The War on Women: The State of Domestic Violence Today

There is a war on women occurring in North America at this very moment. If you want to expand the lens one can argue there is a state of war on women across the world. The pandemic intensified an already prevalent issue and statistics on domestic violence are only getting worse, after decades of slowly getting better. The only way out? Awareness, dignity and kinship among communities.

A statistical profile taken in Canada in 2019 revealed:

"There were approximately 400,000 victims of police-reported violent crime in Canada in 2019. Of these, one-quarter (26%, or more than 100,000 people) were victimized by a family member—that is, a spouse, parent, child, sibling or extended family member perpetrated the violence.  Women and girls accounted for two-thirds (67%) of all victims of family violence in 2019. Women and girls also accounted for over half of child and youth (57%) and senior (58%) victims of family violence, and almost four-fifths of all victims of intimate partner violence (79%)."

These numbers are staggering when it's considered women and girls account for over half of the victims of family violence, and this was before the COVID-19 lockdown forced abusee's to live twenty-four hours a day with an abuser. Moreover, the children involved in abusive relationships also found themselves under lockdown with abusers.

The same study noted above goes on to reveal that 71% of reported incidents are violent forms of assault. These studies do not include indigenous victims or unreported incidents. Therefore one can assume statistics are actually much, much worse. And In fact they are - six times the amount of indigenous women are killed in Canada yearly compared to non-indigenous women.

Read more...