Changing community responses to wife abuse - A research and demonstration project in Iztacalco, Mexico

This article describes the process of designing a multifaceted, community-b ased intervention to change community responses to wife abuse in Iztacalco, a low-income community on the outskirts of Mexico City. The goal of the in tervention is to encourage women to recognize and disclose abuse and to enc ourage more constructive, less victim-blaming attitudes among family member s, friends, and the community at large. The intervention is based on the be lief that rite response that a woman first gets upon disclosing her situati on will be critical ill setting the course of her future actions. The inter vention includes small-scale media (e.g., buttons, posters, events) and a 1 2-session workshop to train women as community change agents. The design is based on insights derived from formative research and from the transtheore tical model of behavior change as elaborated by J. O. Prochaska and C. C. D i-Clemente (1982) and adapted to the special case of domestic violence by J . Brown (1997). The article also illustrates the utility of adapting popula r education techniques to the research setting in order facilitate more hon est disclosure of prevailing norms and attitudes about abuse.