South Africa has built an extensive legal framework protecting women from discrimination, domestic violence and sexual offences, yet legislation alone has not eliminated gender-based violence (GBV). The country’s first national GBV prevalence study, released by the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC) in 2024, found that 33.1% of women aged 18 and older had experienced physical violence during their lifetime—an estimated 7.3 million women. The study also examined the role of gender norms and men’s perpetration of violence, showing why the problem cannot be understood only as a gap in criminal law.
The central difficulty is that laws regulate conduct, while attitudes are learned and reinforced through families, relationships, communities, institutions and social expectations. South Africa has strengthened its laws—including reforms enacted in 2022—but government and parliamentary assessments have continued to identify patriarchal norms, unequal power relationships, economic vulnerability, implementation failures and social acceptance of harmful behaviour as barriers to reducing GBV. Changing those conditions requires sustained behavioural and institutional change, not simply additional legislation.
South Africa’s legal framework is stronger than the outcomes suggest
South Africa’s constitutional order establishes equality and prohibits discrimination, while legislation provides specific protections against domestic and sexual violence.
In 2022, Parliament amended three laws as part of the government’s response to GBVF. The reforms included changes to the Criminal Law (Sexual Offences and Related Matters) Act, the Domestic Violence Act and related legislation, including measures concerning sexual intimidation, protection from domestic violence and the National Register for Sex Offenders.
The government has also expanded practical support mechanisms. By 2024, South Africa had 63 Thuthuzela Care Centres, which provide coordinated services to survivors of sexual offences and domestic violence.
These measures matter because a legal right has little practical value if a survivor cannot access police, courts, healthcare, protection orders or support services.
But the existence of laws does not automatically determine how people behave.
That distinction is at the heart of the country’s continuing challenge.
A law can prohibit violence without changing what people believe
A criminal prohibition establishes a formal boundary: certain conduct is unlawful and can attract punishment.
Social norms operate differently.
They influence what people regard as acceptable, normal, shameful, masculine, feminine or appropriate within a relationship.
The HSRC’s national study specifically examined gender norms alongside GBV victimisation and perpetration. Its findings included evidence that many men knew that laws prohibited violence against women, demonstrating that legal awareness and personal attitudes are not necessarily the same thing.
For example, the study found that 84% of men surveyed knew that forcing a wife to have sex against her will was a criminal act. At the same time, 73.9% agreed with the statement that laws “make it too easy for a woman to bring a violence charge against a man.”
Those findings illustrate an important distinction.
Knowing what the law says does not necessarily mean accepting the principle behind it.
A person can understand that conduct is illegal while still holding attitudes about relationships, authority, consent or gender that make violence or coercion more likely to be tolerated.
The family can reproduce attitudes long before the law intervenes
Attitudes toward women are not usually formed when someone first encounters a criminal statute.
They develop over years.
Children observe how adults divide household responsibilities, resolve conflict, exercise authority and speak about women and men. They absorb expectations about relationships from parents, relatives, peers, schools, religious communities, entertainment and social media.
That does not mean exposure automatically produces violent behaviour. Human behaviour has multiple causes, and individuals exposed to the same environment can behave very differently.
But research on GBV consistently identifies gender inequality and social norms as important structural factors.
The HSRC study describes persistent GBV in South Africa as connected to gender norms and unequal power relationships.
UN Women similarly identifies patriarchal social structures, gender inequality and discriminatory norms among the drivers associated with violence against women and girls in Southern Africa, alongside factors such as poverty, alcohol abuse, historical structural violence and inadequate protection for some groups.
Changing behaviour requires more than telling people the law
A legal reform can take effect on a specified date.
Behavioural change rarely works that way.
Changing attitudes may require people to repeatedly encounter different expectations and see those expectations reinforced by the people around them.
That is why prevention strategies increasingly focus on social and behavioural change rather than relying entirely on criminal justice.
A parliamentary review of GBV responses has identified changing social norms and behaviour through prevention and awareness campaigns as part of the response, alongside stronger institutions and greater economic opportunities for women vulnerable to abuse.
The National Strategic Plan on GBVF likewise uses a multisectoral approach, recognising that violence is not solely a policing problem.
This matters because an intervention aimed only at perpetrators after violence occurs addresses a later stage of the problem.
Prevention attempts to influence the conditions that precede violence.
The hardest attitudes to change are often embedded in ordinary behaviour
Social attitudes do not always appear as explicit statements that women should be harmed.
They can emerge through expectations about who controls money, who makes decisions, who may end a relationship, whose sexual preferences matter, or whether jealousy is interpreted as evidence of love.
Controlling behaviour can also exist without physical violence.
The HSRC national study included psychological abuse such as controlling behaviours alongside physical, sexual, emotional and economic violence.
This broadens the discussion beyond the moment when an assault occurs.
If controlling or degrading conduct is normalised within a relationship, the boundary between socially tolerated behaviour and legally prohibited violence can become difficult to enforce in practice.
A law can define the boundary.
It cannot by itself create the social expectation that people should respect it.
Masculinity is part of the conversation, but not the whole explanation
South African public policy has increasingly focused on how ideas about masculinity can contribute to violence.
A 2024 government message on GBV argued that some young men are exposed to forms of “toxic masculinity” that associate mistreating women with masculine status, while calling for greater education around equality, consent and healthy relationships.
That provides one explanation for why changing attitudes requires work with men and boys as well as support for women and survivors.
But masculinity should not be treated as a single cause.
The HSRC research points to a combination of gender norms, socioeconomic and behavioural factors and other circumstances associated with victimisation and perpetration.
Reducing the issue to one cultural explanation risks overlooking other conditions that can influence violence, including economic insecurity, alcohol and substance use, relationship dynamics and institutional weaknesses.
