Global Symposium on Engaging Men and Boys on Achieving Gender Equality in Rio de Janeiro

2009

THE DECLARATION

PART ONE: PREAMBLE
We come from eighty countries. We are men and women, young and old, working side by side with respect and shared goals. We are active in community organizations, religious and educational institutions; we are representatives of governments, NGOs and the United Nations. We speak many languages, we look like the diverse peoples of the world and carry their diverse beliefs and religions, cultures, physical abilities, and sexual and gender identities. We are indigenous peoples, immigrants, and ones whose ancestors moved across the planet. We are fathers and mothers, daughters and sons, brothers and sisters, partners and lovers, husbands and wives.
What unites us is our strong outrage at the inequality that still plagues the lives of women and girls, and the self-destructive demands we put on boys and men. But even more so, what brings us together here is a powerful sense of hope, expectation, and possibility for we have seen the capacity of men and boys to change, to care, to cherish, to love passionately, and to work for justice for all.

We are outraged by the pandemic of violence women face at the hands of some men, by the relegation of women to second class status, and the continued domination by men of our economies, of our politics, of our social and cultural institutions, in far too many of our homes. We also know that among women there are those who fare even worse because of their social class, their religion, their language, their physical differences, their ancestry, their sexual orientation, or simply where they live.

There are deep costs to boys and men from the ways our societies have defined men’s power and raised boys to be men. Boys deny their humanity in search of an armor-plated masculinity. Young men and boys are sacrificed as cannon fodder in war for those men of political, economic, and religious power who demand conquest and domination at any cost. Many men cause terrible harm to themselves because they deny their own needs for physical and mental care or lack services when they are in need.

Too many men suffer because our male-dominated world is not only one of power of men over women, but of some groups of men over others. Too many men, like too many women, live in terrible poverty, in degradation, or are forced to do body- or soul-destroying work to put food on the table.

Too many men carry the deep scars of trying to live up to the impossible demands of manhood and find terrible solace in risk-taking, violence, self-destruction or the drink and drugs sold to make a profit for others. Too many men experience violence at the hands of other men.

Too many men are stigmatized and punished for the simple fact they love, desire and have sex with other men.

We are here because we know that the time when women stood alone in speaking out against discrimination and violence – that this time is coming to an end.

We also know this: This belief in the importance of engaging men and boys is no longer a remote hope. We see the emergence of organizations and campaigns that are directly involving hundreds of thousands, millions of men in almost every country on the planet. We hear men and boys speaking out against violence, practicing safer sex, and supporting women’s and girl’s reproductive rights. We see men caring, loving, and nurturing for other men and for women. We see men who embrace the daily challenges of looking after babies and children, and delight in their capacity to be nurturers. We see many men caring for the planet and rejecting conquering nature just as men once conquered women.

We are gathering not simply to celebrate our first successes, but, with all the strength we possess, to appeal to parents, teachers, and coaches, to the media and businesses, to our governments, NGOs, religious institutions, and the United Nations, to mobilize the political will and economic resources required to increase the scale and impact of work with men and boys to promote gender equality. We know how critical it is that institutions traditionally controlled by men reshape their policies and priorities to support gender equality and the well-being of women, children, and men. And we know that a critical part of that is to reshape the world of men and boys, the beliefs of men and boys, and the lives of men and boys.

Read more including the Symposium Report and The Rio Declaration

National Crime Victims Awareness Week

Violence, Women & Access to Justice

by Annie Zhang

Since August 2011, I have had the privilege of working as a legal advocate at Battered Women’s Support Services (BWSS), where I provide legal information, support, and advocacy to women navigating our complex legal system.  Our mandate is to provide free and confidential support services to women who have experienced violence in an intimate relationship.  My primary focus is to assist women with family, immigration, criminal, child protection and poverty law related issues. 

Through my work with BWSS, I have assisted women in understanding legal concepts, strategizing for their legal cases, preparing court paperwork such as affidavits, pleadings, and other applications, accompanying them to court and other legal appointments, and advocating for legal aid.  As a result, I have intimately experienced the intersection of barriers women face in their pursuit of justice, especially for women who are survivors of violence. 

Access to justice is an ever-pervasive issue.  Since the inception of BWSS thirty-two years ago, we have fought against women’s barriers to accessing justice and struggled to meet women’s need for proper legal representation.  The cuts to legal aid have ensured that despite the fact that the vast majority of women accessing our services meet their selection criteria (family violence, safety issues, immigration proceedings, low-income, barriers to self-representation, etc) many of them are denied coverage.  Many women request our services in submitting appeals for reconsideration, which may assist them in getting approved upon re-assessment.  Still, that requires yet another hurdle to bypass during an extremely stressful and dangerous period of their lives.

At BWSS, we understand that the most dangerous time for a woman in an abusive situation is when she is leaving the relationship.  The risk to her safety escalates, and she faces many pressing considerations, many of them legal in nature: How does she get a protection order?  What will happen in regards to child custody?  How will she support herself and her children?  What does this mean for her immigration status?

Often the woman also finds herself in a battle against time.  Her ex-partner may have already applied in court for a custody order before she even had the chance to catch her breath.  Orders can be granted on an ex-parte (without notice) basis in cases of emergency, which means she may not know that an action has been started against her until she receives the court order.  Her ex may be claiming that she has abducted the children, and/or involve the Ministry of Children and Family Development (MCFD). He may have cut off her access to family funds, and begin hiding/removing assets for when matrimonial property division becomes an issue. He may be using resources to track her down, with retaliation in mind.

The legal issues faced by women accessing our services are rarely confined to family law.  More often than not, the woman faces an intersection of legal systems.  She may not have status in Canada and wonder about the implications of her ability to remain once she leaves the relationship.  She may be in dire financial straits, and need immediate assistance, whether through a family court support order or income assistance (which is in itself a complex process).  She may also be involved in the criminal justice system, whether it is her abuser being charged or herself due to her abuser phoning the police on her. 

Each legal system is multi-faceted, variable, and often plain incomprehensible to the average woman with no legal background.  It is even more inaccessible to the woman who does not speak English or French as her first language. Without legal representation, she may be at a complete loss of where to begin.  Often, the woman finds herself disadvantaged economically compared to her more financially secure ex-partner, who is able to afford counsel to represent him in court.

