2020, the entire planet was Closed For Business following the pandemonium of the pandemic. Still, the heartbeat of life carried on, be it behind closed doors. In November of that year, VBB Podcast hosted four conversations with individual women on a single theme. All the while, we were unaware of how much the global lockdown had exacerbated the very topic we were speaking to women about.
The theme of those November shows was inspired by a United Nations initiative that resonates with VBB's purpose: to support women by sharing stories that impact women individually and womanhood collectively. The United Nations campaign titled 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence was an inspiration we are privileged to support. Each November leading up to November 25 — International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women — through December 10 — Human Rights Day, VBB hosts conversations with female victims of violence and abuse.
2024 marks the 25th anniversary of the UN General Assembly's designating November 25 as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. The initiative is in memory of three Mirabal sisters, Patria, Minerva, and María Teresa, residents of the Dominican Republic, all brutally assassinated on November 25, 1960. The assassinations turned the Mirabal sisters into symbols of resistance.
According to the UN, violence against women and girls (VAWG) remains the most prevalent and pervasive human rights violation in the world. Globally, an estimated 736 million women — nearly one in three have experienced physical and/or sexual violence by an intimate or non-intimate partner at least once in their lives.
Gender-based violence is defined as violence that is directed against a woman because she is a woman or that affects women disproportionately. It includes acts that inflict physical, mental, or sexual suffering and other deprivations of liberty.
UN List of Types of Violence Against Women:
Intimate-partner violence: behaviour by an intimate partner or ex-partner that causes physical, sexual, or psychological harm, including physical aggression, sexual coercion, psychological abuse, and controlling behaviours.
Sexual violence: any harmful or unwanted sexual behaviour that is imposed on someone. It includes acts of abusive sexual contact, rape, sexual acts without consent, sexual harassment, verbal abuse, threats, exposure, unwanted touching, incest, and others.
Femicide: the intentional killing of a woman or girls. Gender-related killings may range from discrimination and stereotyping to unequal social power dynamics between women and men. Femicide is the most extreme and brutal expression of gender-based violence.
Human trafficking: a global crime that trades in people and exploits them for profit. Physical and sexual abuse, blackmail, emotional manipulation, and the removal of official documents by traffickers to control their victims. Women are the primary targets, and girls are typically trafficked for sexual exploitation.
Harmful practices: a violation of human rights that put women's and adolescents' sexual and reproductive health and rights at risk. Harmful practices include binding, scarring, branding/ infliction of tribal marks, corporal punishment, stoning, violent initiation rites, widowhood practices, accusations of witchcraft and ritual attacks, son preference, daughter aversion and gender-biased sex selection, honour crimes, dowry-related violence, menstruation restrictions, infanticide, incest and body modifications performed for the purpose of beauty or marriageability of girls and women.
It doesn't matter who you are or where you live; every one of us has had contact with a woman or girl identified as a victim of gender-based violence or abuse. We are fortunate if that person confides in us, and on VBB, we give gratitude for every woman who has trusted us and summoned the courage to share painful experiences once suppressed under shame or guilt, but always with the intention of supporting other women still lost in a situation they once found themselves in.
The cruelest part of well-intended campaigns focussed on awareness and education to expose gender-based violence is that beyond all the overwhelming statistics and gruesome facts, there remain countless numbers of women forced to live in silence with a heartbreaking secret that, if told, could cost them their family, livelihood, or their life.
VBB conversations supporting 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence continue in conversation with Advocate and Speaker Sandy Phillips Kirkham, who Authored Let Me Prey Upon You: Breaking Free From A Minister’s Sexual Abuse - a candid memoir exposing clergy abuse against women and girls. VBB #313
