Anastasia Roumelioti

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Board Memo · ESG, Responsibility & Ethics

A going concern: why Boards must confront male violence

· Anastasia Roumelioti

BOARD MEMO

Systemic Risk Series

(official title) Tolerance, Via and Kratos: The Systemic Risk of Tolerating Male Violence for Societal Prosperity, Justice and Institutional Stability

Anastasia Roumelioti | March 2026

Author's Note

I write this as a Founder, Non-Executive Director and strategic advisor, attending virtually the 70th Session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women (CSW70) in New York in 2026 as a UN Women UK delegate. This is the second time I have had the honour of attending in this role, having previously participated in CSW69 in March 2025. The global conversation on gender equality and the elimination of violence against women and girls that these sessions advance has never felt more urgent. My professional work sits at the intersection of governance, digital transformation and ethical leadership. I have spent my career translating complexity into actionable insight for boards and executive teams. It is from exactly this vantage point; not as an activist, but as a governance practitioner, that I write this memo.

The impetus for this piece is not solely the calendar. It is the accumulation of evidence, from boardrooms, from regulatory bodies, from international institutions and from the daily headlines, that the tolerance of male violence is no longer a background condition that governance can safely ignore. It is a structural risk that belongs on board agendas.

This memo is part of a series I am developing under the title Board Memos: a set of briefing papers designed to surface contemporary societal and economic risks through the lens of governance. Each piece addresses a systemic issue that falls, too often, between the cracks of conventional risk frameworks. This one may be the most fundamental of all.

Opening note to the Board

Societies rarely collapse because violence exists, and violence has existed in every civilisation.

Societies deteriorate when male violence becomes tolerated as a mechanism for producing outcomes.

Ancient Greek political thought distinguished between Via (the use of force) and Kratos (legitimate authority exercised through law and civic institutions). In stable societies, force is constrained and subordinated to lawful authority. When violence begins to shape behaviour outside that framework, however, it ceases to be merely a criminal act and becomes a parallel system of power.

The systemic tolerance of male violence illustrates this phenomenon with particular clarity. When intimidation, coercion or the threat of violence influence how individuals behave; whether within households, workplaces or public life, the system quietly rewards those who impose outcomes through force.

People exposed to such environments adapt. They organise their behaviour around vigilance, avoidance and risk management. Over time, entire populations adjust their expectations of how power operates.

From a governance perspective, the systemic tolerance of male violence represents more than a social injustice. It constitutes a structural risk to institutional stability, economic participation and societal trust. When large segments of the population must organise their behaviour around anticipating violence, participation declines, institutions lose legitimacy, and economic productivity suffers.

In risk terminology familiar to boards and regulators, this pattern increasingly resembles a systemic risk factor affecting the long-term 'going concern' capacity of societies and institutions.

Male violence therefore ceases to be an isolated criminal behaviour. It becomes a structural distortion of governance.

Women are disproportionately affected by male violence. They experience the highest rates of domestic violence, sexual violence and harassment, and they frequently adapt their behaviour in response to these risks.

Yet the consequences extend far beyond women.

Men and boys are also shaped by systems that tolerate male violence. Some experience abuse themselves, particularly in institutional environments. Others are exposed to cultural narratives that equate masculinity with dominance, aggression or control. Still others are drawn into ideological environments such as the online manosphere, which normalise hostility toward women and reinforce destructive models of male identity.

A paradox therefore emerges.

The tolerance of male violence can appear to benefit men collectively. It grants them a structural advantage in environments where the threat of violence influences behaviour, and it often rewards men socially for simply refraining from behaviour that should never be acceptable in the first place.

However, this apparent benefit is largely illusory.

The same system that tolerates male violence also narrows the emotional and social development of men, exposes boys to abuse and radicalisation, damages relationships and erodes trust across society.

For men who are not themselves violent, the long-term harm created by this system is often greater than the short-term advantages it appears to provide.

If an entire population must organise its behaviour around anticipating male violence, the society will inevitably operate below its full potential.

1. Tolerance systems: when male violence produces outcomes

Male violence persists not only because individuals commit violent acts but because systems sometimes tolerate and indirectly reward them.

