Links go beyond sexual violence and increased vulnerability to infection. Economic abuse, physical violence (particularly by intimate partners) and psychological abuse lead to situations where women can’t control sex or access services. Child sexual abuse can lead to higher risk taking behaviour in adulthood. Men who are abusive more likely to have more sex partners, STIs, alcoholism and to refuse to use condoms. Some studies show positive women are more likely to have experienced violence. Sex workers, transgendered women, women who inject drugs and lesbians are targets of violence from the state. WHO studies show in many regions young women have high levels of forced first sex - the earlier sex occurred the more likely it was to be forced. Suggestions for preventing violence include;

But the evidence for these interventions is weak and few promising programmes have been taken to scale – more research is needed. Law and policy reform won’t work if it is not enforced or the enforcers are the perpetrators of violence. Placing the responsibility for combating violence in the hands of healthcare workers is problematic in settings where they are the perpetrators of abuse for example in the forced STI and HIV testing of sex workers or sterilisation of women living with HIV. The session failed to address structural interventions to assist men who wish to assert a style of masculinity outside the norm or to make the links between conflict, militarism and violence against women.