Annie Zhang and friends

Lawyer fees for family law cases rarely dip below $200/hour.  The amount of time the lawyer needs to spend on her case will depend, among other factors, on the complexity of the case and the ability between the parties to settle. Settling is rarely an option – at least, rarely a fair option – when there has been abuse within the relationship and an imbalance in power between the parties.  Once a case goes to trial, the legal fees rack up exponentially.  A trial involving many witnesses, expert reports, and other pieces of evidence can take many days and thousands upon thousands of dollars.  The legal processes leading up to trial, such as commissioning a section 15 report, conducting an examination for discovery, or preparing for the case, are also extremely costly. 

For the woman denied legal aid and unable to afford the costs of legal representation, she is often left with no choice but to self-represent.  Even with legal aid, the hours with her lawyer are limited and nothing stops the abuser from pursuing delay tactics or incessantly bringing frivolous suits in order to use up her allotted ration of legal aid.  She will need take on the role of self-advocate and learn the entirety of the family court process – what forms to fill out, what language to use, what evidence to tender, what time limits are in place, how to write an affidavit, how to conduct herself in court – very quickly.  She may be able to obtain the assistance of advocates, duty counsel, or pro-bono clinics, but her hours with them are also limited and she will need to prepare a lot of the work herself.  

She will also not be able to obtain legal representation from those services, and needs to prepare herself for the reality of facing her abuser alone in court, who is often represented by an experienced lawyer.  Her evidence may be rejected because it is not presented in proper form; she may not understand the legal language or process. In short, she will be extremely disadvantaged by not having knowledgeable counsel to properly advocate for her case.

The stakes are high.  She may lose custody of her children. She may not get the restraining order she desperately needs for protection. She may not receive adequate support in order to sustain herself and her children.   She may not receive a fair property distribution. The abuser may get away with using yet another avenue, the legal system, to further perpetrate the abuse.  The court decision will ultimately have a deep impact on the rest of the woman’s life, as well as the lives of her children.  Justice is considered to be served, but a dish served cold for her. 

As an advocate, it has been extremely dispiriting to see, first-hand, the devastating impact the legal process has had on women and their children.  Women who continue to struggle in poverty, attempting to feed and shelter themselves and their children in an expensive city, while wondering whether their next support payment will arrive in the mail.  Women who, bound by court orders, must force their unwilling children to spend time with an abusive parent. Women who have no choice but to continue to maintain contact with their abusers in a “co-parenting” relationship, through a legal system that does not yet recognize spousal violence as meaningful to the best interests of the child, and presumes joint custody as the default ideal. 

We’d all like to believe that the legal system unfalteringly grants justice to those who ventures through its ivory gates, but whose justice does it serve? Those who have power and privilege in society, with resources to afford the best possible legal representation to present their case in the best possible light?   If access to justice is correlated with access to money, then what does that mean for women accessing BWSS, who are often among the most underprivileged in our society? The women struggling with an intersection of disadvantages borne of racism, classism, sexism, ableist and more?  

I write this piece in contribution to the National Crime Victims Awareness Week, to share with you some of the experiences and barriers faced by women accessing legal services at BWSS.  Thank you for reading.

- Annie Zhang, BWSS Legal Advocate

National Crime Victim Awareness Week 2012

Court Related Abuse and Harassment

by Andrea Vollans

What does National Crime Victim Awareness Week mean? There are countless women who spend so much time being victimized by the legal system itself, sometimes I feel like we need Crime Victim Awareness Year. In fact I cringe a little when I hear “if a woman leaves her abusive husband or boyfriend, it will all be better.” As the Legal Educator for the YWCA Metro Vancouver, I spend about 80% of my time helping women cope with post-separation abuse which often takes the form of court-related abuse and harassment.

How do you describe Court Related Abuse and Harassment (CRAH)? In short, it is a legally sanctioned series of abusive actions; when is the systems designed to protect victims of violence are manipulated to become tools to abuse and harassment. As sociologist Jane Gordon, who went through years of court related abuse and harassment by her ex-husband says, “The psychological effect of this took its toll; the whole experience was devastating. Requests for appropriate restraints within the legal system were denied. I felt that there was no protection anywhere in the system for my interests or for those of my children; instead, judges informed me again and again that they would not interfere with my former husband’s access to the judicial system”

The slow movement of the court process is something abusers often take advantage of. For example, I’ve had women spend hours sitting through unnecessary proceedings, sift through hundreds of pages of affidavits, or having to respond to false accusations. She misses work, she pays for a lawyer, she has to take trips to Legal Aid and various other appointments to ensure that court can happen. It’s the use of court itself to abuse. I can’t count the number of guys who have used cross examination of her on the stand as a way to badger her, to ask who she’s dating, to accuse her of lying or harming the child, or to try to bully her into withdraw previous statements of abuse in the courts.

Needless to say, the process can be incredibly financially draining. I’ve helped many women who have drained all the resources they were able to take from the relationship to spend on further litigation. Abusers capitalize by using the long process of court to avoid paying any kind of child and spousal support for as long as possible, to starve her into accepting smaller settlements or simply to punish her. For women on income assistance, the avoidance and sudden payments of child support cause havoc to her monthly cheques and severely affect the wellbeing of herself and her children. For some women, an abusive ex-partner’s sudden payment of child support sparks fear of another return to court because he only pays his child support when he’s going back to court to avoid being cautioned by the Judge.

Andrea Vollans, Legal Educator, YWCA Vancouver

The manipulation does not stop here. Often abusive ex-partners manufacture evidence to undermine his own abusive actions. For example, using wounds caused from a woman defending herself to allege abuse, or in some cases, creating injuries to allege abuse. By accusing the woman of being abusive too, the Judge might just assume they are both to blame and ignore the violence altogether.

Court related abuse and harassment is also the misuse of state resources like police, child protection workers and even income assistance. Abusers will lodge false complaints against women causing her to be watched and scrutinized – and in some cases, wrongfully charged. This can result is the devastative action of removing children being separated from their mothers and put into foster care or given to the abuser. It can also cause her to lose income assistance, which in many cases, is their only form of income. One abuser filed so many complaints with MCFD they had to make a special application to stop investigating his allegations, but to get to this point required a lot of intensive interviews and the child was pulled out of class many times to be interviewed. The school cast suspicion over the mom because MCFD wouldn’t come that many times unless there were real problems. Obviously, this can have a significant negative consequence for both the mother and her children.

