Madhumita Das

As the year draws to a close, the International Center for Research on Women's (ICRW) Asia Regional Office in New Delhi, India, is preparing to expand a groundbreaking program that uses sports as a vehicle for social change.

In this case the sport is cricket, omnipresent in India, from high-end neighborhoods to slum communities. The ICRW program is called Parivartan, an innovative effort that from 2008 to 2012 drew in young men and boys through cricket to challenge them to question traditional notions of manhood in their society and teach them about respecting women and girls and preventing violence against them. Targeting boys 10 to 16 years old, the program took place in formal cricket sessions at Mumbai schools as well as informal settings in two Mumbai slum communities called Shivaji Nagar and ChittahCamp. With funding from The Nike Foundation, Parivartan was modeled after the "Coaching Boys Into Men" program by Futures Without Violence (formerly Family Violence Prevention Fund).

Now, ICRW will launch another version of Parivartan in 2013 with a new group of youth in two underserved areas. In a separate effort, experts in the New Delhi office also are proposing to scale up the original Parivartan model in two states that hold the highest incidences of violence against women nationally.

In each of these new endeavors, youth may play cricket or a different sport that is popular in their particular community.

ICRW's move comes at a time when the role of sports in international development and social change is gaining traction globally. The growing effort includes programs such as Fight for Peace in Brazil, which uses boxing and martial arts to help youth from violent communities realize their potential; Grassroot Soccer in South Africa, where with soccer games come lessons about HIV prevention; and Women Win, which uses sports as a strategy to advance the rights of girls and women around the world. Meanwhile, the United Nations General Assembly last month reaffirmed in a resolution the power of sports in empowering women and girls, strengthening education, facilitating conflict and more.

Indeed, Parivartan's program proved to have an impact on shifting participants' ideas about manhood and women's roles in society - their views became less patriarchal and more gender equitable after the program. Results from ICRW's evaluation of Parivartan demonstrated that sensitizing boys to gender issues can potentially change stereotypes they hold as well as their attitudes about violence against women.

For the next phase of the program, ICRW will develop "Parivartan Plus" as part of the British Department for International Development's STRIVE effort, which aims to address structural drivers - such as poverty and HIV-related stigma - that continue to fuel the AIDS epidemic. Parivartan Plus will take place in rural Karnataka in southern India and again in Shivaji Nagar, the Mumbai slum community of about 600,000 residents by using the local sport as a medium of engaging with adolescents.

The original Parivartan program model will be at the core of Parivartan Plus. However, ICRW and its partners will build upon the model by designing a curriculum to include components of HIV prevention, sexual and reproductive health as well as substance and alcohol use. And, for the first time, girl athletes will be included in the program.

"Part of what we want to evaluate is the feasibility of incorporating this Parivartan Plus model into the overall STRIVE strategy," said ICRW's Madhumita Das, a senior technical specialist who directs the Parivartan program. "We also want to better understand the links between gender norms, violence, substance use, HIV and sexual and reproductive health among youth."

The Parivartan Plus curriculum will be implemented by Kartnataka Health Promotion Trust (KHPT) with girls and boys in 40 to 60 schools and their catchment areas including thousands of villages in two districts in North Karnataka.

Girls also would be included for the first time in the other proposed Parivartan effort, which would involve a major expansion of the program. ICRW is proposing to replicate the original Parivartan model - this time with girls, too - in the states of Bihar and Rajasthan, which respectively have the highest and second-highest incidence of violence against women.

ICRW would partner with Magic Bus, an organization that uses sports-based curriculum to improve children's lives to reach an estimated 7,500 participants with almost 360 mentor coaches by engaging boys and girls of similar age from 90 villages across two districts of Bihar and Rajasthan. The original Parivartan program reached about 1,200 athletes.

Das said that the original Parivartan curriculum for the proposed expanded program should easily be transferrable to an audience of girls. "It's the way that you take up the discussion, not the content," she said. "And for girls especially, being involved in sports can be transformative in terms of boosting girls' confidence and self-efficacy."

"If you really want to achieve gender equality and reduce gender-based violence and see a larger impact on the lives of women and girls, you need to engage with boys and girls," Das added. "It's an investment in both."

Additional Resources: Parivartan: Transformation Through Sports

New International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) findings show that Indian boys’ views about manhood and women’s roles in society became less patriarchal and more equitable after participating in an ICRW program that aimed to shift norms about gender equity. 

The program, called Parivartan, drew in boys from Mumbai through the popular sport of cricket and challenged them to question traditional notions of manhood present in many societies, including their own. Results from ICRW’s evaluation provided proof that sensitizing boys to gender issues can potentially change stereotypes they hold and their attitudes about violence against women. 

Unfolding over three years among boys ages 10 to 16, Parivartan capitalized on cricket coaches’ role in the young athletes’ lives to impart the program’s key messages. It required the coaches, too, to shift their own ideas about expectations of men and women in society. 