In any system, behaviour follows incentives. If violence or intimidation successfully produces the desired outcome; silence, compliance or withdrawal, the system has effectively rewarded that behaviour.

Tolerance therefore functions as an incentive architecture.

Those who impose outcomes through force learn that the strategy works. Those exposed to such behaviour adapt by accommodating or withdrawing. Observers internalise these patterns and adjust their expectations about how power operates.

Over time male violence ceases to appear merely as a breakdown of order. Instead, it becomes embedded within social dynamics as an informal mechanism for shaping outcomes.

Even men themselves are often left wondering what behaviour the system will tolerate and what they might be able to get away with, further reinforcing the ambiguity that allows violence and intimidation to persist.

2. Justice begins at home: the private-sphere reality

Empirical research consistently demonstrates that the most dangerous environment for women is not the public sphere but the home.

According to data from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and UN Women, approximately 50,000 women and girls were killed by intimate partners or family members globally in 2024, equivalent to 137 deaths per day, or one every ten minutes (UNODC & UN Women, 2025).

Source: UNODC & UN Women: Femicides in 2024

60 per cent of all intentional killings of women and girls globally occur at the hands of intimate partners or family members; a proportion that has remained essentially unchanged for years. In contrast, only 11 per cent of male homicides are perpetrated by someone close to the victim.

The persistence of this pattern demonstrates that male violence against women is not simply a series of isolated crimes but reflects deeper structural tolerance.

Case Study: the limits of self-defence

The case of Brittany Smith in Alabama illustrates how justice frameworks can struggle when women respond to male violence.

In January 2018, a man she said had raped and brutally assaulted her earlier that evening later returned to her home and began fighting with her brother. Smith shot him during that confrontation. A sexual assault nurse documented more than 30 injuries on her body, including bite marks, bruising and signs of strangulation. Despite this, a court ruled that Smith did not qualify for immunity under Alabama's Stand Your Ground self-defence law, citing what the judge characterised as inconsistencies in her account and evidence-handling. She ultimately accepted a plea agreement resulting in a 20-year sentence, substantially reduced in practice.

The case attracted national attention precisely because it exposed a structural asymmetry: the law, as interpreted in practice, appeared less accessible to women defending themselves from sexual and physical violence than to other categories of claimant. It became a touchstone in the debate about whether gender-neutral self-defence frameworks produce genuinely neutral outcomes in practice; a governance question as much as a legal one.

Source: The New Yorker

Source: Netflix documentary: State of Alabama vs. Brittany Smith (2022)

Case Study: The Pelicot case and the ordinary architecture of abuse

In 2024, a French court in Avignon delivered verdicts in one of the most significant criminal trials in modern European history. Dominique Pelicot was found guilty of drugging his wife, Gisèle Pelicot, over a period of nearly ten years and recruiting more than 70 men he met online to rape her while she was unconscious in their home. Fifty additional men were convicted alongside him; all but one were found guilty of rape or sexual assault. Dominique Pelicot received the maximum sentence of 20 years. Several co-defendants received shorter sentences than prosecutors sought, and a number walked free on suspended sentences, prompting widespread outcry.

What made the case extraordinary in governance terms was not only its scale but its profile. Dominique Pelicot was not a powerful or prominent figure. He was a retired man living in a quiet village in Provence, regarded by neighbours as unremarkable. The men he recruited were similarly ordinary; they lived within a 30-mile radius of the family home, came from a range of occupations, and ranged in age from their twenties to their seventies. Many claimed in court that a husband's consent was sufficient. Several said they had not considered what they were doing to be rape.

This is precisely the institutional and cultural dynamic that this memo has sought to name. The tolerance of male violence does not require exceptional perpetrators. It requires ordinary permission structures: the belief that a husband's authority over his wife's body is legitimate; that an unconscious woman is not a victim; that the absence of resistance constitutes consent. These are not the beliefs of monsters operating outside society.

They are beliefs that society, in various ways, has historically permitted.

Gisèle Pelicot waived her legal right to anonymity and insisted the trial be held publicly. She stated that she wanted society to be a witness. In doing so, she transformed a private horror into a public governance question: what does a society permit, and who bears the cost of making that visible?

