Reader letter: Support women, girls in opposing gender-based violence
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The 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence is an annual international campaign that ran from Nov. 25 to Dec. 10. Inaugurated at the Women’s Global Leadership Institute in 1991, it’s a movement to help end violence against women and girls.
The United Nations defines violence against women as “any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual, or mental harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life.”
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One form of gender-based violence is intimate partner violence (IPV), referring to 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.
In Canada, a woman or girl is killed every 48 hours.
Canada saw a 27-per-cent increase in the murder of women and girls by a male in 2022. Locally, Windsor Police Service responded to a 7.1-per-cent increase in IPV-related incidents between January and August of this year.
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How can you help?
• Become an ally in our community;
• Support victims, survivors, families;
• Lobby your MPP to declare IPV an epidemic in Ontario;
• Lobby your MP to support Georgina’s Law (the private member’s bill passed in the Senate Nov. 26).
5. Donate to a local women’s shelter.
Want to get more involved? Consider joining the Canadian Federation of University Women (CFUW) Windsor.
Elana Freeman
CFUW Windsor
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