The intervention will be embedded within a football tournament that will take place over four months. Prior to each game, the men will participate in 1 – 1 ½ hour workshops in small groups. The content of the workshops (14 in total) will include discussions about gender socialization and roles in the home, community and society and their links to various forms of violence, including physical, psychological and sexual violence against women as well as homophobia, racism, and other forms of violence and social injustice. The men will be encouraged to analyze the links between rigid gender norms and the aggression and prejudices that often surround football (e.g. homophobia among players, spectator violence) as well as reflect on the gender imbalances that exist in terms of support for men’s and women’s football. There will also be an on-going campaign to disseminate messages about violence prevention to other men in the community.

Men’s use of violence against women is a learned behavior and rooted in norms and attitudes about gender roles in the home and child care-giving, intimate relationships, and society in general. While the intervention seeks to engage the men in critical reflections on these norms and attitudes, the core question is whether a four month intervention will be sufficient to lead to lasting change. Moreover, while we believe that the football tournament will serve as a compelling incentive for the men to participate, the sport is laden with aggression and rigid ideas of masculinities that we will be trying to deconstruct within the context of the intervention. One of the main challenges this project faces is questioning some of the culture of such a beloved sport without turning men off from the project.

The project will be implemented in a low-income community in Rio de Janeiro where we have worked for many years and established strong alliances. Two community-based activists with whom we have previously collaborated were hired to serve as the local coordinators for the project and the focal points for reaching out to the community leadership and organizations. We have also established alliances with two other NGOs based in Rio de Janeiro. One has a long trajectory in working with families in violence prevention and response – they will provide support in addressing any cases of violence or related concerns that appear during the project. The other NGO works in education and sports and provided support during the field-testing of the workshop curriculum. In order to develop the format of the football tournament itself, we consulted with a community-based sports association.

The expected project results include positive changes in men’s knowledge, attitudes and behaviors related to gender equity and the prevention of violence against women. Specifically, we will seek to measure (through quantitative and qualitative methods) the men’s attitudes about gender roles in the home, intimate relationships and society, self-reported use of physical, sexual and psychological violence against women, knowledge of violence-related laws and policies, self-reported communication with other men and/or sons and daughters about violence against women, and self-reported willingness to intervene in situations of violence they may witness.

The results from the impact evaluation study will represent a significant contribution to the evidence base for working with men and will serve as leverage for on-going advocacy in Brazil and elsewhere to integrate men and a broader gender perspective in programming and policies related to the prevention of violence against women. Brazil’s leading legislation on violence against women , the Maria da Penha Law, calls for prevention activities with men and boys and the impact evaluation study and results will serve as an important input for engaging government, civil society and other strategic actors to expand existing prevention activities to effectively engage men. Additionally, the fact that Brazil is the host country for the World Cup 2014 is likely to increase general interest in scaling-up a football-based intervention for men.