A Landscape Review: Addressing Social Norms in Six USAID Sectors

Over the past several years, an exciting body of knowledge has emerged that focuses on understanding the role social norms play as both barriers and facilitators to social behavior change as part of international development programming; yet much of the published evidence base for social norms interventions has been within the health sector. IRH’s Strengthening Cross-Sectoral Social Norms Programming project, which aims to look social norms programming in sectors outside of health, is being conducted under the USAID-funded Passages Project with support from the USAID’s Office of Gender Equality and Women’s Empowerment. The first step for this project was a landscaping review of social norms programming across selected sectors at USAID. The sectors selected for this landscaping were Agriculture and Food Security, Education, Energy and Infrastructure, Land and Urban Development, Technology, and Water Sanitation and Hygiene. The review comprised a stakeholder meeting with GenDev and sector representatives, a literature review of 174 documents published from 2012 to 2018 (including project and evaluation reports, working papers, strategic plans, and annual reports), and 13 key informant interviews with representatives from selected sectors.