Of course this leads to another abusers tactic, isolation. Abusers of this type are very difficult because they may threaten and harass those that support her, I’ve had complaints made against me, my colleagues have been threatened with lawsuits and many lawyers have quit because of abusers’ complaints to the Law Society.

Sometimes when I talk to my friends about how bad these abusers can be, they call me paranoid or they call me crazy. But you never know how far a guy will go to use the systems to abuse her or harass her. These guys will do whatever it takes to have their revenge or to continue to control. Why are we, through our courts and government systems, allowing women to be further victimized?

Because of my experiences with victims who are working through court-related abuse and harassment, I wrote a report through the UBC Centre for Women and Gender Studies in the Summer of 2010, Court-Related Abuse and Harassment – Leaving an abuser can be harder than staying.

This is How We Take Action to End Violence Against Girls and Women

National Crime Victims Awareness Week

April 22 – 28, 2012

by Rosa Elena Arteaga

For over thirty two years Battered Women’s Support Services has been working toward ending violence against girls and women, and every year we support thousands of women. Just alone in 2011, we responded to over 10,000 direct services requests from, young women, women and their friends and family. Our commitment to provide specialized services from a feminist, anti-oppression analysis that recognizes intersectionality and centers de-colonizing practices remains paramount.

Though our programs we have contributed to positively affect women’s lives. Women from diverse communities access BWSS and benefit from a woman-centered approach. Women who have accessed BWSS programs have made changes in their lives, in their children’s lives and in their communities. We are certain to say that so many women who have accessed our services are living a life free from violence. They extend their strength and knowledge to their families and into their communities. A number of women have become agents for change.

In 2011, at Battered Women’s Support Services we provided:

• 4,036 individual counselling appointments though our Stopping the Violence Counselling Program.
• Over 3,600 women accessed 40 different specialized support groups.
• Over 1,350 women obtained assistance with safety planning and risk assessment, crisis intervention, information, court accompaniments, advocacy and emotional support through our Community Based-Victim Service Program
• Over 1,000 women obtained legal information, advocacy, court accompaniments and accessed legal remedies though our Legal Advocacy Program
• 40 women graduated as Crisis Workers through our Violence Prevention and Crisis Intervention Training Program
• Over 400 volunteers joined the effort of ending violence against girls and women volunteering in our Intake and Crisis Line Program, Office Volunteer Program and My Sister’s Closet – social enterprise of Battered Women’s Support Services (located at 1092 Seymour Street at Helmcken in Vancouver).

Our services are integral to women’s survival. We are a small organization with a big heart and we are committed to continue enhaincing our services as well as to serve as many women as possible.

Here is what some of the women who have accessed our programs have said:

“I am so fortunate that I got the courage to pick up the phone and call BWSS. I am feeling better. I am working very hard on myself and I am going to make it”

“Please provide more of these groups. They are so helpful in breaking the cycle of violence!”

“Your support makes me want to face my past and move on knowing I’m not alone.”

"Growing up, I learned that women are subservient to men, women are to serve men, men are more intelligent,men have authority/they are in charge,women have to please men,our value comes from what we look like, e.g. if you are pretty, thin, have big breast, if you are not too dark… I got these ideas from my family, my community, school and other men in my life. I now know that I can challenge those ideas. I am now proud of being who I am. I am a strong woman"

Rosa Elena Arteaga

Rosa Elena Arteaga has been working in the anti-violence field for over twelve years providing crisis intervention, advocacy and support to girls and women who experience violence as well as delivering training on violence against women to community and service providers. For the last 8 years she has worked as the Manager of Direct Services and Programs at BWSS. Rosa Elena is wildly passionate about her work which is framed in an anti-colonial feminist, anti-oppression analysis. She is an active agent of change towards eradicating violence against girls and women.

News Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Angela Marie MacDougall

Executive Director,

Battered Women’s Support Services

604-808-0507 • www.bwss.org

Rosa Elena Arteaga, Manager,

Battered Women’s Support Services, 778-996-5993• www.bwss.org

April 23, 2012

National Crime Victims Awareness Week April 22 – 28, 2012

Taking Action to End Violence Against Girls and Women

“Women are eight times more likely than men to be killed by their spouse or romantic partner," states new report released, last Tuesday, by the BC Coroners Service.

The report looked at 120 homicides classified as Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) from 2003 to 2011. IPV is defined as "intentional harm or injury inflicted by a current or former spouse, boyfriend or girlfriend or other romantic partner of the victim." However, the findings of this report expose the gendered implications of these crimes: women are at the highest risk.

"These statistics only scratch the surface," said Angela Marie MacDougall, Executive Director, Battered Women’s Support Services (BWSS), "for every murdered woman represented in these statistics, there are hundreds and thousands more women and their children living in fear in British Columbia."

During National Crime Victims Awareness Week 2012, BWSS highlights “best practices” intervention and prevention initiatives. In 2011, through BWSS interventions over 4,000 individual counselling appointments were provided, 3,600 women access specialized support groups, 1,350 women were assisted with safety planning, risk assessment, crisis intervention and court accompaniment. In the absence of legal aid over 1,000 women obtained assistance with family law cases. Our services are delivered by a dedicated team of 16 staff and 40 volunteers.

"Through our statistics we have learned that now, more than ever, women are leaving abusive relationships” said Rosa Elena Arteaga, BWSS Manager, Direct Services and Programs. “Therefore, we value every opportunity to build trust and to support every woman who accesses our services. We are a small organization and we are one strong organization committed to ending violence against girls and women"

Prevention work at BWSS includes:

• Youth Ending Violence Program, where trained young women and young men facilitate workshops with their peers in high schools and community programs. Through this initiative youth work together examining their relationships with one another, identify the possibilities and conditions for violence and emotional abuse and explore how to build healthy intimate relationships.
• Online campaigns at www.bwss.org/endingviolence How Does She Resist?  Resisting Media Representations to End Violence Against Girls and Women and Women, Violence and Justice. Since April 15, 2012, over 20,000 individuals have read blogs and shared through social media, raising awareness critical to long term social change.

"Over a third of women who die in this province, die at the hands of a partner – and more often at the hands of a current partner," said chief coroner Lisa Lapointe. "We need to really look at situations where domestic violence is happening, or we suspect it is happening, and make sure there are resources for those women."

Thirty-three years ago, Battered Women’s Support Services (BWSS) initiated this call and remains progressive providing prevention and intervention services to help end violence against girls and women.

