CPRMB welcomes Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy – careful attention needed in implementation

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The Centre for Policy Research on Men and Boys (CPRMB) warmly welcomes the Government's commitment to halve violence against women and girls by 2035. The VAWG strategy is particularly welcome in its prioritisation of  police forces introducing specialist rape and sexual offence investigation teams to hunt down perpetrators.

This commitment includes reducing male victims of crimes suhc as domestic abuse, stalking and sexual harms by half as well. Currently 2 million men eveyr year.

However other parts of the strategy published today need careful attention. VAWG is a societal problem and a structural problem not just a boys' problem. The headlines are back awash with terms such as toxic masculinity (which the Minister for this area, Jess Phillips, says she is not a fan of). Nor does it help that the media narrative has returned to a sense that all boys are potential miscreants and criminals.

There has been much effort from so many people to turn around the Adolescence-fuelled narrative from “the problems all boys cause ” to one that is about “fixing the problems boys have...which will then fix the problems some boys cause others.”

This meansthat how boys as young as 11 are to be engaged is critical to making this strategy work. The evidence of radicalisation and the evidence of who is harming who seems to be less than clear. The latest YouGov research (October 2025) says one in eight young men (13%) have a positive view of Tate. Not the “over 40% of young men hold a positive view of Andrew Tate” cited which is a figure drawn from one Hope Not Hate poll in January 2024.

Strategiessuch as this need to be based on the best evidence not just of who and what but also how to intervene. Overburdened teachers being asked to take on yetanother task is to risk nothing more than the equivalent of the 'AndrewTate Assembly'. As recent research by Demos articulated, on the whole, many teachers are not well equipped to curate sensitive and difficult conversations especially with young men. Indeed the very young men the government's strategy wants to reach are the very group most in need of sophisticated approaches and support and help. Hopefully the training to be given to teachers will help achieve this. More than anything tarring all boys with the brush of being potential abusers in waiting will achieve little but to drive a sense of grievance.

This grievance is likely to be aggravated further if there is no recognition that many boys face problems with abuse too. But this does not feature in the communications and publicity. The recent research from the Youth Endowment Fund shows that 41% of girls have suffered in abusive relationships and so have 37% of boys. Only dealing with part of the problem of violence leaves the problem unresolved. Three areas in the recent announcements on the new strategy show:

1. “40% of  teenagers have been victims of abuse in relationships.” The figures from  the Youth Endowment Fund show it is 41% girls and 37% boys but the boy figure is not referenced so the impression is left that only girls are affected.
2. “The Government will halve violence against women and girls’. As it should (it should be zero). But wrapped up in this, is that it also applies to men  and boys (The ONS says it is two million a year) who are victims of domestic  abuse, sexual violence and stalking. This is not mentioned. A strategy is therefore needed for violence against men and boys
3. “One in eight women are victims of the VAWG” crimes. The same ONS report also says one  in twelve men are too.

It is why we support the calls for a parallel and complementary strategy to tackle violence against men and boys, covering violence and  abuse in relationships and also inside and outside the home. The complementary men’s health strategy set the tone and policy template.

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