“Parivartan demonstrated that role models for youth – in this case, sports coaches – hold great potential as conduits for helping to address and change seemingly indomitable societal norms,” said Madhumita Das, an ICRW senior technical specialist who directed Parivartan. “What we don’t know yet is if the changes that took place among program participants will remain with them into adulthood.” 

Parivartan’s athletes hailed from opposite ends of the socioeconomic spectrum: middle- and upper-class youth from Mumbai schools who had paid coaches and practiced their game in their cricketer’s white on a manicured field near a country club in downtown Mumbai; and boys from Mumbai’s slum community of Shivaji Nagar, who were coached by mentors close in age and practiced on dirt or asphalt, where they used recycled equipment and sometimes ran in sandals or barefoot. 

Modeled after the Coaching Boys into Men program by Futures Without Violence (formerly Family Violence Prevention Fund), ICRW sought to test whether the influence of coaches and the sports setting could serve as a venue – like home and school – to learn about gender roles and relationships. Experts aimed to document how attitudes, perceptions and behaviors did or did not change among athletes – as well as their coaches. 

“Coaches are more than just instructors of sports techniques. They’re also role models,” Das said. “So we wanted to value this unique relationship of coaches’ with their athletes, to have them channel positive messages to young men about manhood and respect for women.” 

The study sample consisted of 168 athletes in 26 Mumbai schools who were exposed to the Parivartan curriculum, and 141 athletes from 19 schools where the program was introduced later. This design provided a means of comparison, to gauge the effectiveness of the program. Similarly, 168 athletes from Shivaji Nagar took part in the program, while 133 athletes from another community served as the comparison group. 

Researchers sought to answer three questions: (1) What changes occurred in gender and violence-related attitudes, perceptions and behaviors among the Parivartan athletes? (2) What effects did participation in the training and the overall program have on the coaches? and (3) What changes did the wives, mothers or daughters of the coaches perceive as a result of the men’s participation in the program? 

In general, ICRW found that attitudes about gender equity and violence against women shifted for the better among the young cricketers. The coaches’ mindset and behavior also evolved positively. 

ICRW determined the changes by asking the athletes to respond to a series of statements centered on stereotypes around manhood and roles for girls and women. This included questions such as, “A wife should always obey her husband” and “Only men should work outside the home.” The participants were asked at the beginning and end of the Parivartan program to indicate on a 5-point scale whether or not they agreed. ICRW compared responses among athletes from the school setting, the slum community and the groups who did not receive the Parivartan curriculum.

Among ICRW’s findings was that most young cricketers supported a more traditional view of manhood when the program started – a view where boys are not expected to be faithful to girlfriends, where they must always act tough and where they believe they’ll lose respect if they talk about their problems. “This suggested that despite their young age, many boys had already been exposed to and internalized the idea that real men are tough, unfaithful and unemotional,” Das said. 

Those perceptions had changed for most by the end of the program. However, many participants said they still believed that only men can work outside of the home – one of the more deeply-engrained cultural expectations. 

When ICRW looked at changes across the three areas researchers studied – boys’ controlling behavior, manhood and masculinity and girls’ and women’s roles – it found that Parivartan participants’ attitudes about gender roles had changed significantly, compared to those who did not participate in the program. 

An important transformation took place in the Shivaji Nagar athletes’ opinions physical abuse of girls: they became less supportive of it. Such violence is not uncommon; many girls in India, particularly those from poor neighborhoods, are not valued much by their families or others in their community. Many don’t have the chance to attend school or have much say over the course of their lives. To that end, some men and boys see girls as disposable and to be controlled – sometimes, by using violence. In the Parivartan study, most young athletes agreed that a girl does not deserve to be hit if she doesn’t finish her homework, obey her elders or argues with her siblings. However, there was still somewhat strong agreement – specifically among the community athletes – that a girl deserves to be slapped or beaten when she doesn’t help with household chores. 

“Particularly in poor communities, girls are often seen as a big support to handle household chores and look after their younger siblings,” Das said. “More importance is placed on that role in the home, regardless of how young they are, than in getting an education.” 

It’s unclear whether the positive changes in attitudes and behavior that ICRW found will stick as the young men grow into adults. To guarantee such an outcome, ICRW recommends that Parivartan be institutionalized into the settings to which teenagers connect and learn, so that its messages are consistently reinforced. 

While the formal program in Mumbai is no longer, Parivartan is expanding its focus and working with a new group of youth in a rural area: Now, it will be Parivartan-Plus, and part of the U.K. Department for International Development’s STRIVE effort to address social inequities that continue to fuel the AIDS epidemic. The program will take place in rural Karnataka, in southern India, and along with addressing violence against women, it also will tackle sexuality and the links between alcohol and substance use and HIV. 

Gillian Gaynair is ICRW’s senior writer and editor.

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Photo Slideshow: The Sport of Respect