Survivors Speak Out to Break Silence about Systemic Violence Against Women and Girls

by Joanna Chiu

If you took a poll of everyone you know, very few might say that they support violence and abuse against women and girls.

But all over the media, footage of a woman being punched in the face can be used to promote a reality show, a video of a woman in a neck brace after “rough sex” can be used to promote a vegetarian diet, and artists rapping and singing in a mansion filled with corpses of women hung by chains can be passed as an “artistic” music video.

If you keep watching those shows, supporting the same artists and organizations, playing violent video games or subscribing to the same magazines without thinking about what you’re accepting, like it or not, you are actually supporting violence against women and girls.

The philosophy of Battered Women’s Support Services is that battering does not take place between two people in isolation—violence and abuse happens in a social context, and is deeply rooted in a system that supports the right of some people to oppress others based on privileges such as gender, race, religion, class, sexual orientation, age and physical ability.

The kinds of systems of oppression that perpetuate violence against women are reflected in and promoted through the media, so for Prevention of Violence Against Women Week, BWSS asked me to help bring together media makers and activists in dialogue about how to end systemic violence against women and girls.

Throughout the past week, my blog posts have discussed different messages in the media that take away the agency of survivors of violence and marginalized groups—misrepresenting them instead with highly damaging ideas: Women are sluts, women of colour are really big sluts, women are asking for it, women are crazy “psycho bitches.”

Those media messages, brought to you by the 3000 ads you see every day, and from a myriad of news and entertainment outlets, promote a culture of violence—and a culture of silence.

The debilitating fear, shame and self-blame that many women feel after surviving sexual assault, domestic violence or abuse keep most from reporting the crimes to police, and even from telling their closest friends and family. As a result of this culture of silence and victim blaming, 97% of rapists will not spend one day in jail (Source: RAINN).

The idea of sharing their stories with the broader public, even if it is to raise awareness about violence, is something that few survivors are willing to do.

But as someone who has worked on media outreach for several activist events and human rights organizations, I know that telling personal stories is a powerful way to engage the public to take action (as Jennifer Pozner explained on Day 3). That was why for the first time, I wrote briefly about being sexually assaulted in my introductory blog post for this campaign. But that was very hard to do. After the piece was published, I stayed away from my computer for a while, scared of what the feedback might be, and I had a sick feeling in my stomach all day.

A part of the reason I had the courage to share my story was because my friend Holly Meyer had done it last year. Last fall, she wrote about being raped by a trusted friend in the New York Daily News (a very mainstream newspaper):

One night in January, after a lot of dancing at a party in Brooklyn, a male neighbor and I made our way back to our building less than a mile away. We’d been drinking, but nothing unusual for twenty-somethings on a Saturday night…The next thing I know I’m feeling my pants being pulled down off my body. I heard the neighbor mutter, "Time to take charge of this situation." And then I felt a small penis trying to enter me from behind. "No. Stop. No. Stop," I said. I was in complete shock as I felt him enter me twice while I continued to say, "No. Stop. No. Stop." I then felt him lift his weight off of my body and retreat. I felt frozen and totally incapacitated. I didn’t realize fully what happened to me for at least the next 24 hours, stunned that my neighbor would sexually violate me.

When I talked to Holly about what she hoped to achieve by telling her story, she told me:

“I never reported what happened to the police and never even told a friend until 3 to 4 months after the fact…I think if anyone read it and then found the courage to open up to someone and talk about an assault that they’d kept a secret, I’d be incredibly humbled.”

Sadly, stories such as Holly’s are very common. 1 in 2 Canadian women has survived at least one attack in her lifetime, and in 2005, an average of three women a day were murdered by their intimate partners in the U.S. 15% of sexual assault victims are children under the age of 12.

That is why personal stories are most impactful when they are told in conjunction with a clear message that violence does not happen to individuals in isolation—they happen because we live in a society that promotes violence against women and girls. Often, media outlets feature personal stories in a sensationalized way, without tying them to broader patterns of violence.

Sometimes, survivors do not choose to tell their stories directly, but tell their stories through media representatives, journalists and other media makers. Before you tell a personal story in the media, whether it is your own or someone else’s, consider these guidelines from Esther Shannon, a Vancouver human rights advocate and former editor of Kinesis magazine:

· Keep in mind that the media may get the story wrong. The media can sensationalize or simplify, and miss many of the nuances. The media also likes conflict and may search out contrasting views to the survivors’ and call that “objectivity.”

· Media reps need to prepare, support and protect women willing to expose themselves to the media the best they can. Reps have to be honest to survivors about what might happen with their story after they share it with the public.

· To try to prevent sensationalism or misrepresentation in the media, it is absolutely essential to follow up, both to say thanks when it’s merited and to provide respectful feedback when they get it wrong.

There are also a variety of online forums that survivors of violence and abuse can use to share their stories anonymously, including Dancing in the Darkness and Escaping Hades (More listed below).

In addition to providing a full range of services and support, including a crisis hotline, counseling, legal help, referrals, advocacy and employment programs, Battered Women’s Support Services can work with survivors to help them share their stories with the public on this blog and on other forums.

I want to conclude by sharing an essay written by BWSS client Rhonda Lee Vermette, which was originally posted on January 24, 2012.

Thank you very much for the tremendous support and feedback on this week’s campaign. Let’s keep this dialogue going. Please do not hesitate to contact me at editor.joanna@gmail.com or @joannachiu, or join me in a community of feminist media critics at WAM! Vancouver, WAM! international, or Women in Media and News.

Joanna

—

Please Don’t Give Up…I Didn’t

By Rhonda Lee Vermette

About a year ago now, I was phoning around trying to find domestic violence counseling services for myself. I had phoned a few places and as I tried to explain the situation that I had been court ordered to take domestic violence counseling, most places would not listen to me after they heard that. I had made the attempt to explain that it was not because I was an abuser, but that I was the abused and how I even got myself into the criminal activity was that I was bullied into it by my abuser, thus resulting in the domestic violence counseling sentence. I finally contacted Battered Women’s Support Services (BWSS) and they listened to what I had to say and I was in for my first session within days.

I am originally from a small Saskatchewan city and spent 15 years in an extremely abusive relationship (in every aspect) with my abuser passing away 6 months prior to starting counseling here in Vancouver. During the last 4 years of the relationship we were under investigation for drug trafficking which resulted in my sentence and during that investigation, police listened live to me being beaten and/or raped on more than one occasion but never intervened in order to protect their drug intervention. I wasn’t able to deal with the many different ways I was affected, until I had started the counseling at BWSS.

