Nov 25: International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women
Confronting Gender-Based and Digital Violence in Alberta and Beyond
The International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, observed annually on November 25, to recognize and end the pervasive, systemic, and often invisible forms of violence faced by women and gender-diverse people. Established by the United Nations in 1999, the day marks the beginning of the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence, uniting movements across the world in the fight for justice, safety, and equity.
This year’s theme, “UNiTE to End Digital Violence against All Women and Girls”, is a critical recognition of how digital spaces have become increasingly unsafe. Technology-facilitated gender-based violence, such as cyberstalking, online harassment, non-consensual sharing of images, hate speech, and doxxing. What happens online is not separate from lived experience; it has real consequences for safety, health, and human rights.
In Alberta, Violence against women (VAW) is a crisis. From intimate partner violence and workplace harassment to the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, and Two-Spirit people, VAW is deeply rooted in systems of colonialism, patriarchy, and structural inequality.
While VAW affects people of all genders, women, particularly those living at the intersections of multiple forms of oppression, are disproportionately impacted. The consequences extend far beyond individual lives, affecting families, communities, and generations.
VAW, including its digital forms, is not inevitable. It is preventable. It is upheld by systems that normalize power imbalances, tolerate misogyny, and deny survivors access to justice and care. According to recent Canadian data, one in three women in Canada will experience a form of violence in her lifetime. Violence is not always physical. It can be emotional, economic, institutional, or cultural. It shows up in wage inequality, child apprehension systems, inaccessible shelters, and the criminalization of survivors. For many women, especially Indigenous women and migrant workers, the systems meant to offer protection are often the same systems that cause harm.
Digital platforms have become common spaces of harm. Survivors face targeted abuse that invades their homes, workplaces, and personal relationships. For many, digital violence is compounded by economic abuse, surveillance, and systemic failures in legal and support systems. Online spaces mirror and amplify offline inequalities.
Ending violence in all its forms requires structural change across laws, workplaces, healthcare systems, education, and media. Public awareness is not enough without the political will and sustained investment needed to change how we prevent harm and support healing.
The Role and Responsibility of Social Workers
Social workers are on the front lines of gender-based violence prevention and response. They provide crisis support, safety planning, advocacy, and long-term healing in shelters, hospitals, schools, legal systems, and community programs. They also witness how digital violence impacts mental health, housing, employment, parenting, and access to safety. Their work is grounded in a commitment to dignity, equity, and self-determination, and often involves navigating systems that are themselves sources of harm.
Social workers understand that ending violence requires more than supporting survivors; it requires transforming the systems that create vulnerability in the first place. This means addressing the social determinants of violence, including poverty, housing insecurity, racism, colonialism, and gender inequality. It also means understanding the ways technology can harm, and advocating for survivor protections, digital literacy.
Yet, social workers are often left to navigate these complex challenges with inadequate funding, limited training, and systemic barriers. There is a pressing need for trauma-informed, culturally grounded, and digitally aware responses to the growing landscape of violence.
There is an urgent need to resource this work adequately, ensure trauma-informed training across sectors, and recognize social workers as key contributors to violence prevention and systemic advocacy.
Toward Safety Through Anti-Oppressive Practice
Addressing gender-based violence through an anti-oppressive lens involves challenging the norms and policies that maintain gendered harm. It means confronting how systems; legal, social, health, and economic, often protect perpetrators while failing survivors. This includes shifting away from carceral models of justice that disproportionately criminalize Indigenous and racialized women, and moving toward community-based solutions rooted in healing, autonomy, and care.
To move toward a future free from violence, we must:
Fund Indigenous- and community-led shelters, healing lodges, and transitional housing.
Implement trauma-informed and culturally grounded training across all service sectors.
Hold institutions accountable for the safety and rights of survivors.
End the criminalization of survival, particularly among Indigenous and racialized women.
Ensure access to justice and protection for women targeted by digital abuse.
Centre healing, relational safety, and cultural resurgence in all prevention efforts.
The fight against digital violence is inseparable from the broader movement to end gender-based violence. It requires collaboration across sectors and a commitment to justice that reflects the complexities of women’s lives. This work must not only include survivors but be led by them. Lived experience and community knowledge must shape policy, practice, and service design.
A Call to Collective Action
The International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women is not only a day of mourning. It calls on governments, institutions, communities, and individuals to confront violence in all its forms and commit to building a future where safety is not a privilege, but a right.
From schools and shelters to boardrooms and legislatures, the work of ending gender-based violence must be everyone’s responsibility. We owe it to survivors, not only to believe them, but to build the systems that will never betray them.
Let us move forward with the conviction that change is possible, and that every act of resistance, every policy reformed, and every survivor heard brings us closer to a world free from violence.
Resources
Support services for those affected by gender‑based violence – Government of Canada
Find family violence resources and services in your area – Government of Canada
Ending Violence Association of Canada – Resources on GBV in Canada
Support and resources to end gender‑based violence – Government of Alberta
Alberta Primary Prevention Playbook – Prevent Domestic Violence Society