Scoping Review of Cultural Responsivity in Interventions to Prevent Gender-Based Violence in Latin America

Abstract

In this article, we review existing interventions to prevent gender-based violence (GBV) in Latin American contexts to evaluate the extent to which this work incorporates cultural responsivity—meaning whether the interventions consider the unique norms, identities, and attributes of specific cultures. We follow Arksey and O’Malley’s steps for conducting systematic scoping reviews. We reviewed articles from 2003 to 2023 across 12 databases. Fifteen peer-reviewed articles met the criteria for inclusion, which included being published in English or Spanish, focused on proposed or implemented interventions to prevent GBV based in Latin America, and published in the last 20 years. The selected studies contained information about separate GBV interventions (proposed or implemented) in 10 different countries in Latin America, in both rural and urban contexts. We categorized five interventions as most culturally responsive, six studies as moderately culturally responsive, and four studies as showing minimal attention to cultural responsivity. We found that culturally responsive interventions tended to involve working closely with men and women in local communities as “peer facilitators” or “community-based researchers.” These interventions challenged socio-cultural norms related to gender, family, and parenting, including attention to machismo and other forms of hegemonic masculinity. The present study is the first one to examine cultural responsiveness within GBV interventions in Latin America, and it is relevant for researchers, service providers, and communities in Latin America who are concerned with preventing GBV.