New research into violence among girls is calling for prevention programmes to involve families after finding that mothers, in particular, “play a role in accepting and promoting violence”.
The research, carried out in Scotland, states: “Many young people felt families, often mothers, supported involvement in violence.”
One teenager quoted in the research says her mother was “so happy” when she hit a girl who had been bullying her.
“If you come from a hard family, then you are expected to be hard yourself,” she says.
The research report - which was small scale and involved four focus groups of 16 young women with experience of violence - also says that disrespect towards family and friends was “a common trigger of violence”.
Changing attitudes
It recommends that “whole-family support” is needed “to change attitudes around violence”.
The report states: “Young people and practitioners told us it was difficult to challenge attitudes around violence if families were supportive of violence. As well as working with young people, we must adopt a joined-up approach to work alongside families to support violence prevention.”
The research - entitled The Lassies are no Feart - Violence Between Girls in Scotland - was carried out by the No Knives, Better Lives programme, run by YouthLink Scotland, which aims to understand and address the drivers for youth violence.
The research was sparked by anecdotal evidence that violence between girls is “increasing in frequency and severity”, according to the report - although it acknowledges that this is not reflected in police reporting, or in qualitative research on children and young people.
The research, therefore, is an attempt to begin to get to the bottom of “the disparity between research and reporting figures compared to what practitioners are hearing and witnessing”, and to come up with solutions.
Misogyny ‘a common everyday experience for young women’
It finds that the young women who participated perceived “lots of violence in their lives”; that misogyny was “a common everyday experience for young women, from peers and adults” and that “social media plays a central role in violence”, with girls both viewing and creating violent videos.
In the Scottish Parliament, “ugly” videos of girls attacking other girls have been raised as an issue. Last year, the Liberal Democrats’ education spokesperson Willie Rennie said he had watched a video “of a female pupil attacking another” in a Fife secondary. He said he wished he had not, adding: “I cannot get it out of my head; it was an ugly scene.”
The research says “daily exposure to violent content online” was leading to desensitisation among the participants.
Focus groups with young women highlighted “the normality of fights being filmed and then being widely, and quickly, distributed”.
Social media is used to “escalate violence”, the research finds, with arguments on social media seen as “a form of entertainment” but then sometimes escalating to in-person violence.
One young woman is quoted as saying: “My god, I love arguing with people. It’s fun, I get a buzz from it.” Another says: “I’d rather argue than sit there, bored.”
The research says that platforms such as Snapchat are used to organise fights.
Violence an ‘easier’ solution
The research finds that the girls resorted to physical violence because the ways they could resolve conflict were “limited”, with some of the participants reporting that they found violence an “easier” solution.
Difficulty accessing support from adults is also highlighted as an issue, leading to young women taking matters “into their own hands”.
The research therefore recommends more focus on teaching young people to regulate their emotions and their impulses, and to “manage conflict in a healthy and productive way”.
It says practitioners, including teachers, need to be better informed about harmful online behaviour and its impact, and that national guidance on responsible use of technology needs to be updated.
Scottish government research into behaviour in schools, published last year, found “a general deterioration in the behaviour of pupils” in Scotland since 2016.
The research did not look in any depth at changes in behaviour by gender. However, it did identify a rise “in sexist, misogynistic and explicitly sexualised language among male pupils”.
It also found that, in secondary schools, the behaviour most commonly reported as having the greatest negative impact on the learning experience was students using and looking at mobile phones and tablets when they should not be.
A national action plan on tackling behaviour has been promised by the Scottish government and is expected to be published soon. The education secretary Jenny Gilruth has said it will include a review of the exclusions policy that is currently in place in schools.
The number of exclusions has dropped markedly in recent years as restorative approaches have come to be favoured in Scottish schools.
According to the YouthLink Scotland research, exclusion from school was “a common experience” among the young women involved, some of whom “saw it as a deterrent”.
Emily Beever, a senior development officer who co-authored the research, said young women were often having to tackle bullying and other conflict alone.
“We need to grow the options for young women to access support by ensuring they are surrounded by trusting, loving and safe relationships,” she said.
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