations 2011; Leach et al. 2014). The purpose of this chapter is to look critically at the sorts of assumptions being made about violence – how it is defined, what causes it, with what consequences. We focus in particular on assumptions in academic literature about how violence has intensified, dropped or transformed over time and across space, including its links with poverty. The epidemiological studies reviewed in The Spirit Level (Wilkinson and Pickett 2010) suggested that violence was linked with inequalities, eliciting considerable controversy 1 (e.g. Saunders 2010). This chapter aims to investigate the interface between poverty, inequality and violence, and shows how there is no simple story. It maps a wide range of links between poverty, inequality and the levels of violence experienced by young people and reflects on the implications for thinking about education interventions.
