25 Nov 2024 What will it take to decisively end violence against women?

The 33rd edition of the annual 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence campaign begins today. It is natural to feel despondent that things will never change.

One may ask why funding investments directed to efforts to end violence against women and girls (VAWG) seem not to be bearing fruit as intended. In almost 3 decades, the UN Trust Fund to End Violence against Women has disbursed USD 225 million to 670 projects aimed at ending VAWG in approximately two-thirds of the world’s countries.

The funding seems enormous, but a closer analysis reveals it to be less than 1% of the combined annual national budgets of 36 of the world’s largest economies. The funding investment is after all insignificant.

Violence against women has been accepted and even condoned throughout history in most societies. It has gained ground in once progressive nations with the alarming shift to right-wing politics and spreading anti-gender movements. Paradoxically, awareness has increased, new legislation has been enacted, and silence around VAWG has been broken in many parts of the world.

Yet efforts to end VAWG continue to swim against the tide, complicated by firmly entrenched repressive gender social norms, institutional barriers, fear on the part of survivors and their lack of economic autonomy from perpetrators. The one-in-three statistic of women experiencing violence has barely changed in the last few decades.

Technology-facilitated gender-based violence (TFGBV) has added a new layer of harm to women and girls Internet users. Those from minority groups are more likely to be subjected to online hate. In Europe for example, black women are 84% more likely to receive abusive tweets than white women.

There is no shortage of ideas of what needs to change, from holistic institutional support systems to accountability of social media companies and cultural transformation.

Margaret Sentamu of Uganda Media Women’s Association, a WACC partner, urges unwavering commitment to advocacy. The struggle to end VAWG offline and online must be intersectional and multifaceted. It must seek a total transformation of culture to value the safety, dignity, respect, and rights of women and girls.

Photo: The 33rd edition of the annual 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence opening panel