All over the world, there are women and girls currently struggling with violence, while others fear that violence is in their future. Both abuse and fear of abuse can have a silencing effect. If you have experienced violence and found a way to cope or make it stop, share what you know and support others to end the silencing impact of violence.
Today marks International Women Human Rights Defenders' (WHRD) Day. Human rights defenders face frequent violence, which tends to escalate if they are LGBTQI and/or women because of the multiple discriminations that they already face. WHRDs fight to defend our human rights, but they need our solidarity and support.
Today we share with you a folk story. Folklores and fairytales are the earliest form of education, embodying collective wisdom and memory of a community through each retelling. It is a form of living history that allows the audience and storyteller to reinterpret and critically reflect about meanings and power in this world, and our places in them.
How many passwords do you have? How many times do you get asked for a password as you use different spaces on the internet? Keep your information safe. Secure your passwords!
How many passwords do you have? How many times do you get asked for a password as you use different spaces on the internet - from email to social networking and all those cool tools you've signed up for that are internet-based? Hopefully you get asked A LOT. If not, it's probably because your browser already knows your password – and so would anyone else using your computer.
How can we make our online experience a safer one? Share what you know!
There are increasing reports of women and girls who are subjected to harassment and cyberstalking through the use of technology. Harassment and cyberstalking can take many forms. For example, receiving repeated harassing and threatening messages online and through SMS. Or the harasser pretending to be the victim, and posting sexualised messages on websites, forums or to her contact list. Sometimes this is accompanied by her real name, phone number and sometimes even home address, moving the harassment from online to the material world.
Exercise our right to protest! Wear your feminist stance against violence against women!
Sometimes wearing a T-shirt with a political message can speak volumes. During the Apartheid regime in South Africa, strict censorship was enforced to include not just books and films, but also badges and T-shirts that contained symbols and messages viewed as threatening to the ruling power at the time. Activists used to wear political T-shirts hidden underneath plain shirts and find opportune moments to flash their political T-shirts to passing cars of public officials' before melting into the crowd.
What does it take to end violence against women? Sometimes it takes a large action: ratifying a convention, making a change in law, committing through policy and more. Most of the time, it takes small gestures: in everyday actions, everyday words, everyday interactions with the women and men around us, and within ourselves. And sometimes, it might take just that one unlikely, but great and timely idea to start changing things. Join in the global brainstorm. What's your idea for ending violence against women?
What does it take to end violence against women?
Sometimes it takes a large action: ratifying a convention, doing large-scale documentation and research, making a change in law, committing through policy and budgetary allocations, organising a huge protest and rally, supporting more gender-aware decision-makers in the media and more.
