Can true gender equality ever be achieved without considering the epidemic of violence against women and girls? For this year’s International Women’s Day Phoenix Chief Exec considers how we ‘Accelerate away from the safe ground’
The theme of this years International Womens Day is Accelerate Action, calling for ‘increased momentum and urgency in addressing the systemic barriers and biases that women face, both in personal and professional spheres.’
The world Economic Forum says at the current rate of progress it will take until 2158, which is roughly five generations from now, ‘to reach full gender parity’.
The ‘safe ground’ of conversation on gender parity is gender parity in employment. Touting our gender pay gap figures, our in house approaches to supporting women in leadership. How we create environments at work that allow women to flourish, to navigate the labyrinth of dead ends, detours, unusual paths and complexities that women face in their work life balance.
That is all really important. I do it and have done it myself for many years and I am proud of the work people in my organisation do to support the women we employ to thrive.
But if we are serious about addressing the systemic barriers and challenges all women face, we have to reach into that less safe ground of the traumatic lives of women whose stories are mostly unheard or whispered, written off as complex, and stigmatised into believing their pain is self-inflicted with only themselves to blame.
Artist Anna Siviero designed a graphic to support the IWD theme this year. She wanted to convey ‘action, speed, instinct, rebellion and the propulsive energy that rage can have to drive change’.
That spoke to me.
Rage of course can be negative. The Femicide Census tell us that women die at the hands of men’s rage every 3 days in the UK. The under reporting we know exists means the real figure is likely to be much higher than that.
We would all agree wouldn’t we that men’s violence against women and girls is the most pernicious manifestation of sex inequality?
Of course, men kill men, and more men are killed by violence than women.
It is the way women are killed, the motivation for the killing and the life experience of women before they are killed that makes femicide an equality issue.
In the UK, women are killed in their own home, by partners or ex-partners, often when they try to leave a violent relationship and often in front of their children or alongside their children. Women involved in sex work who are killed are younger. They are less likely to be killed by a partner and more likely to experience dehumanising sexual violence around the time of their death. Femicide Census – Profiles of women killed by men
Until we understand what the root cause of that horrific reality is and what role we all have to play in addressing it, we aren’t going to end violence against women and we aren’t going to achieve gender parity for every woman.
The government has pledged to halve [men’s] violence against women in a decade. Of course I applaud that. I challenge myself, the organisation I lead and the initiatives I am involved in, to take action to identify opportunities to contribute to that mission.
The roles that I have created provide obvious opportunities to do that;
- Ensuring the services we deliver continue to question how we can reach more women without judgement, to provide care, compassion and practical support on their terms
- Through our gender work addressing some men’s toxic attitudes to women
- To speak truth to power – to challenge policy and practice that creates barriers for women or stigmatisation that force women to hide
- To celebrate women’s successes, strengths and resilience and create common ground across womens’ universal experience of life
- And to say sorry when I could have done more and learn from that mistake
Sometimes I channel my rage created from the stories I hear, the lives Iived, the battles won and lost. Sometimes that rage makes me less effective but mostly it does give me energy to drive change.
We can accelerate away from safe ground this International Women’s Day and give ourselves a real chance of achieving gender parity for every woman.
