Plan specific actions
Depending on the inequality you have chosen to focus on, there are different types of actions you can take. These include those designed to change:
- Policies and laws, which means making changes to the policy, programme and budgetary aspects. For example, the content of the law in relation to domestic violence or the regulation of financial institutions.
- How policies are delivered which refers to how policies and programmes are enforced and/or implemented in practice. For example, the practices of hospitals, police or judges faced with women who experience domestic violence or the power and independence of a financial regulator.
- Attitudes and behaviour which refers to the social norms and behaviour underlying the problem, as well as aspects such as people’s awareness of rights. For example, women blaming themselves for abuse and men believing they have the right to beat their wives.
Here is an example of reducing domestic violence that uses there terms.
Changes which can support the long term goal of reducing domestic violence
Long-term goal: To reduce the risk and incidence of domestic violence, especially against women.
Result: To make domestic violence recognised and treated as a crime and a violation of basic rights by society and the legal system.
Policy and law: To reform the criminal and family codes to make domestic violence explicitly a crime with procedures to protect victims and appropriate punishment.
Delivery: To provide training to police and judges about the nature of domestic violence and the particular needs of perpetrators and survivors; and to establish ‘women’s desks’ in selected police stations on a pilot basis with the involvement of four key women’s NGOs working on violence.
Attitudes and behaviours: To educate the general public through the mass media, that domestic violence is a public problem and a crime; and to establish pilot men’s groups to encourage new thinking about violence.
[Based on Veneklasen, L., and Miller, V. (2002). A New Weave of Power, People and Politics, the Action Guide for Advocacy and Citizen Participation, Practical Action Publishing]
You can see from the examples above that as well as changing policies, laws and practices to bring about change, there are also important elements of changing harmful attitudes. This is sometimes called “changing the narrative”. The phrase generally refers to efforts to change established worldviews that dominate societies and act as a barrier to change. Dominant narratives are deeply embedded in a culture and society and consistently repeated and reproduced over time. They provide a way in which people “make sense” of the way the society in which they live works. They can also sometimes influence the focus and content of public policy and what is considered politically feasible for governments and political parties to target.
Changing harmful attitudes and behaviour is an essential element of tackling inequalities. People’s long term behaviour and prejudices can be very hard to change, although it may be crucial to reducing inequalities in the long term. It is likely to require significant shifts in values to confront entrenched perceptions about inequalities and transform norms associated with intolerance and discrimination.
Discrimination is an extremely important aspect of harmful attitudes. Negative cultural stereotypes can greatly impact the perception of specific inequalities. For example, if poverty, criminal behaviour or low levels of educational attainment are associated primarily with an ethnic minority population. Discriminatory stereotypes can become deeply intertwined with the dominant narratives on the economy, poverty and inequality within society with little recognition of the structural factors shaping outcomes or the fact that discriminatory behaviours and practices can strongly influence inequalities.
Despite a growing awareness of high levels of inequality, there is still a widespread belief in meritocracy – that rich people deserve their wealth because it reflects hard work and that poor people deserve to live in poverty because they are lazy. In some countries, the belief that inequality is right or fair is driven by religious belief (everybody has his/her place and inequality is a fact of life) rather than theories of social justice. The feeling that inequality is inevitable is also commonplace among the public. Feelings of powerlessness are coupled with this belief.