The case also illustrates a dimension of institutional tolerance that extends beyond the violence itself. The abuse came to light only because Dominique Pelicot was arrested for an unrelated offence and police subsequently examined his devices. Gisèle Pelicot had experienced years of unexplained symptoms and deteriorating health; the healthcare system had not identified what was being done to her. As her lawyer noted, she had been wandering through institutions describing her symptoms for years, without any of them connecting those symptoms to what was happening in her home.

Sources:

3. Institutional failure and public trust

Male violence also exposes systemic weaknesses within institutions responsible for protecting citizens.

A critical governance factor underlying this risk is that full equality between men and women has not yet been realised in practice, even in advanced economies. Structural asymmetries in economic power, caregiving expectations and political representation continue to shape the dynamics of relationships and households.

As a result, the home, often assumed to be the safest environment, can also be one of the most vulnerable spaces for women. This reality persists across social classes, including in affluent and highly educated households. When structural inequality intersects with the tolerance of male violence, safety within the private sphere cannot be assumed.

An additional dimension often overlooked is coercive control: patterns of intimidation, isolation and psychological domination that may occur without physical violence but can severely damage mental health and autonomy. Sometimes described as a silent form of violence, coercive control can trap victims in environments of chronic fear while remaining difficult for institutions to detect.

From a governance perspective, this creates a blind spot: the environment where women face the greatest risk remains largely outside institutional visibility, while still shaping the security, wellbeing and participation of half the population.

Case Study: The Murder of Sarah Everard

In 2021, Sarah Everard was abducted, raped and murdered in London by a serving police officer who falsely arrested her while she was walking home.

Subsequent investigations revealed that the perpetrator had previously been the subject of multiple allegations of indecent exposure, which had not resulted in effective disciplinary action.

The case triggered national scrutiny of policing culture and led to the independent Angiolini Inquiry, examining misogyny, institutional tolerance and failures of oversight within the Metropolitan Police.

Source: Angiolini Inquiry: UK Government

The case highlighted a central governance issue: when institutions fail to act on warning signs of male misconduct, public trust in justice systems deteriorates. The cost is paid not only in lives, but in the erosion of the institutional legitimacy upon which social order depends.

4. Institutional protection of powerful abusers

Patterns of institutional tolerance are not limited to policing environments.

Several investigations in recent decades have revealed cases in which powerful individuals abused large numbers of women and girls over many years while operating within elite financial, political or entertainment environments.

These cases demonstrate how reputational protection, institutional reluctance and power asymmetries can allow male violence to persist for extended periods before meaningful intervention occurs.

Such scandals illustrate how systems of influence and institutional reputation can become barriers to justice. The governance lesson is a straightforward one: when an institution's first impulse is to protect its own reputation rather than those within its care, it has already failed in its fundamental duty. The downstream consequences; loss of trust, regulatory intervention, reputational collapse, are the price of that failure, paid years or decades later.

5. Workplace harassment and economic participation

Male violence and harassment affect not only personal safety but also economic participation.

According to the International Labour Organization, more than one in five workers globally has experienced violence or harassment at work (approximately 23 per cent), with women particularly affected by sexual harassment (ILO, 2022).

Source: ILO: Violence and Harassment at Work, A Global First Survey

Women also continue to face a global gender pay gap of roughly 20 per cent, influenced by career interruptions, discrimination and workplace environments where harassment remains insufficiently addressed.

Source: ILO: Gender Pay Gap

These dynamics create structural barriers to full economic participation; barriers that impose costs not only on individual women but on the organisations and economies in which they operate.

6. The impact on boys and men

A system that tolerates male violence harms not only women but also boys and men.

Institutional investigations have revealed significant levels of abuse affecting boys. The United Kingdom's Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse estimated that one in twenty boys experiences sexual abuse before the age of sixteen.

Source: IICSA Reports and Recommendations

Male victims of sexual violence are also frequently overlooked in public discourse. In one of the most significant criminal cases in the United Kingdom, a man was convicted of more than 150 sexual offences against male victims, many of whom had been drugged before being assaulted.

Source: GMP: Manchester case

These examples illustrate that the tolerance of male violence does not protect men. It exposes boys and men to abuse while reinforcing harmful identity models that constrain them throughout their lives.

