Measuring the Outputs of Violence Against Women Policy at Multiple Levels: The Implementation and Evaluation of Training Programs

Since the 2000’s in France, training programs for the actors who support survivors and work with abusers have become a significant aspect of the Violence Against Women (VAW) policies that must necessarily coordinate a wide range of stakeholders (police, lawyers, health practitioners and social workers). Training was central in the first two VAW Global Plans in 2005 and in 2008. A focus on training programs as one of many policy instruments is helpful to understand how VAW as an issue is defined and framed. It highlights which theoretical (psychological, legal and sociological) tools are conveyed during the training sessions by policy agents and how VAW is understood with regards to the concept of gender. Moreover, looking at training programs allows the assessment of the formal evaluation of VAW policies: how are training programs evaluated? By whom? What are the quantitative and qualitative instruments that are used for the purpose of evaluation? In terms of the common analytical framework for this panel, this focus also provides a means to measure the extent of substantive and descriptive representation in the policy outputs as well as the extent of gender transformation in the frames of the implementors themselves. We conduct a multi-level analysis to study the application of the first two VAW Global Plans with regards to training. On a national and regional level, we will map out the actors and institutions involved with the training programs to better understand the definitional struggles surrounding VAW. On a sub-national level, we will assess the content and unfolding of training in Provence-Alpes-Cotes d’Azur and Ile de France. Comparing these two quite different regions will provide insight into the variation of implementation and evaluation as well as the validity and reliability of the common methodological framework explored by this Panel.