Economic inequality can make attitudes harder to escape
Formal equality does not necessarily produce equal practical power.
A person who is economically dependent on a partner may face different choices from someone with secure income, housing and access to support.
Economic vulnerability can make leaving an abusive relationship more difficult and can increase the consequences of challenging controlling behaviour.
South Africa’s GBVF strategy therefore includes economic empowerment alongside criminal justice, prevention and survivor support. The government has also identified economic opportunity for women as part of the wider response.
This does not mean poverty causes violence.
It means economic circumstances can affect vulnerability, options and the ability to act on rights that already exist in law.
Laws can also fail through implementation
There is another reason attitudes can remain powerful even after legal reform: the law has to be implemented by institutions and people.
Police officers must receive complaints appropriately. Protection orders must be accessible. Prosecutors must build cases. Courts must function effectively. Survivors must be treated with dignity.
A 2024 Public Protector investigation into systemic administrative deficiencies in South Africa’s justice system identified concerns involving human resources, records management, court accessibility, language constraints and the complexity of forms in the GBV response. The Department of Justice said these issues needed remedial action.
The distinction is important.
A failure of implementation is not evidence that legislation itself has no value.
It shows that formal rights and practical access to those rights are different things.
Why enforcement alone cannot transform social norms
Criminal punishment is designed primarily to establish accountability and deter unlawful behaviour.
It is not a substitute for education, relationship skills, economic opportunity or social change.
A person may avoid committing a crime because of the risk of punishment without changing the attitudes that produced controlling or discriminatory behaviour.
Conversely, social attitudes can change even where criminal law remains unchanged.
This is why long-term prevention strategies generally operate on several levels at once.
They can include education about consent and equality, interventions with young people, community programmes, survivor services, economic empowerment, institutional reform and consistent criminal justice.
The goal is not to replace enforcement with education.
It is to recognise that the two address different parts of the problem.
Why awareness campaigns have limits
Awareness campaigns can change public discussion, but awareness is not the same as behavioural change.
UN Women reports that efforts in South Africa have succeeded in generating engagement around favourable social norms and attitudes, while also noting that behaviour change has been more difficult to track.
That distinction is crucial when evaluating campaigns.
A survey showing that people support gender equality does not necessarily demonstrate that relationships have changed.
Similarly, attendance at a workshop or engagement with an online campaign does not prove that violence has declined.
The strongest evidence comes from programmes that can demonstrate changes in attitudes, behaviour and ultimately violence over time.
The gap between generations may matter
Attitudes are not fixed, but neither are younger generations automatically more egalitarian.
South Africa’s 2024 national GBV study included adults and youth and examined gender norms as part of understanding victimisation and perpetration.
The government’s 2024 public messaging has also placed emphasis on educating boys and young men about equality, consent and healthy relationships.
This suggests an important long-term strategy: intervene before harmful beliefs become deeply established patterns of adult behaviour.
Schools can play a role, but they are only one influence.
Young people’s attitudes are also shaped by parents, peers, entertainment, online communities and the behaviour they observe around them.
That makes social change considerably more complicated than passing a law.
What would show that attitudes are actually changing?
The most useful measure is not whether a new law has been enacted.
It is whether behaviour and underlying norms change over time.
A meaningful assessment would look at several indicators together:
| What is measured | What it can show | What it cannot establish on its own |
|---|---|---|
| Knowledge of GBV laws | Whether people understand legal boundaries | Whether they accept or follow them |
| Attitudes toward gender equality and consent | Changes in stated beliefs | Whether behaviour has changed |
| Controlling or abusive behaviour | Changes in relationship conduct | Why behaviour changed |
| Reporting and help-seeking | Access to and willingness to use services | The true prevalence of violence |
| Police and court outcomes | Institutional implementation | Whether prevention is working |
| Repeat victimisation | Whether survivors remain exposed to violence | The causes of individual cases |
| National prevalence over time | Whether violence is changing at population level | Which intervention caused the change |
This is also where better data becomes essential.
South Africa’s 2024 HSRC study provides a national baseline for measuring GBV prevalence and associated factors. The government described it as the country’s first scientifically verifiable national baseline.
Future surveys can help establish whether interventions are associated with changes in attitudes and behaviour rather than relying primarily on anecdotal evidence.
The law still matters
The contrast between laws and attitudes should not be interpreted as an argument that legislation is ineffective or unnecessary.
Legal reform can establish rights, criminalise conduct, provide protection mechanisms and create institutional duties.
It can also change the boundaries of what society formally recognises as unacceptable.
Over time, laws themselves can contribute to social change by giving people new standards against which behaviour is judged.
But legal reform is only one component.
South Africa’s experience illustrates the difference between formal equality and lived equality. A country can have constitutional protections and increasingly detailed GBV legislation while harmful social expectations continue to influence relationships and behaviour.
The persistence of violence therefore does not necessarily demonstrate that legal change has failed. It demonstrates that changing the formal rules and changing the social environment in which people live are different tasks.
What would make change more durable?
The difficult question is no longer simply whether South Africa needs stronger laws.
It is whether existing laws and institutions can be consistently implemented while prevention efforts change the attitudes and behaviours that allow violence to persist.
That requires measuring more than arrests and convictions. It requires asking whether people understand consent, whether controlling behaviour is becoming less socially acceptable, whether survivors can safely seek help, whether institutions respond effectively and whether measured prevalence changes over time.
**Changing attitudes is harder than changing laws because attitudes are reproduced through everyday relationships and institutions rather than written into legislation. South Africa’s experience suggests that durable change requires both: laws that establish enforceable rights and sustained social, educational, economic and institutional efforts that make those rights part of ordinary behaviour. The critical test is therefore not how many laws are on the books, but whether the evidence eventually shows that the norms, behaviours and conditions associated with violence are changing.**