White Ribbon Australias Campaign - Case Study Example

case analysis al Affiliation) “WHITE RIBBON” Australia’s campaign to stop violence against women PART The White Ribbon Campaign (WRC) is a media coverage program that draws its design from the motivation of creating positive messages that can champion the course of change against gender-based violence. This campaign inspires men to join in to fight against women violence. Originally, the campaign aimed at altering the attitudes of men and their behaviours by men talking amongst themselves in a manner they understand best. In Australia, this operation has developed into one of the renowned social marketing campaigns. The main aim of the campaign therefore was to create awareness of the violence that women are subjected to by the men. This awareness would challenge the society to foster personal change as the society shuns this violence. At the end of it, the society would gain a commitment to supporting the campaign to influence the behaviour of other men who do not recognize the campaign as critical. The target audience of this campaign was individual men. Despite this, the campaign reached out to the entire community to encourage a response against the violence faced by women. The major reason why the men were targeted is that a majority of cases involving women violence had men enlisted as the core perpetrators. In addition to that, the feminist thinking concerning the attitude of men towards the female gender shows that most men result to violence as measure of retaliation against women. Besides, the campaign being targeted to male audiences, the knowledge behind the formation of the campaign is based on bystander intervention programs that focus on the prevention of gender-based violence as a means to encourage women empowerment in the society. Further, the knowledge about the effects of the violence encouraged the use of social marketing as a means of ending or reducing the impact of the violence in the country. Evidently, an average of one woman is killed every week because of intimate partner violence. This violence, furthermore, contributes significantly to death, ill health and disabilities amongst the Australian women population of the 15 to 44 years age bracket. In addition to that, in every three women, at least one has an experience of sexual or physical violence attributed to a person with whom they are familiar. This violence constitutes to an annual $5.6Billion cost to the Australian economy (White Ribbon, 2015). The belief driving the White Ribbon Campaign is in the ability of individuals to encourage change within the society. The belief that the society perceives violence as a serious and hazardous activity, motivated the campaign to emphasize violence against women. In addition to that, the campaign portrays men as positive and non-violent in the roles they play. This emphasizes that not all men are violent, and that a majority of men can actively support women by intervening to challenge the societal norms. Therefore, the social marketing development sequence depends on the belief that men can join in the fight against women violence. The marketing mix strategies incorporated in the White Ribbon Campaign involved centralizing the customer by making them the target for change. This marketing mix involves promotion. The basic facets of social marketing employ the audience or the target as the dynamic and active determinant of the marketing process. The men in this context include perpetrators, those with attitudes supporting violence, the women who are victims of violence, and the entire population or community. The White Ribbon Campaigns involved a detailed attention of masculinity in order to achieve the desired positive response in line with gender inequality and intimate partner violence. The engagement of men is specifically based on the understanding that men share common assumptions besides the fact that male intimate violence is gendered. These assumptions include: men need an invitation to guarantee their participation in the problem solving process. Moreover, men have a duty to play in the prevention of violence against women, interactive and small male facilitated groups are effective in this campaign, men must collaborate with women in participation to this campaign and that there is need to strengthen the positive anti violence actions and values of men. The campaign targeted voluntary behaviour as a marketing mix. The success of social marketing criteria involves the targeting of voluntary behaviour and making these behaviours more attractive than other choices. The marketing mix envisages price as a factor of consideration in marketing the campaign. The audience is left with no choice but to buy the product through voluntary engagement. However, this is not to state that coercion, behaviour change and punishment are part of the design. The aim of the campaign was to reach a sustained behavioural change, hence prompting the marketing strategy to adopt a manner that portrays the product as more attractive than the current harmful behaviours of perpetrators. The white ribbon offered service provision with counselling services and phone help lines (Castelino, Colla & Boulet, 2013). The campaign also used anonymity to encourage other victims to turn out and join in popularizing the campaign. This approach to social marketing illustrates that legislative change and mere education are not adequate to suppress negative social behaviour; instead, voluntary social inclusion enables the elimination of the less desirable behaviours. The White Ribbon Campaign involved sale of white ribbons to the populations 16 days before the Human Rights Day. The marketing mix involved in this strategy is to make the product and its promotion relevant to the course of the campaign. The neglect of relevance can lead to loss of resources and further misconceptions by the public. Therefore, the white ribbon campaign had a number of questions that guaranteed its relevance and subsequent success. The measure of success of the campaign would not just depend on the number of white ribbons sold, but on the number of men who buy the ribbons. Besides, other factors like the number of men who take a pledge on the White Ribbon Day and the number of men who respond actively to attitudes that are supportive of