Step It Up Ontario - End Violence Against Women

Equity seeking women’s advocates—Aboriginal women, women of colour, immigrant and refugee women, low-income women, women with disabilities, Deaf women and women experiencing discrimination based on age, sexuality, geographic location, language or culture—then challenged mainstream women’s advocates to further grow and recognize their own need to address oppression and exclusion within mainstream feminist analysis of violence against women. 

Leadership and direction by these women—survivors and advocates—is critical to finding ways to work towards an end to violence against women.   Why?

• It was women’s advocates and survivors who first declared that women survivors are the experts on their own lives and that it is critical for advocates and “helpers” to be accountable allies in women’s journey to escape or overcome the impacts of violence. This is the first ‘best practice’ underlying all others.

• It was women’s advocates and survivors who built their own organizations and services from nothing when community systems and public consciousness still re-victimized them and blamed them for the violence.

• They have over 30 years of herstory and experience in working to end violence against women and they are often the only groups concretely dedicated not only on providing individual services to women and children, but to eliminating violence against women in all its forms.

• Women’s equality-seeking advocates are connected to the equality rights movement for women this is at the heart of ending violence against women. Most academic and institutional consultants do not work from a holistic, equality rights framework and their input rarely integrates a social justice approach.

• Survivors and women’s advocates are the best monitors and evaluators of systemic response and ideas for solutions to the challenges we face.

• Women’s advocates and survivors care about the issues on a day-to-day basis and are vigilant to emerging concerns that have an impact on women and children.  They see directly the impact of policy on women’s lives. They work on the issues on a day-to-day basis, have the greatest passion for a solution and simply have more information and knowledge about violence against women.

• Women’s advocacy services and activist groups include the voices of survivors in their thinking and planning. They also take forward the needs of survivors to policy makers and systems when survivors are not safe or not able to do so themselves.

• Many professionals and academics now consulted as the primary experts on violence against women were trained or taught by frontline grassroots women’s advocates, or built their knowledge on the study of survivors and their children.  While hard-pressed and overworked frontline advocates continue their daily work, unsung and underpaid, professional experts and consultants have the time to record their ‘learnings’ and receive fees for passing on (by presentation and publication) the knowledge they have gained from women and their allies in the women’s movement. The accountable ones give credit where credit is due.

• Independent grassroots groups of women’s advocates and survivors can speak without needing ‘permission’ from larger systems or powers. Survivors and women’s advocates speak out on social justice for women when no one else will!

Some facts:

• The first shelter specifically for women experiencing violence and the first rape crisis centre were opened in 1973 and 1974 in Toronto.  There are now 100 women’s shelters and 34 rape crisis centres in Ontario as a result of women’s activism.

• The first French language shelter opened in 1976.  The first French language rape crisis centres were funded in 1991.

• In 1977, the Ontario Coalition of Rape Crisis Centres was formed and there were 12 centres in Ontario. In the same year, 10 women’s shelters (or groups hoping to start a shelter) gathered to begin the Ontario Association of Interval and Transition Houses (OAITH).

• In 1986, the Ontario Association of Women’s Centres formed, but today it has no ongoing funding or base or operations.

• Action ontarienne contre la violence faites aux femmes (AOcVF), a coalition of French language women’s anti-violence services, was formed in 1988.

• The Ontario Native Women’s Association (ONWA) was founded in 1972.  ONWA is “a provincial organization representing Aboriginal women and their families on matters that affect the political, social, education, economic, and justice issues of their daily lives. ONWA is affiliated with the Native Women's Association of Canada (NWAC), and represents Native Women in the province of Ontario, regardless of status or locality.”

• The Disabled Women’s Network (Ontario), a provincial organization of women with disAbilities and their allies, was formed in 1992. They view issues, including the issue of violence against women, from a feminist, cross disAbility perspective and have operated without funding since 1999.

• The Ontario Association of Women’s Centres was formed in 1986.  Ontario government funding cuts and restricted funding mandates have seriously affected the Association, but it has recently begun again to organize collectively.

More resources:

Action ontarienne contre la violence faite aux femmes (AOvCF)

DisAbled Women’s Network Ontario (DAWN)

Ontario Association of Interval and Transition Houses(OAITH)

Ontario Coalition of Rape Crisis Centres (OCRCC)

Ontario Association of Women’s Centres (OAWC)

Ontario Native Women’s Association (ONWA)