Person:
McCleary-Sills, Jennifer
Author Name Variants
Fields of Specialization
Gender-based violence
Degrees
Departments
Gender Cross-Cutting Solutions Area, The World Bank
Externally Hosted Work
Contact Information
Last updated
January 31, 2023
Biography
Jennifer McCleary-Sills is a Gender-Based Violence Specialist at the World Bank Group. Prior to joining the Bank, she was a Senior Social and Behavioral Scientist with the International Center for Research on Women. She holds honors degrees from Yale University (BA), the Boston University School of Public Health (MPH), and a Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Publication Search Results
1 - 10 of 10
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Publication
Voice and Agency : Empowering Women and Girls for Shared Prosperity
(Washington, DC: World Bank Group, 2014)The 2012 World Development Report recognized that expanding women's agency - their ability to make decisions and take advantage of opportunities is key to improving their lives as well as the world. This report represents a major advance in global knowledge on this critical front. The vast data and thousands of surveys distilled in this report cast important light on the nature of constraints women and girls continue to face globally. This report identifies promising opportunities and entry points for lasting transformation, such as interventions that reach across sectors and include life-skills training, sexual and reproductive health education, conditional cash transfers, and mentoring. It finds that addressing what the World Health Organization has identified as an epidemic of violence against women means sharply scaling up engagement with men and boys. The report also underlines the vital role information and communication technologies can play in amplifying women's voices, expanding their economic and learning opportunities, and broadening their views and aspirations. The World Bank Group's twin goals of ending extreme poverty and boosting shared prosperity demand no less than the full and equal participation of women and men, girls and boys, around the world. -
Publication
Violence Against Women and Girls : Disaster Risk Management Brief
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-04)Violence against women and girls (VAWG) has negative impacts on physical and mental health. Health care settings provide a unique opportunity to identify VAWG survivors, provide critical support services, and prevent future harm. Ample studies have shown that natural disasters, including tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes, and floods, disproportionately affect women and girls, who are at greater risk of violence and exploitation than men and boys in the face of uprooted housing and traditional support structures, disrupted access to services, and both structural and social obstacles to accessing food, relief, supplies, and latrines. A study conducted four years after Hurricane Katrina occurred in the United States found that the rate of new cases of VAWG among displaced women also increased and did not return to the pre-hurricane baseline during the protracted phase of displacement. -
Publication
Violence Against Women and Girls : Social Protection Brief
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2014-12)The definition of social protection (SP) programs varies widely, as do the types of interventions included and the specific outcomes sought. These programs can be implemented through public and/or private sectors, with the involvement of single or multiple government sectors, or by some combination of these actors. This brief will specifically focus on four types of social protection interventions: social assistance, social insurance, labor market programs, and early childhood development. It will offer suggestions for integrating violence against women and girls (VAWG) prevention efforts within these interventions. These areas of focus are meant to be illustrative of different social protection programs, rather than to reflect the full breadth of SP programs. In general, SP programs are public interventions that support the poorest populations and assist individuals, households, and communities to better overcome social and economic risks. Examples of programs include: a) social assistance (social safety nets): cash transfers, school feeding, and targeted food assistance; b) social insurance: old-age and disability pensions and unemployment insurance; c) labor market programs: skills-building programs, job-search and matching programs, and improved labor regulations; and d) early childhood development. Other program interventions, which fall under what is referred to as social protection, aim to strengthen families abilities to respond to hardships by promoting gender equality. Examples include early childhood development, projects that focus on at-risk youth, or targeted poverty alleviation programs. -
Publication
Violence Against Women and Girls : Health Sector Brief
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-04)Violence against women and girls (VAWG) has negative impacts on physical and mental health. Health care settings provide a unique opportunity to identify VAWG survivors, provide critical support services, and prevent future harm. VAWG has intergenerational effects: boys who witness intimate partner violence (IPV) at home are more likely to grow up to perpetrate violence themselves. And girls with childhood exposure to IPV are more likely to experience violence in later relationships. The health sector can play a role in educating clients and the broader community about VAWG as a human rights violation and major public health issue. -
Publication
Violence Against Women and Girls : Introduction
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2014-12)Violence against women and girls (VAWG) is one of the most oppressive forms of gender inequality and stands as a fundamental barrier to equal participation of women and men in social, economic, and political spheres. Such violence impedes gender equality and the achievement of a range of development outcomes. VAWG is a complex and multifaceted problem that cannot effectively be addressed from a single vantage point. The prevention of, and response to, such violence requires coordinated action across multiple sectors. This resource guide was developed through a partnership between the Global Women s Institute (GWI) at George Washington University, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), and the World Bank Group (WBG). The primary audiences for the guide are IDB and WBG staff and member countries, as well as other development professionals who do not yet have experience addressing VAWG. The purpose of this guide is to provide the reader with basic information on the characteristics and consequences of VAWG, including the operational implications that VAWG can have in several priority sectors of the IDB and WBG. It also offers guidance on how to integrate VAWG prevention and provide quality services to violence survivors across a range of development projects. Lastly, it recommends strategies for integrating VAWG prevention and response into policies and legislation, as well as sector programs and projects. -
