On the 25th of November, women around the globe will take to the streets or the internet to manifest on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. This day was established in 1993 by the General Assembly of the United Nations.
In its declaration, article 1 states that violence against women “means any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life”.
A lot of the time, when we talk about the term violence against women, we only think of physical, psychological, and sexual violence, but that is not the case, since there are several types of violence. According to a report on Violence against Women and Girls Handbook for journalists published in 2019 by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), these are also actions of violence against women:
- Cyberbullying and online harassment of women include several:
Trolling: posting comments to try to provoke controversy
• Doxxing: online researching and publishing of private information about a person
to cause them harm
• Obsessive online stalking (cyberstalking), intrusive and threatening harassment
of a person
• Cyber-control in relationships
• Revenge porn: non-consensual dissemination of intimate images, online public
sharing of sexually explicit content without the consent of the person concerned,
often for revenge.
- Early marriages or child marriages
- Female genital mutilation/cutting
- Forced marriages
- Gender-specific foeticide and infanticide
- Sexual harassment, sexual assault and rape
- So-called ‘honour’ crimes
- Trafficking in persons and smuggling of migrant women
- Violence by an intimate partner or ex-partner and murder (femicide).
Is important to remember that all these actions of violence are based on a patriarchal structure, which is defined by the power between women and men globally.
In Finland, +Collective, which is a group of individuals of different backgrounds, networks, and organisations, has a shared goal to support human rights and equality, promoting social change and inclusion. On the 25h of November, it launched the campaign “We Want We Do”. The 6-week campaign program includes workshops, webinars, podcasts, and exhibitions; however, the main events will take place at Central Library Oodi and in Kansalaistori, Helsinki, from November 17 to 29, 2020.
One of the webinars that will be discussed is Online violence, which was mentioned above. This way of violence is common today since the use of social media platforms is part of the daily routine. You are welcome to join us on 20.11 at 16:30-18:00. For more information, click here.
In the campaign We Want We Do transgender women voice is hear about the violence they experience. In an interview with Susanna Viljanmaa from Transfemininity, she manifested, “the violence that most transgender people experience is verbal. For example, the year I came out, I got multiple instances of harassment on the street every day. Also, transgender immigrants face their own problems in Finland; sometimes their diagnoses from other countries aren’t respected, or they might not need any diagnosis to get hormone replacement, thus their treatment ceases”.
The artistic itinerant installation of Red Shoes, created by the Mexican artist Elina Chauvet, which denounces the high percentage of violence against women and femicides during the 90s in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, is one of the events that will take place on November 25. Is the first time that this installation will be presented in Finland. During an interview for the campaign, she said, “the death of my sister by her husband (femicide) was the cause of my art. I was really excited when I got an email requesting that my art be presented in Helsinki, it will be at the very north of the planet”.
Finland is not an exception to violence against women. According to data from the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL) in 2019, there was an increase of 6% in relation to 2018 in the number of people who sought help from shelters. 91% of people out of 5,354 who sought services were women. In addition, statistics from the Institute of Criminology and Legal Policy (Krimo) state that in 2019, 15 women were murdered in Finland.
Women’s violence is a public issue, so please join us, act, and be part of this chain of change. We Want, and We Can Do it.
*This article was published in the We Encourage blog.
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