7. Cultural drivers: online misogyny and the Manosphere

Digital platforms have also contributed to the spread of misogynistic narratives at scale, reaching young men during critical developmental periods.

Online communities associated with the manosphere promote highly adversarial views of gender relations and frequently portray hostility toward women as a legitimate form of male identity. Research by Ofcom has identified these spaces as environments where misogynistic views can proliferate and influence young men.

Source: Ofcom: The Manosphere Unmasked

The scale of this problem in educational settings is now empirically documented. According to a YouGov survey conducted in 2025 and analysed by researchers at Loughborough University, 54 per cent of secondary school teachers report that boys very or fairly often openly express misogynistic attitudes or behaviours in school. Almost half of all teachers across primary and secondary schools describe such attitudes as a widespread problem.

Source: Loughborough University: Men, Boys and Tackling Misogyny (January 2026)

A separate peer-reviewed study published in PLOS One in 2025 found that 76 per cent of secondary school teachers in the UK reported being extremely concerned about the influence of online misogyny on their students, with teachers citing specific instances of male pupils referencing misogynistic influencers to justify hostile behaviour toward female peers and staff.

These trends represent a significant governance challenge. The next generation of citizens is being shaped, in part, by ecosystems that are explicitly hostile to gender equality. If boards and institutions believe that culture and risk exist in separate domains, this evidence should prompt a reconsideration.

8. The intergenerational transmission of violence

The consequences of tolerating male violence do not end with the individuals directly affected. They are transmitted across generations through the developmental impact on children raised in households where violence, coercion or chronic fear are present.

The research literature on this subject is extensive and consistent. Children exposed to domestic violence face significantly elevated risks of anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. A meta-analysis of 118 studies by Kitzmann et al. (2003) found that children exposed to domestic violence had significantly worse developmental and psychosocial outcomes than non-exposed peers across a range of measures, including social adjustment, academic functioning and emotional regulation. Research consistently demonstrates that this exposure is associated with elevated rates of PTSD, depression and anxiety in both childhood and adolescence.

Source: Kitzmann, K.M., Gaylord, N.K., Holt, A.R. & Kenny, E.D. (2003)

Perhaps most consequential from a governance perspective is the evidence on intergenerational perpetuation. Children, particularly boys, who grow up in households characterised by violence are significantly more likely to perpetrate intimate partner violence in their own adult relationships. A landmark UK study drawing on data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children (ALSPAC) found that co-occurring child maltreatment and domestic violence exposure were associated with increased risks of drug use, anxiety, depression, unemployment, welfare dependency and perpetration of intimate partner violence in adulthood.

Source: ALSPAC PubMed Central

The mechanism is not simply learned behaviour, though social learning plays a role. It operates also through the disruption of neurological development, attachment formation and the socialisation of conflict-resolution strategies during formative years. Violence in the home does not stay in the home: it travels, through the child, into the next generation of relationships, households and institutions.

The World Bank has noted that women whose fathers beat their mothers face 2.5 times greater risk of experiencing intimate partner violence in their own adult lives, compared to women who did not witness such violence in childhood.

These patterns illustrate why the tolerance of male violence is precisely the kind of risk that compounds silently over time. Each cohort of children raised in violent or coercively controlled households represents a future burden on mental health services, judicial systems and social support infrastructure; they simultaneously carry forward the conditions that perpetuate the cycle. A governance framework that considers only the immediate costs of male violence is, by definition, incomplete.

Violence in the home does not stay in the home. It travels, through the child, into the next generation of relationships, institutions and societies.

9. Tolerance of male violence as a systemic risk

In governance and risk management, a systemic risk refers to a threat capable of destabilising entire systems rather than isolated institutions. Systemic risks typically exhibit three characteristics: they affect multiple sectors simultaneously, they generate behavioural responses across large populations, and they create cumulative pressures that undermine long-term stability.

The tolerance of male violence increasingly meets these criteria.

First, male violence affects a wide range of institutional domains simultaneously, including public safety systems, healthcare services, labour markets, education systems and justice institutions. The consequences are therefore not confined to criminal justice responses but ripple across economic and social infrastructures.