violence determine the success of the social marketing campaign based on relevance. The buying of white ribbons would be an indication of the increased awareness and the probable possibilities of a man rising to voice his support against domestic violence. The purchase of white ribbons would not necessarily make statements of the status of a man concerning his position on the issue of gender violence, instead the attitude and behavioural change would account for his position. Therefore, the relevance of the white ribbon campaign is dependent on the perception of the society. The success of this campaign required more training, accountability and support at the local level. Moreover, the campaign used the desired societal positive as a marketing strategy to incorporate more people into the campaign. PART 2 The behavioural change in the area of gender-based violence has several constraints that range from the personal or internal factors to the external, environmental and social factors. Peer pressure is a primary influence that hinders the internal behavioural change. Peer pressure associates an individual with a specific society that has dominant norms. Members of a certain peer groups have self-driven approach towards several issues, and implement these approaches in solving their day-to-day problems. Based on gender violence and intimate partner violence, peer pressure influences the perception of the individual (Pechmann, Zhao, Goldberg & Reibling, 2003). This affects the way the individual thinks and dictates their behaviour. In the rolling out of the white ribbon campaign, different peer groups had varying opinions on the subject of the campaign. Peer groups that embraced the idea had their peer members encourage the campaign, whereas those opposed to the campaign had their members abstain from the campaign. Peer group and subsequent peer pressure hinders the alteration of behaviours. Individual hindrances such as the fear of being targeted by the perpetrators hinder the change of behaviour. By wearing a white ribbon, individuals pledge to be against gender-based violence. This is an indication that the individual does not support these actions. However, many woman and men alike fear being subjected to violence from perpetrators for publicly opposing their social norms. In addition to that, certain individuals view the campaign as an ambiguous nature of sexism, hence their reluctance to change their behaviour and attitude in support of the campaign. The exclusive identity of male as the core perpetrators of intimate partner violence invites fears amongst other individuals about their masculinity being called into question (Pink, 2009). In many societies, the support of feminist beliefs and campaigns by men amounts to stigmatization on the sexual orientation of the individuals. Besides the fact that the campaign highlighted the positive nature of men, others are reluctant to change their behaviours for fear of being labelled as feminine. In relation to intervening in gender violence cases, the individuals have the ambiguity regarding the relationship between the potential perpetrators and victims. This means individuals take intimate partner violence as not as a community or political issue but as a personal issue. Therefore, intervening would be tantamount to meddling into the perpetrators personal matters. In addition to the belief that the issue is personal, the individuals have in built perceptions that taking action in case of gender-based violence would be ineffective and would not guarantee the solution to the problem. This causes reluctance and instils a nonchalant attitude of individuals towards behavioural change. Individual constraints contribute largely to the cause of difficult behavioural change towards the campaign against gender-based violence. Internal lack of knowledge on how to intervene discourages individuals from taking action as required by the campaigns. In other situations, the fear of compromised friendship limits the ability of individuals to voice their concerns to the perpetrators of gender-based violence. Many male counterparts are adamant in preserving their interpersonal relations despite having evidence of violence within relationships. The above factors, coupled with turgid adherence to the basic traditional gender roles make it difficult for individuals to criticize the norms that support male dominance. The external impediments of behavioural change constitute the lack of basic societal foundations to guarantee the successful transformation of behaviour from the individual to the societal level. Cultural norms forbid younger generations from taking action against members of the older generation (Rothschild, 1999). This creates a stalemate in the event of a victim being younger than the perpetrator. The social marketing designs should incorporate a clear design that highlights the need to alter certain cultural beliefs in a bid to embrace positive social behaviours. Inadequate education on the components of intimate partner violence hinders the behavioural change, as the available education materials do not envisage the specific topics about the factors amounting to gender violence. The white ribbon campaign does not have specific cases that engrave the diverse nature of violence subjected to women, hence making it difficult for the target audience to specify the nature of violence addresses by the campaign. In as much as several legal and legislative actions are in place to tarnish the infamous gender based violence, inadequate women representation in legislative positions makes the campaign have less political good will. Many men are attentive to political topics, and are attracted to stories that have political semblance in them. Were it not for external support from prominent male politicians, the White Ribbon Campaign could not register an equal amount of success. This insinuates that the political input towards addressing the issue hinders the alteration of perceptions and behaviours amongst many men. Poor networking and reluctant approach by the key stakeholders of the campaign illustrates the lack of agency in the campaign set up. Leaders of the campaigns should adopt hands on approach towards popularization of the campaign; hence hasten the behavioural change amongst the target audience. Besides, lack of