Protecting Women, Improving Policy: Confronting Alcohol’s Role in Gendered Violence

Protecting Women, Improving Policy: Confronting Alcohol’s Role in Gendered Violence

Virtual Event for the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women – November 25, 2025

Date

November 25, 2025

Time

9.30 – 10.30AM CET

Place

Zoom platform

Registration

Please register here to join the event.

Background

Violence against women and girls remains one of the world’s most pervasive human rights violations. The World Health Organization estimates that 1 in 3 women globally experience physical or sexual violence in their lifetime. The WHO Regional Office for Europe has launched the Special Initiative on Violence Against Women and Girls (SIVAWG) to accelerate multisectoral, evidence-based action across 53 Member States of the European region to prevent, respond to, and ultimately eliminate violence against women and girls.

Across all regions, alcohol is a major – yet consistently underestimated and under-addressed – driver of gender-based violence. Women and girls with lived experience of gender-based violence know what scientific evidence clearly documents: there is a robust, repeated link: alcohol increases the risk, frequency, and severity of intimate partner violence (IPV), domestic violence, sexual violence, and violence against children. Alcohol does not cause gender-based violence – but it makes violence more likely, more severe, and more dangerous, and it intersects with harmful gender norms fueled by decades of alcohol marketing objectifying and sexualising women and girls, patriarchal inequality, and commercial determinants of health.

At the same time, alcohol harm to women is rising due to increasing alcohol use among women and intense, targeted marketing to women and girls by alcohol companies that links alcohol with female empowerment, independence, and coping for mental health strains. Women in low- and middle-income countries carry a disproportionate burden of alcohol-fuelled violence, economic harm, and other second hand effects from men’s alcohol consumption.

Yet alcohol policy remains a neglected tool in violence against women prevention initiative, despite clear evidence that reducing alcohol availability, affordability, and marketing is among the most impactful ways to prevent violence against women.

The gap between lived experience, evidence, and action is significant.

This event brings together global expertise, local experience, and community voices to make the case for integrating alcohol policy into gender-based violence prevention – as part of a comprehensive approach to promoting women’s health and rights.

Purpose

To highlight and elevate the overlooked role of alcohol in violence against women and girls, and to demonstrate how evidence-based alcohol policy solutions can improve and enhance national and regional strategies for eliminating violence against women, complement feminist and public health efforts, and advance gender equality.

Objectives

1. Illuminate global evidence on how alcohol fuels gender-based violence, such as IPV, sexual violence, and other harms to women’s and girls’ health and rights – including gender norms, commercial determinants, and structural pathways.

2. Highlight community-level experiences from Uganda and Bosnia, showing how alcohol-fuelled violence affects women and youth, and identifying the urgent need for policy action.

3. Showcase the WHO Europe SIVAWG initiative, its evidence base, and how alcohol policy can help countries implement more effective violence prevention systems.

4. Identify key gaps and missed opportunities in integrating alcohol policy into GBV prevention – especially concerning the potential of alcohol availability, affordability, and marketing regulation.

5. Mobilize collaboration across civil society, youth organisations, women’s rights advocates, and the global health community to accelerate evidence-based policy change.

Proposed Programme (60 minutes)

Opening (3 min)

Welcome and framing – Kristina Sperkova, Movendi International

Part I – The Global Evidence: Alcohol as a Driver of Violence Against Women (5 min)

Kristina Sperkova, Movendi International

• Overview of global and regional evidence on the role of alcohol in violence against women and girls

• Commercial determinants: how the alcohol industry objectivfies women, fuels harmful gender norms, targets women, and fuels violence

• The potential of alcohol policy and the link to the women’s rights agenda

Part II – Local Realities: Voices From Communities (5 min Uganda + 5 min Bosnia)

Uganda – Women’s Experiences & Policy Gaps (5 min)

Juliet Namukasa, Uganda Alcohol Policy Alliance

• Women’s lived realities of alcohol-fuelled violence

• Economic and social impacts on families

• Barriers to policy implementation & lessons for national GBV strategies

• Why local women’s groups in LMICs call for alcohol policy

Bosnia and Herzegovina – Lessons from the Hidden Shadows initiative (5 min)

Adis Arnautović, Center for Youth Education (CEM)

• Youth exposure to violence in alcohol-dense environments

• Changing norms and risks for young women

• Community mobilisation and the need for structural prevention measures

Part III – WHO Europe’s Special Initiative on Violence Against Women and Girls (5 min)

WHO Europe Representatives

• Overview of SIVAWG goals and pillars

• Evidence on alcohol as a modifiable risk factor

• Opportunities for integrating alcohol policy into VAWG prevention

• Support for Member States to implement cost-effective measures

Part IV – Discussion and Q&A (25 minutes)

Moderated discussion on:

• How to bridge the gap between evidence and action

• How to strengthen feminist engagement in alcohol policy

• Priority recommendations for countries in Europe, Africa, and the Balkans

• Next steps for coordinated advocacy

Closing (5 minutes)

Lessons and wrap-up – Movendi International

Expected Outcomes

• Increased awareness among policymakers, civil society, and UN agencies of alcohol as an under-recognized driver of GBV.

• Concrete recommendations for integrating alcohol policy into initiatives to end violence against women.

• Strengthened partnerships between WHO and other UN agencies, national alliances, women’s rights organizations, youth leaders, and the alcohol policy community.

• Momentum for a broader global conversation on alcohol as a women’s health and rights issue – and the need to treat alcohol policy as violence prevention solution and catalyst for women’s health and rights.

Format

A dynamic virtual panel event with short, experience- and evidence-rich presentations followed by an interactive discussion. The event is designed to reach policymakers, civil society actors, researchers, youth advocates, gender-equality organizations, and journalists.