I was really lost, limiting my contact with the outside world by never leaving my house other than for appointments with physicians, lawyers or counseling sessions. I had become quite anti-social which is not normal for me. My counseling sessions have brought me to talk about the devastating things that have happened to me and the survival skills and techniques I developed over time. The abuse I had experienced over the years had changed me in so many ways that I had never even realized it. I believe my biggest issues were fear and trust. I say this because of the extreme levels of abuse I suffered and how I interacted with other people. One thing I remember is during these assaults I would wish for someone to walk in and stop them. To later find out the police were there and listening, turning blind eyes to what was happening to me, almost absolutely destroyed me.

Now that I have been in counseling for a year, I have come to terms with what happened to me was wrong and something that I can never turn the clock back on. But, I can start making changes for the future not only for myself, but for other victims of domestic violence by telling my story and how I managed to survive. BWSS has given me back my courage and strength as a woman to deal with my pain and anger. They have also made me aware that I am not alone in my suffering. They play a huge role in my path of healing and if not for them I do not know where I would be today. PRAISE to you, the staff and volunteers at BWSS, for giving me back to me, my family and the rest of the world.

More Survivors’ Stories

BWSS client essay: “This is my Journey by Anon”

“To combat rape on campus, schools should stop keeping it quiet”

“Walking away from domestic violence”

Escaping Hades: A Rape and Sexual Abuse Survivor’s Site

Dancing in the Darkness

WADV: No More Surviving—Thriving

Experience Project

Resisting Media Representations.
How Women Can Effectively Challenge the Way They Are Represented
A Literary Review

by Silvia Almanza Alonso

TV shows, advertisements, magazines and fashion displays are some examples of media that construct and represent women in a very standardized, offensive and stereotypical way. These media forms tell women how to look, and which behaviours are acceptable by creating a unique recipe for beauty, success and happiness: be white, be ridiculously small, and be perfectly ok as an object of sexual desire. Not conforming to this ideal is not considered different, it is wrong and shameful. Race, class, gender, ability, education, sexuality are some of the intersectional categories which are ignored most of the time in the way media socially constructs and represents women. While not all women are equally affected, younger women become more vulnerable to this misleading reality. But the question is: What can women do today, tomorrow and in the future to resist and challenge these messages? How can we fully realize that what we see in the media is an inaccurate representation of what womanhood is supposed to look like?

What is Media Literacy and Why it Matters?

Media scholars unanimously agree that media messages are constructed. “TV commercials, newspaper news items, captioned photographs, and billboard slogans are all created by someone working within a discernible set of social, political, historical, and economic institutions, and seeking to achieve a particular effect on the targeted audience”5. The problem lays in the fact that just a minority of the audience are fully aware of this. While many people may say: “yes, I know I’m watching TV, that is not real life”, or “yes, I’m aware company ‘X’ is trying to sell them certain product”, the constant bombardment of images penetrates in our brain to the point that we are convinced that beauty means thinness, and there is no other way. It can be very difficult to fully realize that what media is selling us are pure representations, distant from reality. And here is where media literacy enters to play, as a way of helping us understand how media operates and how we can effectively analyze, discuss, critique and challenge what we see.

“Media literacy is the ability to sift through and analyze the messages that inform, entertain and sell to us every day. It’s the ability to bring critical thinking skills to bear on all media— from music videos and Web environments to product placement in films and virtual displays on NHL hockey boards”6. This ability aims to examine the “…techniques, technologies and institutions involved in media production…”  Like the definitions above, media literacy is something that needs to be learned; therefore its importance lies in preparing people for this activity. From this perspective, media literacy as a learning tool has two standpoints: media producers and media consumers. Regarding the producers, “…many media literacy researchers hope to influence the process so that entertainers and journalists might modify their messages to accommodate a more informed and critical audience.” As we will see later on, many of the challenging ways to resist media representations are in the hands of those in the media business. On the other hand, consumers of media representations should be instructed beyond the scholarly environment, but even in “…other venues, such as community events and, most importantly, everyday family life”. Also, we will be able to see, not just the crucial roles of teacher, educators and parents, but also how some organizations present simple tools to challenge media representations from ordinary environments like dinner time.

Special attention has been paid recently to training young learners in media literacy. These programs, usually targeted to teenagers, are very connected with activism and engaging youth in different ways. Youth media programs “…emphasize media production as a form of social activism in local communities… Authentic representation and “voice” are emphasized in programs that are designed to give adolescents opportunities to strengthen leadership skills and advocate for issues of concern to them” .
As the popular phrase says knowledge is power, research in the effects of media literacy has shown that “…education is associated with reduced susceptibility to tobacco use among children and adolescents and increased skepticism about perceptions of the thin ideal in beauty and fashion magazines among adolescent girls”. This is just a simple example of the powerful effects that media literacy programs can have in the life of people.

Resisting Media Representations by Silvia Almanza Alonso – Read the entire document here

Your Message, Your Voice:

Blogging to Fill the Need for Independent Critical Analysis

by Joanna Chiu

It is no coincidence that Battered Women’s Support Services (BWSS) is using a blog campaign this week to generate dialogue about how media critique can help end violence against girls and women.

The purpose of a blog is to not just to be read, but to be part of a conversation. For media activists, blogs carve out spaces to participate in critical analysis of mainstream media and culture when mainstream media outlets typically push out critical voices.

In the U.S. 6 corporations control the vast majority of media outlets, and in Canada, 7 companies control the vast majority of media outlets. WorldAudit.org ranked Canada No. 16 and the U.S. No. 17 for levels of press freedom, making North America far from being leading champions for democratic values in the press.

I recently went to a panel in New York that was supposed to be a critical conversation of media coverage in developing countries, but the panelists said they weren’t comfortable talking about the publications that they write for, which kind of defeats the purpose of participating in a critical conversation. But I couldn’t blame them—who could risk losing their job in this economy?

Blogs fulfill the need for an independent, alternative space for social criticism, and if you have access to a computer and Internet, blogs cost no money to get started, and you can even make money from blogging if you’re savvy enough. Many user-friendly platforms like WordPress, Blogger and Tumblr host blogs for free, and offer a variety of different ways to customize your blogs.