Second, the persistence of male violence produces behavioural adaptations across large segments of the population. Women, who are disproportionately affected, often modify daily routines, limit mobility, adjust professional ambitions and withdraw from certain public environments in response to perceived risk. These adaptations represent a form of continuous risk management that diverts cognitive, emotional and economic resources away from productive activity.

Third, the tolerance of male violence generates intergenerational consequences. Children exposed to violence or coercive power structures within households are more likely to experience trauma, disrupted development and the reproduction of harmful relationship dynamics. Over time, these patterns impose cumulative pressures on educational outcomes, mental health systems and social cohesion.

While women experience the most immediate effects, the broader consequences extend to men and boys as well. Boys exposed to violent models of masculinity may internalise aggression as a marker of identity, while others experience abuse themselves within institutional settings. At the same time, cultural environments that tolerate male violence contribute to the emergence of online radicalisation ecosystems that frame hostility toward women as a legitimate response to social frustration.

These dynamics illustrate why the tolerance of male violence should be understood not only as a justice issue but also as a systemic governance risk.

In corporate governance, the concept of going concern refers to the capacity of an organisation to continue operating sustainably over time. Societies rely on similar foundations: trust in institutions, broad participation in economic and civic life, and stable social relationships.

When violence becomes tolerated as a mechanism for imposing outcomes, these foundations weaken. Participation declines, trust erodes and institutions face increasing pressures to manage the consequences of harm.

For this reason, the tolerance of male violence should be recognised as a systemic risk factor with implications for the long-term going concern of social and economic systems.

Addressing this risk therefore requires confronting not only acts of violence themselves but also the tolerance structures that allow male violence to persist as an informal mechanism of power within society.

10. The regulatory and policy landscape: progress, gaps and the governance imperative

The tolerance of male violence is not invisible to governments and regulators. A body of international and domestic law exists specifically to address it. The critical question, and the one that belongs on board and institutional risk agendas, is whether these frameworks are adequate and whether they are being implemented with sufficient rigour and accountability.

The Istanbul convention

The Istanbul Convention, formally known as the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence, remains the most comprehensive international legal instrument in this field. Adopted in 2011 and in force since 2014, it establishes legally binding obligations on signatory states across prevention, protection, prosecution and integrated policy.

As of 2025, 39 parties to the Council of Europe have ratified the Convention. The European Union ratified it in June 2023, bringing its obligations into force across the EU from October 2023. However, seven Council of Europe member states have still not ratified it, and Turkey, the first country to ratify in 2012, withdrew in 2021. Several EU member states, including Hungary, Bulgaria, Czechia and Slovakia, have not ratified at national level. This patchwork of implementation means that the legal floor varies significantly across geographies, creating structural inconsistencies that undermine the Convention's effectiveness as a pan-European standard.

The monitoring body, GREVIO (Group of Experts on Action against Violence against Women and Domestic Violence), has produced baseline evaluation reports on 17 countries. These reports consistently identify implementation gaps, including under-resourcing of specialist support services, inadequate training for criminal justice professionals, and insufficient data collection. In governance terms, the Istanbul Convention framework is sound in design but inconsistent in execution; a pattern that should be familiar to anyone who has overseen the implementation of policy commitments at institutional level.

The UK: a national strategy and its tests

In December 2025, the UK government published its cross-government VAWG strategy, titled Freedom from Violence and Abuse. The strategy represented the most comprehensive framework for addressing violence against women and girls in British history, bringing together health, education, justice, policing and technology regulation under a single strategic umbrella for the first time. The government committed to halving VAWG within a decade; an ambitious target that drew both welcome and scrutiny from the sector.

The strategy included commitments to specialist rape and sexual offence investigation teams in every police force, a new approach to tackling online misogyny in schools, mandatory relationships and sex education for 16 to 18 year olds, and the expansion of Domestic Abuse Protection Orders. It also acknowledged, for the first time in a strategy of this kind, the role of men and boys; not only as perpetrators but as those affected by systems that tolerate male violence.

The governance test of this strategy will be its implementation. A National Audit Office report published in early 2025 found that the previous VAWG strategy, published in 2021, had not been delivered on time, had been chronically under-funded relative to its own budget, and had failed to generate effective cross-departmental buy-in. The new strategy has inherited that context. Boards and governance practitioners watching this space should note: the capacity of institutions to implement commitments of this kind, consistently and at scale, is itself a systemic risk indicator.

