Interventions promoting collective action have been used to prevent domestic violence in a range of settings, but their mechanisms of operation remain unclear. We formalise and combine feminist theoretical approaches to domestic violence into a game-theoretic model of women’s collective action to change gendered social norms and outcomes. We show that social norms create a social dilemma in which it is individually rational for women to abstain from action to prevent domestic violence among neighbours, but all women suffer negative consequences if none take action. Promoting altruism among women can overcome the social dilemma. Discouraging women from tolerating domestic violence, imposing additional external punishment on men for perpetrating violence, or lowering costs to women of taking action against violence may not work or even backfire. We invite researchers on community mobilisation to use our framework to frame their understandings of collective action to prevent domestic violence.

促进集体行动的干预措施已被用于在一系列环境中防止家庭暴力，但其运作机制仍不清楚。我们将家庭暴力的女权主义理论方法形式化并结合到一个女性集体行动的博弈论模型中，以改变性别化的社会规范和结果。我们表明，社会规范造成了一种社会困境，在这种困境中，女性不采取行动以防止邻居之间的家庭暴力是个人理性的，但如果没有人采取行动，所有女性都会遭受负面后果。在女性中提倡利他主义可以克服社会困境。劝阻女性不要容忍家庭暴力，对实施暴力的男性施加额外的外部惩罚，或者降低女性采取行动反对暴力的成本可能不会奏效，甚至会适得其反。