Blogging—even if it’s just writing tweets once in a while—is also a way to access supportive communities. As discussed in my earlier posts, it can feel alienating to be a lone voice of skepticism when people around you are buying into dominant media narratives, such as the idea that survivors of violence are “asking for it” if they go out at night or dress provocatively.

I think of feminism as a lens in which to analyze all unequal power structures in society including within institutions such as media.When I first became interested in feminism and media criticism as a sixth grader in the 90s, all I could think of to do was to go to my public library and check out books about the women’s movement. I wrote down my reflections in a big pink journal, and I would carry the journal around with me while shopping in the mall with my preteen friends, asking them what they thought of Gloria Steinem going undercover as a Playboy Bunny while trying on training bras at La Senza Girl.

Thank goodness for blogs. When I started blogging in high school, my media literacy and understanding of social issues improved dramatically. Blogging was cool and quite common in my school—almost as ubiquitous as Facebook is now—and I found myself having very interesting critical discussions on things like porn, philosophy, consumer culture and body image issues with my classmates—topics that rarely came up in the classroom, and those online engagements led to real-life friendships. I was also able to connect with and learn from people all around the world.

Through blogging, I was able to grapple with ideas and questions I had about feminism and social justice issues in public for the first time, and the positive feedback and constructive criticisms I got from fellow bloggers helped give me the confidence to pitch story ideas to local newspapers and magazines. Blogging in my PJ’s in my parent’s basement eventually led to getting a job as a columnist for Canada’s largest feminist magazine, Herizons.

In the past decade, blogging has exploded, creating new opportunities for self-expression for inexperienced writers like myself, but unlike most fads, blogging continues to innovate to keep up with a rapidly changing media culture.

At the beginning of this blogging boom, bloggers who weren’t already celebrities or well-known writers were able to quickly build their platform and gain international readership.

Although Feministing.com is now one of the most widely read feminist blogs, when it was founded in 2004, it didn’t take much promotion work to attract an audience. In a corporate media culture where it was becoming increasingly hard to distinguish between advertising and editorial content, blogs were a much-needed source of independent social criticism and news.

I talked to Samhita Mukhopadhyay, current editor of Feministing.com to learn more about her thoughts on Feministing’s success and ways to sustain a vibrant feminist blogosphere.

“Jessica and Vanessa Valenti founded the blog in 2004 because of the lack of feminist voices online,” she said. “I can’t say we did a ton to promote it, but we were consistent and pretty soon when people would Google ‘young women’ or ‘feminist,’ our site or a similar feminist blog would pop up.”

In deciding what to write your blogs about, Mukhopadhyay provided some good advice:

“Be consistent and only write about the things you have something to say about. No one wants to read a summary—what do you have to add that is new to the conversation? What’s the part of the story that is being left out? What is your point of view? Those are all things to consider in cultivating your voice—which will lead to people reading you.”

In Canada, the feminist blogosphere is still in its development stages, so there are many opportunities for new bloggers to jump in, quickly gain a national audience and help grow the Canadian feminist blogosphere.

You can do this either by starting your own blog or by contributing to an existing blog. A survey being conducted by WAM! Vancouver researcher Candace Coulson (from Simon Fraser University) found over 110 feminist blogs in Canada—and counting!

Canada’s Gender Focus blog editor Jarrah Hodge is always looking for guest contributors, and Canada’s rabble.ca blogs editor Alexandra Samur is looking for blog content as well, especially from feminist writers, which she says are currently underrepresented.

Mukhopadhyay, Hodge and Samur agree that progressive bloggers can only benefit by supporting each other.

As Hodge puts it, “Canadian feminist bloggers (myself included) need to do a better job of networking with each other and promoting each other’s content. The Internet is a big place and there’s room for us to work together to advance the issues we all care about.”

Mukhopadhyay agrees that (refreshingly!), blogging isn’t about competition.

“Feminist bloggers have to stick together—we can’t compete with each other, that’s what patriarchy wants us to do. There is plenty of work and each one of us has our role in the work, so through alliances and friendships—this work is only strengthened,” she said.

Samur points out that if you don’t have time, energy or inclination to write longer blogs, micro-blogging is a quick and easy way to be a much-needed independent social critic.

“Feminist micro-bloggers on Twitter and Tumblr are a fascinating group,” she said, “And they are making a real difference.”

Sharing content on micro-blogging platforms is also an easy way to support independent media and pieces you like in mainstream media, and to have conversations with people to build a stronger movement around causes like ending violence against women and girls.

On Twitter, join in the conversation about this week’s campaign with the hashtag #resistmedia. I’m @joannachiu and BWSS is @EndingViolence.

See you online!

Your Message, Your Voice!  Battered Women’s Support Services (BWSS) invites guest contributors to Ending Violence Blog for more information email endingviolence@bwss.org

Women with Disabilities: Understanding Media Representations to

Empower one of the Most Victimized Groups in Society

by Joanna Chiu

1 in 7 people in the world have a disability.* Yet people with disabilities are often rendered invisible in the media, and when they do appear, the media’s portrayals of them are typically very bad.

So bad that when Jane Smith was diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder nine years ago, she didn’t believe it. She couldn’t possibly be one of those deranged women she sees in television and movies.

Because women have been historically branded as “hysterics,” and women are oppressed in the media in general, women with disabilities report feeling particularly harmed by media misrepresentations of their realities. (See the theory of intersectionality on how oppressions like racism, trans-phobia and classism intersect.)

“I’ve almost never seen a positive or, at least, accurate portrayal of women with Bipolar Disorder,” said Smith (name changed for confidentiality). “Most people have grown up with this media saturation of ‘psycho’ people doing horrible, dangerous things without empathy.”

From the Joker in the Dark Knight to Angelina Jolie’s character in Girl, Interrupted, people with invisible disabilities (disabilities that aren’t physically apparent, including mental illness), are often portrayed as dangers to society who need to be contained and/or “fixed”. People with physical disabilities, on the other hand, are often portrayed as helpless victims, or people who heroically “overcome” their disability.

The trope of the “psycho bitch” is something that oppresses

women and people with mental illness simultaneously

The truth is, people with disabilities—and especially women and women of colour with disabilities—are often the most vulnerable to being victims of violence. And when they experience violence, because they are seen as crazy, or because they are not able to understand or communicate what happened to them, their attackers are rarely brought to justice.