Source: The NAO report

The UK is not unique in this pattern. Across multiple jurisdictions, the gap between legal commitments and operational reality remains the primary governance failure in this domain. Laws and strategies provide the architecture; resource allocation, institutional culture and accountability mechanisms determine whether the building stands.

The broader international landscape

At the United Nations level, the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) provides the principal intergovernmental forum for advancing policy on gender equality and the elimination of violence against women. CSW69, held in March 2025, took place at a moment of heightened global attention to this agenda, with particular focus on technology-facilitated violence, data gaps and the financing of specialist services. CSW70, happening now (2026), continues this work; delegates from across the world, including civil society representatives, are advancing commitments on gender-based violence, education and institutional accountability.

The EU, separately from Istanbul Convention obligations, adopted a Directive on Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence in 2024 (Directive EU 2024/1385), establishing minimum criminal standards across member states including the criminalisation of female genital mutilation, forced marriage and forms of cyber violence against women. A consent-based definition of rape was debated but ultimately excluded from the final text, reflecting ongoing divergence among member states on criminal competence. This represents a significant regulatory development for corporate compliance, since organisations operating across EU jurisdictions will face increasing obligations around workplace violence, harassment and digital conduct.

Source: European Commission

The picture globally is one of accelerating regulatory intent, uneven implementation, and a persistent gap between legal standards and lived reality. For governance practitioners, the lesson is consistent: regulatory frameworks alone do not shift systemic risk. They require resourcing, institutional commitment and accountability mechanisms to function. Boards that wait for regulatory requirements to arrive before acting are, by definition, managing risk reactively rather than strategically.

11. The economic consequences

Male violence imposes significant and measurable economic costs; costs that fall not only on individuals and families, but on institutions, healthcare systems, labour markets and national economies.

Research across multiple jurisdictions indicates that intimate partner violence alone may impose losses equivalent to between 1.2% and 3.7% of GDP in affected countries; a figure that exceeds what many governments spend on primary education (World Bank).

Source: World Bank: Addressing Gender-Based Violence

At the global level, the total cost of violence against women, across public, private and social domains, has been estimated by UN Women at approximately USD 1.5 trillion. These costs arise through:

The economic argument matters not because it supersedes the human rights argument, but because it speaks to a governance audience that is obligated to account for risk in quantifiable terms. A board that would engage with a risk representing 2 to 3 per cent of organisational value would be derelict in its duty if it failed to engage with the same magnitude of risk at the societal level; particularly when that risk intersects directly with workforce participation, talent retention, organisational culture and reputational exposure.

12. Men as stakeholders: the allies argument

In this memo, I argue that the tolerance of male violence harms not only women but men. It is worth pausing to make that argument explicitly and with care; it is central to the strategic case for action, and it is frequently misunderstood.

The framing of male violence as a 'women's issue' is one of the most persistent and consequential errors in how this risk is communicated. It allows men, including men in positions of governance responsibility, to classify it as a matter for others to solve, outside the scope of their own accountability. This framing is empirically incorrect, strategically counterproductive and, from a governance perspective, irresponsible.

The data tells a different story. Men and boys are directly harmed by systems that tolerate male violence: as abuse victims themselves; as sons raised in households shaped by coercive control; as young men channelled into radicalising online ecosystems that corrode their capacity for healthy relationships and civic participation; as adults whose emotional and relational development has been narrowed by cultures that equate masculinity with dominance. Research consistently shows that men in societies with high rates of gender-based violence also experience worse mental health outcomes, higher rates of homicide victimisation and lower social trust than men in more equal societies.

There is also an institutional argument. Organisations that successfully address gender-based violence and harassment in the workplace, through culture, policy and accountability mechanisms, consistently report higher levels of trust, lower absenteeism, stronger talent pipelines and better decision-making. These are not coincidences. They are the organisational expression of a broader truth: environments free from coercion and intimidation are better environments for everyone.

Men in leadership therefore have a direct stake in this agenda; not as allies performing a form of moral support for others, but as principals with their own interests in the outcome. The governance case for men's active engagement in addressing the tolerance of male violence is straightforward: the costs of inaction fall on everyone, and the benefits of action are distributed across the entire organisation and society.

