We have a voice: Assertiveness as a self-defence strategy against women's self-silencing

Gender equality and women's empowerment have an important place on the world agenda in terms of sustainable development goals. Based on intimate relationships as the basis for these social issues, it appears that women make more effort than men to maintain their relationships, and in particular resort to negative relationship maintenance and the non-assertive communication strategy of self-silencing. Hence, the current study aimed to develop the "We Have a Voice" psychoeducational group work on assertiveness and investigate whether intervention is effective in preventing women from silencing themselves in their intimate relationships. In this direction, a collaboration was made with the Ankara Metropolitan Municipality Women's Counseling Center from the beginning. As a method, the quasi-experimental, non-equivalent control-group pretest/post-test research design was used. Accordingly, a 9-week program was prepared. Demographic Information Form and Silencing the Self Scale were used to determine 16 women (8 each for the treatment and control groups) between the ages of 25-50 living in Ankara with high levels of self-silencing. Wilcoxon Signed-Rank Test and Mann-Whitney U Test were used to analyze whether the intervention is effective in reducing self-silencing. Findings indicated a significant difference within-group while no meaningful difference between-group analyses. In line with these results, it was concluded that the program was highly effective in reducing self-silencing. The findings will contribute to the importance of creating programs for women's empowerment through a gender lens and the effectiveness of psychoeducational group work.