universal access of social media platform bars individuals in older generations from gaining awareness on the facets of the campaign. Nonetheless, other societies are not attracted to the application of feminist approach to the handling of male related issues. This misconception hinders the development of the campaign as a general attitude and behavioural change (Sheth, Sethia & Srinivas, 2011). PART 3 Behavioural change requires a complete overhaul of the core societal and cultural factors that hinder the successful implementation of the gender anti- violence campaigns. The social marketing campaign must build a relationship that sustains social good and ethical concerns in light of men participation. The campaigns should incorporate both sexes as parties to gender and sexual harassment to guarantee genuine behavioural change. In that context, the feminist approach to the campaigns will be solved. The campaigns should focus on the acceptance of the voluntary nature of the marketed product exchange. In this case, the marketed product being the desired behaviour should exceed the product itself. The consideration of the target audience if they buy the product determines the behavioural change. This is the condition if they decide to change their attitudes and norms. In that context, men are hailed as heroic for not assaulting women in the White Ribbon campaign. The promotion as heroes exceeds the social norm that simply does not protect the female gender. The social marketing campaigns should aim at educating the society on the nature of the male violence against women in many categories. The education on this should focus on the psychological, financial, verbal, physical and sexual violence (Baca-Motes, Brown, Gneezy, Keenan & Nelson, 2013). In addition to that, the behavioural change will materialize if the campaigns shun the generic, cultural and economic factors that persistently exist as barriers to the realization of behavioural change. The society should be more informed on the apathy of the bystander and the capability of intervention. These factors must incorporate the disregard of cultural and social norms that are retrogressive. There is need to develop creative approaches to educational materials and curriculums that specifically deal with the issue of gender based violence. By informing the younger generation on the intimate partner violence, they grow up with much awareness on the consequences of the vice in the social cohesion of the community. As generations evolve, the system will be fully implemented in the various dimensions of life. The contemporary involvement in community development, networking and advocacy would help in the creation of more courage to get involved with the campaigns. Such efforts enhance, claim and broaden the democratic spaces and strengthen the solidarity of the community for safety and peace amongst all the citizens (Stark & Ager, 2011). This helps to eradicate the internal and individual barriers to behavioural change that is associated to fear. In many advanced democracies, such campaigns receive substantive support due to the liberal minded thinking of the citizens. Women representation in legislative posts should increase in order to encourage women empowerment and emphasise the essence of behavioural change amongst the perpetrators of intimate partner violence. The employment of leadership development programs and consciousness-raising forums on the rights of women and gender equality should be organized to ensure more recognition of women in the society. In addition to that, these programs should bring together both men and women in order to incorporate togetherness towards instigate behavioural change. The stakeholders should take part in a participatory evaluation and action research exercise that oversees the creation of campaigns to enhance change of attitudes and behaviours in this area. This can be implemented through the support of struggles against violence through formulation of strict law enforcement agencies to punish the perpetrators of violence. The legal systems should derive a mechanism that protects women against all forms of violence while guarantees them access to justice, dignity, human rights and safety. Evidently, the position of the male gender is in jeopardy given that these campaigns focus solely on protecting the women against gender violence (Duhachek, Agrawal & Han, 2012). Moreover, gender violence subjected to men is generally on the rise, with many agencies stepping up to stem this emergent trend. As part of the solutions to the reasons for slow behavioural change, negligence of the problems faced by the men should be avoided. The social marketing campaigns should recognise that men and women have varying problems, and a behavioural change will be valid if both sides are incorporated into the decision making process. Conclusion The White Ribbon Campaign is a successful campaign that runs in over 60 countries worldwide. The campaign makes the idea of behaviour change attractive through its message packaging. It also decreases the impact of negative social behaviours to the economy and victims. The campaign improves the ability of the audience to adopt behaviour change as it has successfully managed to decrease the attractiveness of using violence in finding solutions to domestic problems (Donovan, Jalleh, Fielder & Ouschan, 2009). References Baca-Motes, K., Brown, A., Gneezy, A., Keenan, E., & Nelson, L. 2013. Commitment and Behavior Change: Evidence from the Field. Journal Of Consumer Research, 39(5), 1070-1084. doi:10.1086/667226 Castelino, D., Colla, M., & Boulet, D. 2013. Social Marketing for Preventing violence Against Women. Making Every Action Matter, 4-35. Donovan, R., Jalleh, G., Fielder, L., & Ouschan, R. 2009. Ethical issues in pro-social advertising: the Australian 2006 White Ribbon Day campaign. J. Publ. Aff., 9(1), 5-19. doi:10.1002/pa.308 Duhachek, A., Agrawal, N., & Han, D. 2012. 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A Systematic Review of Prevalence Studies of Gender-Based Violence in Complex Emergencies. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 12(3), 127-134. doi:10.1177/1524838011404252 White Ribbon,. 2015. White Ribbon - Australias Campaign to Stop Violence Against Women. Retrieved 4 June 2015, from http://www.whiteribbon.org.au/ Read More