Publication
Violence Against Women and Girls : Citizen Security, Law, and Justice Brief
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2015-04)For every three years a country is affected by major violence (defined as deaths due to war or excess homicides comparable to a major war), economic growth lags behind by 2.7 percentage points. Citizen security issues impact women and men differently. For example, women are more likely to be assaulted or murdered by someone they know - in fact, worldwide the share of homicides by an intimate partner was six times higher for female victims compared with male victims (39 percent versus 6 percent, respectively). Boys who witness intimate partner violence (IPV) during childhood are more likely to exhibit delinquent behavior and to perpetrate IPV in adulthood. And girls who witness violence are more likely to experience IPV in adulthood. -
Publication
Violence Against Women and Girls : Education Sector Brief
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2014-12)Experiencing violence in schools can negatively impact girls' enrollment as well as the quality of the education they receive. Evidence suggests that sexual harassment is widespread in educational settings in many parts of the world. Children who have witnessed violence at home or experienced violence have lower educational attainment. In Zambia, girls who experienced sexual violence were found to have more difficulty concentrating on studies, some students transferred to another school to escape harassment, and others dropped out of school because of pregnancy. Few ministries of education around the world have explicit policies on sexual violence and harassment as unacceptable, and few have developed guidelines on the definition of harassment and how educational institutions should respond. -
Publication
Stigma, Shame and Women's Limited Agency in Help-Seeking for Intimate Partner Violence
(Taylor and Francis, 2015-06-08)In Tanzania, 44% of women experience intimate partner violence (IPV) in their lifetime, but the majority never seeks help, and many never tell anyone about their experience. Even among the minority of women who seek support, only 10% access formal services. Our research explored the social and structural barriers that render Tanzanian women unable to exercise agency in this critical domain of their lives. We collected qualitative data in three regions of Tanzania through 104 key informant interviews with duty bearers and participatory focus groups with 96 male and female community members. The findings revealed numerous sociocultural barriers to help-seeking, including gendered social norms that accept IPV and impose stigma and shame upon survivors. Because IPV is highly normalised, survivors are silenced by their fear of social consequences, a fear reinforced by the belief that it is women’s reporting of IPV that brings shame, rather than the perpetration of violence itself. Barriers to help-seeking curtail women’s agency. Even women who reject IPV as a ‘normal’ practice are blocked from action by powerful social norms. These constraints deny survivors the support, services and justice they deserve and also perpetuate low reporting and inaccurate estimates of IPV prevalence. -
Publication
Engaging Men and Boys in Advancing Women's Agency : Where We Stand and New Directions
(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2013-11)Despite advances in gender equality, women and girls still face disadvantages and limits on their agency. Men and boys can be key stakeholders and allies to increase women's agency. This paper focuses on examining men's attitudes and behaviors related to gender equality and violence perpetration to better understand how to engage men and boys as. It uses data collected from men and women from eight countries (Bosnia, Brazil, Chile, Croatia, Democratic Republic of Congo, India, Mexico, and Rwanda) as part of the International Men and Gender Equality Survey (IMAGES). There is wide variation across countries in men's support for gender equality, equal roles for men and women, and acceptability of violence against women. Key findings of this investigation include: 1) that in most countries male perpetrators of violence are more likely to be depressed or engage in binge drinking than non-perpetrators; 2) that witnessing one's mother being abused by a partner is one of the strongest predictors of ever perpetrating violence, suggesting that efforts should focus on breaking the intergenerational transmission of norms and violence; 3) that being involved with violent fights generally is a significant predictor of ever perpetrating violence, suggesting that programs and policies reducing violence generally may also have an effect on violence specifically against women; and 4) that a majority of men is willing to intervene upon witnessing violence against a woman, and men who do not support violence against women, are not violent generally, and who are aware of laws prohibiting violence against women are more likely to intervene. -
Publication
Child Marriage: A Critical Barrier to Girls’ Schooling and Gender Equality in Education
(Taylor and Francis, 2015-10-23)Education is not only a human right, but also a powerful tool for women’s empowerment and a strategic development investment. There is a clear multiplier effect to educating girls; women who are educated are healthier, participate more in the formal labor market, earn more income, have fewer children, and provide better healthcare and education to their children compared to women with little or no education. The benefits of education thus transmit across generations as well as to communities at large. Where girls have greater educational and economic opportunities, they are more likely to pursue those opportunities than to have children in their teenage years. Yet a host of structural, social, and financial barriers prevent girls’ enrollment and completion of both primary and secondary school.