There is still a huge research gap in the field of Disability Studies on violence against women, but in Canada, DAWN (DisAbled Women’s Network) first found in 1988 that 40% of women surveyed reported being abused, raped or assaulted. A more recent Roeher Institute study, “Harm’s Way,” (1995) found that 60% of women with disabilities will experience abuse during their lifetimes.

Smith was sexually assaulted two years ago by an acquaintance. Partly because she had a mental illness, she decided to not report the assault to the police.

“It’s like the usual shame attached to rape, but on a whole other level reserved for ‘crazy’ people,” she said.

When Smith considered what would happen if she went to the police, she thought:

“I just kept picturing their faces once I ran down my list of medications. They wouldn’t listen to a single word I said after that.”

Smith has a degree in journalism and sociology, and although she intellectually understands that portrayals of women with disabilities in the media are inaccurate, she still feels shame and blames herself for the rape, because she thinks that bipolar women are “supposed to be so hypersexual” that they bring it onto themselves.

Women with disabilities constantly face stigma and varying degrees of struggle to achieve legitimacy, and the absence or misrepresentations of women with disabilities in the media only further disempowers women with disabilities. It can have a very real impact on self-esteem and survival.

I talked to Raquel Baldwinson, a Masters level researcher on the “Rhetoric of Health, Illness and Medicine” at the University of British Columbia, to try to understand the reasons women with disabilities are one of the most victimized groups in our society.

I first met Baldwinson while I was a contributor to Antigone magazine, and noticed that she had produced a remarkable “Women with Disabilities Issue” for Antigone.

The best introduction to these issues that I’ve seen.

You can read the whole issue online or listen to the audio.

As a woman with a disability herself, Baldwinson understands the flaws of Canada’s health policies intimately, and her work advocates for people with stigmatized illnesses who are most often discriminated against.

Raquel explained the different kinds of violence that women with different disabilities encounter:

“Women with physical disabilities who are physically unable to defend themselves tend to be abused by their caretakers, abused financially, and don’t have a system of community to report abuses, let along education from feminist blogs and other outlets to recognize when they are being exploited,” she said.

But women who have physical disabilities like quadriplegia or blindness are considered more biologically legitimate than women with mental illnesses like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. There are moral judgments imposed on every illness, says Baldwinson, but women with mental illnesses are seen as “girls who get into trouble” who pose greater dangers to society.

Women with mental illnesses are more likely to be taken advantage of when their judgment is compromised, and are more likely to have abusive relationships because they settle for anyone who would love a ‘crazy person,’” she said.

It is important to understand these patterns and hierarchies of ways that society stigmatizes people with disabilities in order to help build communities of support to help end all abuse, violence and exploitation.

As discussed throughout this blog campaign, media literacy is one of the first steps in creating widespread change. By analyzing and resisting against media representations of women with disability, we can help dismantle the ideas in society that perpetuate violence against women with disAbilities.

–

*I use the more familiar term, disability, in this post, rather than a less problematic term like “different-ability” in order to allow wider engagement with these issues.

Resources

DAWN-RAHF Canada: DisAbled Women’s Network

U.S.: National Alliance on Mental Illnesses (NAMI)

Common Portrayals of People with Disabilities

Center for Research on Women with Disabilities

Book: Mad, Bad and Sad: A History of Women and Mind Doctors

Mock American Apparel ads draws attention to lack of women with disabilities in media.

Film – Dialogues with Mad Women by Allie Light

Indigenous and Women of Colour Media Makers Resist!:

How to Create the Media You Want to See in the World

by Joanna Chiu

Today, as I was walking down the street to write at my favorite coffee shop, I received the usual afternoon greetings from my neighbours: “Hey baby!” “Konichiwa!” “Ni hao! “Look at that ass!!”

As all Indigenous women and women of colour know, if sexism wasn’t bad enough, we encounter racism on a daily basis as well—on the street, in the classroom, in the workplace, and in the media. (See the theory of intersectionality on how oppressions like racism, ageism and classism intersect.)

In media, women of colour are often hyper-sexualized, and depicted in racial caricatures: Kung Fu ladies, geishas, sexy Latina sirens, Pocahontas types, etc. That is, if we see ourselves represented in the media at all. According to Journalism.com’s State of the Media report, race and gender issues only accounted for 1% of overall news coverage. And how many women of colour lead actresses can you name in Hollywood, or who have graced the covers of glossy magazines?

The absence of representations of people of colour in the media is as bad as racist representations in the media, because it implies that we simply don’t matter.

I’m graduating from a prestigious journalism school next month, and while I’m grateful for getting top-notch training from the excellent professors, I have to admit that I’m looking forward to getting out of there.

In my classes, when I would speak up against my classmates making fun of black people living in public housing for being fat, debating at what point it is actually wrong to sleep with underage girls, or using racial slurs like “coolie,” I’d get backlash for being a militant feminist who takes things too seriously. And it started to make me feel that I was pretty uncool, which isn’t the case obviously…

At a party last month, I tried to introduce myself to a classmate I didn’t recognize. “I know you already,” she said curtly. “You’re the girl who yells at everyone.” One of my classmates contacted me the other day, asking if I could appear in a funny video he was making. Joseph Pulitzer will come back from the dead and say these old-timey, racist terms. You’d be perfect for someone to act all offended, he said.

If it’s not hard enough for Indigenous women and women of colour to simply talk about racism with our friends and colleagues without being laughed at or ostracized, it’s even more challenging to share our perspectives and experiences in the media.

In news media, not only are racial issues avoided like the plague, there is a serious underrepresentation of people of colour on staff, too. People of colour make up only 12.79 percent of staff in newsrooms, and this has actually declined .47 percent from a year ago, according to a census by the American Society of News Editors

In my previous blog post, I discussed ways to challenge problematic news coverage of progressive causes. But media isn’t only about newspapers, magazines and websites. Media makers include comic book artists, radio hosts, visual artists, musicians, and video game developers, too.

In this post, I highlight filmmaking and zine-making: two ways you can resist racism, sexism, trans-phobia and other oppressions by creating the kind of media you want to see in the world.

I talked to self-taught filmmaker Elle-Maija Tailfeathers, whose award-winning films inspire discussion and action on violence against Indigenous people. A Red Girl’s Reasoning, written and directed by Tailfeathers and produced by Rose Stiffarm, won the Crazy 8s contest earlier this year. Another film, Bloodland, about the environmental and human impact of fracking, has just finished the festival circuit.

