Breaking Barriers: Unveiling Resistances to Overcoming Gender-Based Violence in Psychological Research Today
A special issue of Behavioral Sciences (ISSN 2076-328X).
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 May 2026 | Viewed by 56
Special Issue Editor
Interests: sociological theory; cultural groups; social impact; gender; successful actions; inclusion
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Despite decades of advances in research, gender-based violence (GBV) persists, revealing deep resistances engrained within behavioural patterns in society. Psychological processes, as well as specific social structures and dynamics, play a role in shaping human behaviour that can support or challenge these patterns. Thus, identifying these processes is crucial for dismantling the dynamics that sustain violence and silence. Social norms around gender roles, victim-blaming narratives, and the normalization of aggression and silence continue to shape collective and individual perceptions, making it difficult to recognize, address, and report violence when it occurs. Moreover, psychological processes such as cognitive dissonance, moral disengagement, and fear of social exclusion and retaliation often deter individuals from supporting victims, particularly when aggressors and their social circles exert isolating violence on those who stand with survivors. This isolating violence—targeting allies—functions as a powerful barrier, maintaining silence and complicity. Breaking these barriers requires research that, on the one hand, foregrounds the structural conditions enabling violence, while exploring the psychological mechanisms that sustain complicity on the other, as well as research identifying and explaining the actions that promote the behavioural change that would leads to overcoming these resistances—hence contributing to overcoming GBV. In so doing, research can move beyond describing gender violence to actively dismantling the structures and beliefs that perpetuate it, fostering cultures of accountability and genuine solidarity and activating upstanders’ support with victims and those who support them.
Dr. Marta Soler
Guest Editor
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Keywords
- gender-based violence (GBV)
- societal behavioral patterns
- psychological processes
- social structures
- social dynamics
- violence and silence
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