This is not a gender war. It is a governance problem that requires the full engagement of all stakeholders; and that means men, at every level of institutional life, taking active responsibility for the cultures and accountability frameworks they lead and inhabit.

13. What Good Governance Looks Like: A Framework for Action

Every risk memo should end where governance begins: with a framework for action. The tolerance of male violence is a systemic risk. Systemic risks are not managed by acknowledgement alone. They require structural responses at the level of institutions, boards, regulators and governments.

The following framework is offered as a starting point for boards and governance practitioners seeking to translate this analysis into institutional responsibility.

At the board level

Boards bear responsibility for the cultures of the organisations they oversee. Culture includes the informal mechanisms by which outcomes are produced; including the degree to which intimidation, coercion or harassment are tolerated as informal instruments of power. Governance responsibilities in this space include:

At the regulatory and policy level

Regulators and policymakers have a specific responsibility to ensure that the legal and institutional infrastructure for addressing male violence is adequately resourced and implemented. Key governance indicators include:

The weaponisation of Law: SLAPPs as a governance risk

A governance analysis of the tolerance of male violence must account not only for institutions that fail to act but for mechanisms that are actively used to suppress accountability. Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPPs) represent one such mechanism.

SLAPPs are legal actions brought not to seek justice but to silence: to drain defendants of time, money and emotional resource, and to deter others from speaking. For survivors of gender-based violence, journalists investigating abuse, and advocates working on these issues, SLAPPs have become an increasingly documented instrument of intimidation. As one legal analyst has noted, for survivors the process itself can function as an extension of coercive control; the legal system becomes the abuser's next tool.

The EU Anti-SLAPP Directive (Directive EU 2024/1069), which entered into force in May 2024 and must be transposed by member states by May 2026, represents a significant regulatory response. It provides for early dismissal of manifestly unfounded claims, cost-shifting to claimants in abusive proceedings, and refusal to recognise third-country SLAPP judgments against EU-domiciled defendants. Its scope is currently limited to cross-border civil cases, and critics have noted that purely domestic cases remain outside its protection; the Directive is a foundation, not a complete remedy.

From a governance perspective, the relevance of SLAPPs to this memo is structural. When the law can be used by those who have perpetrated or tolerated male violence to silence those who speak about it, the accountability mechanisms on which all institutional reform depends are undermined. Boards and institutions committed to addressing gender-based violence must therefore also consider whether their own legal and communications practices could, even inadvertently, create environments in which survivors or advocates face legal risk for speaking. The question belongs on governance agendas alongside the risk itself.

Sources:

At the institutional and societal level

Beyond individual organisations and regulatory bodies, several structural interventions have demonstrated evidence of effectiveness in reducing the tolerance of male violence:

None of these interventions is sufficient alone. The consistent finding of the research literature is that effective responses are multi-level, sustained over time and accountable to clear performance frameworks. One-off campaigns, unfunded commitments and unmonitored strategies are not merely insufficient; they can actively undermine credibility by creating the appearance of action without the substance.

A board that would engage with a risk representing 2–3% of organisational value would be derelict in its duty if it failed to engage with the same magnitude of risk at the societal level.

Final observation

Male violence is often framed as a gender conflict issue. In reality, it is a systemic governance problem.

Women bear the most immediate consequences. Yet the tolerance of male violence ultimately affects the development, safety and participation of the entire population.

The apparent advantages that some men derive from this system obscure a deeper truth: a society organised around the tolerance of male violence constrains the development and well-being of men themselves.

If an entire population must organise its behaviour around anticipating male violence, the society will inevitably operate below its full potential.

Addressing the tolerance of male violence is therefore not only a matter of justice for women and girls. It is a necessary step toward building societies capable of achieving their full human, economic and institutional potential.

The governance challenge is to ensure that this risk receives the same analytical rigour, the same resource allocation and the same board-level accountability as any other systemic risk of comparable scale. The evidence presented in this memo suggests that it more than meets that threshold.

The question is not whether this risk is real. The data is unambiguous. The question is whether institutions are willing to act on it with the same seriousness they would bring to any other threat to their long-term viability.

That willingness, or its absence, is itself a governance signal.

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