And I talked to Syahidah, a member of the collective of Indigenous women, women of color, queer and trans women behind the new zine series, Margins. Margins was created to highlight the stories and experiences of Indigenous women, women of color and gender-queer and trans women and to develop community support among these marginalized populations. Margins was awarded a grant from the Girls’ Action Foundation and their first issue will be available here. Syahidah’s main passion is writing and has written for several feminist websites. Currently, she blogs at www.lifeandlimabeans.wordpress.com.

Tailfeathers (left) with star of A Red Girl’s Reasoning Jessica Matten (centre) and Rose Stiffarm (right)

Margins zine editor and feminist writer Syahidah

Whatever your medium of choice, Tailfeathers and Syahidah provide these great tips and insights on how to create the kind of media you want to see in the world.

When did you first become interested in creating media and why did you choose films and zines?

Tailfeathers: I started out as an actor and did that professionally for a number of years, but became really jaded with the industry as an actor. It’s obviously very limiting for women in general, and women of color even more so. While I was in the First Nations Studies program at UBC, I learned how to use film equipment and editing software on my own and ended up working at First Nations House of Learning as a videographer.

With my knowledge in film, I thought that I might use it as a form of nonviolent direct action against issues like violence against women and degradation of Indigenous land.

I think film can be a very powerful medium to convey issues of social justice, especially because film is about storytelling. There’s a very strong narrative going on about violence against Aboriginal women, and the story needs to be told, and told to wider audience.

[In a Red Girl’s reasoning, after the justice system fails the victim of a brutal, racially-driven sexual assault, the main character becomes a motorcycle-riding, ass-kicking vigilante who takes on the attackers of other women who've suffered the same fate.]

It was definitely a huge challenge for me to make the film because I’m not an advocate of violence. I don’t think that’s an answer, but clearly, there are major issues going on in this country with violence against Indigenous women, and a Red Girl’s Reasoning is a way to raise awareness and dialogue about it. I thought an action film would attract more of a male audience. The fact is, women, particularly Indigenous women, know about these issues already, and there is no sense of preaching to the choir.

Syahidah: The idea for the zine came from talking to three friends of mine about our negative experiences working within largely white feminist spaces and largely within white and male activist circles. At one point or another, we all felt alienated, unsupported or silenced when we express our views.

Personally, I was writing for mainstream feminist/white women editors who constantly wanted to lump me (unconsciously and with the best of intentions) into the token “woman of color” box. It wasn’t that they were being outwardly racist—it’s just that they were “un-racist” instead of “anti-racist.”

So with the zine, the aim is to highlight the stories and experiences of Indigenous women, women of color and gender-queer and trans women and to help other Indigenous women, women of color and gender-queer and trans women realize that they are not alone.

I think zines are one of the several ways that people can express themselves and create political media that speaks to them and that help buffer social justice movements, even if there are many things that limits zines [including being a written medium and having a limited circulation]. In some ways, the zine is a good tool for reaching out to peers who are already thinking about the same issues as you, which is what we aim to do for our zine –-reach a very specific audience to build community.

An excerpt from Tailfeathers’ film, A Red Girls’ Reasoning;

What do you think of current portrayals of Indigenous women and women of colour you see in the media?

Tailfeathers: First, unless you’re watching APTN (Aboriginal People’s Television Network), chances are you’re not going to see Indigenous women represented in any way shape or form, and if she is, age-old stereotypes are incredibly pervasive.

The idea of the idyllic Indian princess is very much alive. And then we have the other end of spectrum, which is the squaw. If there are such limited images of Indigenous women in the media, what does the broader public think of us? Do they not realize that we are incredibly diverse?

This is damaging to Native women because we absorb those messages like anyone else out there, and may think that we’re not Native enough because we don’t look like Pocahontas.

Syahidah: Well, to quote Margaret Cho from the film MissRepresentation,“The media treats women like shit!” I agree with this 100%. Queer, gender-queer and trans women are constantly being made fun of in the media and the word “tranny” is casually used in mainstream discourse to derogate trans women…Women of color are typically side-lined as well. Although I will be fair and say that there has been a concerted effort to include women of color characters (especially in sci-fi and fantasy), the representations often circle around one of several tropes.

Black women in sci-fi for example are often seen as “warrior women” (e.g. Mira from Terra Nova, Zoe from Firefly), evil seductresses (e.g. Ashanti in Buffy, Sharon from Battlestar Galactica), exoticized sex objects (e.g. Sierra from Dollhouse, Inara in Firefly) or at best what I like to call “space secretaries” (e.g. Uhura in Star Trek, Tory from Battlestar Galactica).

I would argue that currently, white women have more representation than Indigenous women and women of color, and I really think that has to do with the success of second-wave feminism whose agenda mainly circulated around white, middle-class women.

What advice do you have for making films?

Tailfeathers: I guess just to recognize that film is about storytelling. Really think about the kinds of stories you want to tell. I think it’s imperative that people support women of colour who tell their own stories in film. There are a lot of amazing filmmakers that are women of colour, but their work is mostly being screened at festivals and not really getting mainstream play.

What advice do you have for people to start their own zines?

Syahidah: Make sure you get a great community of support around you. And be prepared to work hard! Margins has been immensely lucky – from the get-go, people around us have been so supportive of our idea including Vancouver Status of Women, WAM! Vancouver and Allies UBC (a student resource group), who have also been amazing in terms of both financial and physical/emotional support.

Hard work comes with the territory—we’ve faced some challenges especially in terms of trying to schedule meeting times and trying to put the zine together as a collective. I should also add that as a collective, we are not paid for our work for the zine. It’s hard work and it can be frustrating but at the end of the day, we remind ourselves that the harder the work is, the more important it is.

Additional Resources:

Funding available and support for feminist media projects available through: Girls Action Foundation

Tutorials on filmmaking, photography website design, etc. available at: Lynda.com (some are free without subscription)

How to make a zine and Guide-To-Zine-Making

Free movie editing software

 Film-making 101

Support for learning about radio production at WINGS (Women’s International News Gathering Service)

 February 14th Women’s Memorial March Vancouver

 Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC)

 Aboriginal Women’s Action Network (AWAN-BC)

 Indigenous Action Movement

Families of Sisters in Spirit

Union of BC Indian Chiefs (UBCIC)

How Does She Resist:  Resisting Media Representations to End Violence Against Girls and Women

Prevention of Violence Against Women Week April 15 – 21, 2012

Follow on Twitter #resistmedia