Advocates rally to eliminate violence against women

Monday marked the start of 16 days of activism for local groups who are trying to eliminate violence against women across British Columbia and the world.

In 2023, there were 288 cases of intimate partner violence reported to police in B.C. Last year 187 women were killed – that is one woman every two days – across the nation, according to Women and Gender Equality Canada.

Advocates say that number has increased since the pandemic particularly due to a lack of affordable housing.

“We need to address this – awareness is okay, but we absolutely need action, and that’s why this day and the next 16 days are so important,” Angela Marie Macdougal, Director, Battered Women’s Support Services Association

The women’s organization is hosting a two-day conference in Vancouver to address violence against women and girls, with a focus on those in Indigenous communities.

“Half of the women that were killed in B.C. in 2024 were killed by their intimate partner, and that is appalling to us, so we need some big policy changes around housing,” Macdougal told The Leader Spirit. “A wide sweeping increase in housing subsidies for victims leaving transition housing so they can access housing in their community to manage the incredible unaffordability.”

Experts say that the issue will not be solved overnight and has to include men and boys.

“We’ve spent a lot of time teaching women and girls how to not get assaulted, and we haven’t spent any time teaching boys how to not assault,” Caithlin Scarpelli, Communication Director, DTES Women’s Centre, said at the conference.

She said that social media plays a role in giving young people a “skewed sense of reality.”

“I think it’s our schools, our parents, our aunties and uncles are encouraged to teach young boys about what it means to exist in a world where women are equal to them,” Scarpelli said.

This comes after the provincial government launched a review of how the legal system treats cases of sexual and intimate partner violence.

Statistics Canada says that from 2014 to 2022, intimate partner violence among adults aged 25 to 64 years increased by 32 per cent, and by 42 per cent among seniors aged 65 years and older. It also notes in 2022, there were 117,093 victims of police-reported intimate partner violence, a higher rate of which were women and girls.

B.C.’s attorney general, Niki Sharma, says that those numbers are a part of the reason for launching the review. The COVID-19 pandemic contributed to people’s reluctance to report sexual assault and violence, and she’d like that reluctance to shift.

British Columbia holds the highest provincial percentage of both men and women reporting being sexually assaulted since the age of 15. The most recent self-reported data provided by Statistics Canada shows that women were five times more likely than men to be victims of sexual assault.