Short abstract:

This paper examines the role of psychological expertise in the case of prevention programs against gender-based violence in North America.

Long abstract:

The research on which this article is based examines educational programs, inspired by psychological approaches, generally designed to be delivered in schools, universities or workplaces, to prevent the occurrence of sexist and sexual violence by learning various communication techniques and sociological and psychological knowledge. We have studied this prevention project in the context of Quebec regarding specific intervention practices, and more broadly in North America regarding the research supporting these programs and the grey literature of these initiatives often carried out by non-profit, public and private organizations.

I analyze the knowledge and expertise mobilized by professionals in violence prevention and examines the role of psychology in public action against gender violence in North America. Borrowing from the questions and methods of feminist science studies, the data collected is subjected to a critical analysis of the practices, theories, tools, and various bodies involved in the scientific and institutional construction of gender and sexuality. This approach, applied to an atypical hybrid object, enables us to grasp the issues involved in the scholarly constructions studied and their social effects. These programs can thus be seen as the deployment of feminist and psychological expertise on gender-based violence, this expertise itself being the product of this conflict of expertise. The feminist approach to science thus serves to clarify the modalities of elaboration, implementation and expected effects of the violence prevention project by considering it as a "mosaic" composed of actors with diverse expertise and more or less convergent objectives.