MRC- “I See It Running Through My Family”: The Intergenerational And Collective Trauma Of Gender-Based Violence

Gender-based violence is usually understood as a crisis of individual harm as well as social inequality. This presentation argues that it is also a catalyst for intergenerational and collective trauma: a pattern of violence, silence and institutional failure that moves through families, communities and systems over time.

The session will equip practitioners with the knowledge and confidence to identify domestic abuse in later life and respond proactively and compassionately. At the collective level, communities and institutions may also dissociate from gender-based violence by failing to see, name or respond to it. Schools, police, health services and mental health systems appear in these accounts not merely as absent protectors, but as part of the social conditions through which trauma is minimized, displaced and transmitted.

The presentation argues that prevention frameworks need to move beyond a narrow focus on attitudes, awareness and gender norms, and engage more directly with the burden of unresolved trauma.

By situating gender-based violence within intergenerational and collective trauma, the presentation offers a broader account of why violence persists, why systems so often fail to act, and how meaningful prevention might interrupt the transmission of harm across generations.