Jean-Noël Senne (RITM, Université Paris Saclay) is the co-laureate of a €395,649 research grant awarded by the French National Agency for Research (ANR), for the research project “Bans of Gender-Based Violence, Social Norms and Well-Being in Africa (BASAF)”, co-piloted with Sandrine Mesplé-Somps (IRD) and Nehara Feldman (CURAPP-ESS), Université de Picardie). He specifically leads three work packages that investigate the effect of sexuality-based stigma on access to (HIV) healthcare in Senegal and the effect of role models on changing attitudes toward gender-based violence in Mali, the latter in collaboration with Björn Nilsson (RITM, Université Paris Saclay).
This interdisciplinary project investigates the persistence of gender-based violence (GBV) and its links to social norms and legal frameworks in Sub-Saharan Africa. GBV targets women and sexual minorities—particularly men who have sex with men (MSM)—and includes practices like intimate partner violence and female genital mutilation (FGM). Despite international progress, such violence remains deeply rooted in local norms and often reinforced by legal systems. The project has two core objectives: (1) to document GBV and associated gender norms and assess their effects on well-being and socio-economic outcomes; and (2) to identify innovative and context-sensitive interventions capable of transforming norms and reducing violence. The scientific approach combines economics, public health, and ethnography. It addresses key methodological challenges in researching sensitive topics among hidden populations. It innovates by using qualitative surveys, indirect survey methods (e.g., list experiments) to mitigate response bias, and randomized control trials.