Reducing the Victimization of Women and Children: Policy Effectiveness and the Pathway toward Sustainable Development Goals

Imagine a world where the rules of a game are written perfectly on a scoreboard, but the players can't find the ball, the referees are confused, and the audience is too scared to cheer. This is the story of public policy, a field of science that studies how governments try to solve big problems like poverty, crime, or, in this case, violence. To understand this story, you need to know two main things. First, there are Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which are like a giant global to-do list created by the United Nations to make the world a better place by 2030; one of these goals is specifically about making sure women and children are safe and treated equally. Second, there is the idea of policy effectiveness, which asks a simple question: "We made a rule, but did it actually work?" It's not enough to just have a law; the law has to reach the people who need it, be carried out by people who know what they are doing, and fit into the real world without getting stuck. This paper cares about this question because when policies fail, real people suffer, and the dream of a safer, fairer world gets pushed further away.

This study dives into the messy reality of West Java, Indonesia, a place where the number of reported cases of violence against women and children has been climbing, ranking first in the country from 2023 to 2025. The researchers wanted to see if the local government's efforts were actually helping to stop this violence and support the global goal of gender equality. They didn't just look at the laws on paper; they went out and talked to the people on the ground—government workers, volunteers, psychologists, and support group leaders—to see what was really happening. They used a famous checklist called the "Five Rights" model to judge the policies, asking: Is the rule right? Are the people doing the work right? Is the target group right? Is the environment right? And is the process right?

Here is the twist the researchers found: The government actually did a pretty good job checking the first four boxes. They had the right laws, they had the right people in charge, they were aiming at the right victims, and they had a plan. But, the policies were still struggling to be truly effective. Why? Because the researchers discovered two hidden "boss levels" that the original checklist didn't account for.

The first hidden boss is Implementation Capacity. Imagine the government has a brilliant map to a treasure, but the team trying to find it has no boots, no compass, and no map-reading skills. The study found that while the plan existed, the organizations trying to carry it out were often stretched too thin. They didn't have enough psychologists, legal advisors, or money to keep their programs running smoothly. In some villages, community programs that were supposed to help everyone (like groups for husbands, wives, and teens) had shrunk down to just one group because the volunteers had moved away or run out of energy. The "map" was perfect, but the "team" was too small and tired to follow it.

The second hidden boss is Victim Psychological Factors. This is like having a lifeboat ready for a shipwreck, but the people in the water are too terrified to jump in. The researchers found that even when help was available, many victims didn't use it. They were held back by deep trauma, a fear of being judged by their neighbors (stigma), and pressure from their own families to keep quiet. The process of getting help was also so complicated and slow that by the time a victim finally got to the right office, they felt so overwhelmed and exhausted that they just gave up. The study suggests that a policy can be perfect on paper, but if it doesn't understand the fear and pain in a victim's heart, it won't work.

So, what does this mean? The paper suggests that we can't just write better laws to stop violence. We have to fix the engine that drives the laws. This means giving the organizations doing the work more resources, better training, and better coordination so they aren't running on empty. It also means changing the system to be kinder and faster for the victims, so they don't feel like they are fighting a battle alone. The researchers propose a new model for success: a policy only works if you have the right rules, the right people to do the work, AND a system that understands the human heart. Until we fix both the "team" and the "fear," the goal of ending violence against women and children will remain just out of reach.