Free From Violence
By Felicia Davis Blakley, President & CEO of Chicago Foundation for Women
Since its founding, freedom from violence has been at the core of Chicago Foundation for Women’s work. Over the years, our understanding and focus on this issue have evolved, growing to include holistic approaches across sectors to address the root causes of gender-based violence and leadership development of survivors, in addition to funding organizations providing direct services.
Today, the issue remains at the forefront, with the World Health Organization calling violence against women a major public health problem and a violation of women’s human rights. Estimates indicate that about 1 in 3 women worldwide have been subjected to either physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence or non-partner sexual violence in their lifetime. The level of disregard for women, trans, and gender nonbinary individuals continues to astound me. Each day, the impacts of gender-based violence are felt around the world and in our communities. The fact is that these issues don’t impact just the individuals involved, but the lives of children, extended families, and entire communities.
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has also contributed to the increase in domestic violence incidents. During the first ten months of the pandemic, women lost nearly 1 million more jobs than men, most of which were Women of Color. The drastic loss of income generated increased stress, financial insecurity, and put more persons at risk for increased gender-based violence at home. After shelter-in-place orders were implemented, the National Commission on COVID-19 and Criminal Justice found that domestic violence incidents increased 8.1%. This compounded impact on women, especially Women of Color, is explored more deeply in our recent report Building an Equitable SHEcovery™: A Roadmap to Address COVID-19’s Impact on Women and Girls.
With this information weighing heavily on me, I was struck by the recent media frenzy related to Gabby Petito, a young white woman social media influencer who went missing. Her followers began to search for clues of her whereabouts across the country. The continuing media coverage highlighted the disparities in the reporting of missing white women in direct contrast to missing Women of Color. Petito’s boyfriend came to the surface as the main person of interest, and it appears another young woman has lost her life as a result of intimate partner violence. As I think about this tragic situation, I can’t help but contrast the coverage against the thousands of missing and murdered women across the country and the world, especially Indigenous and Women of Color. They haven’t had the benefit of having this same level of media outreach and public support.
There is an epidemic of violence against women, girls, transgender, and gender nonbinary people of color; many have experienced harm, gone missing, or been murdered across the United States and in the Chicago region. Sadly, this is not a new issue. In November 2018, the Urban Indian Health Institute released a report, ‘Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls,’ highlighting the difficulty in accessing data and the limited coverage and follow-up on missing and murdered Women of Color in the media. In the spring of 2019, multiple media outlets, including the Chicago Tribune and Block Club Chicago, published articles spotlighting communities’ demands for police and government response, including to conduct full investigations and assigning a Task Force to review cases of missing and murdered women from communities on the South and West Sides of Chicago. In December 2019, the New York Times published ‘In Indian Country, a Crisis of Missing Women,’ which focused on missing Native women and the aftercare once they are found.
Earlier this year, a group of Roosevelt University journalism students published the ‘Unforgotten: The Untold Stories of Murdered Chicago Women.’ The project highlights the lives of missing and murdered women, primarily Black women, across Chicago whose crimes remain unsolved and never made it to the major media headlines. As shared by the students’ professor, John W. Fountain, the project’s goal was “to humanize the women and discard any notion that their lifestyle or any choices or mistakes made them somehow deserve to be murdered.” What a powerful statement.
I had the opportunity to speak to one of the students working on this project and am hopeful that change will come with this project and the added scrutiny of the media’s handling of the cases related to missing women, especially women, trans, and gender nonbinary individuals of color. All deserve the same efforts to be found. Their families deserve closure and to know what happened to their loved ones. Members of our communities deserve to feel safe and live free from violence, no matter where they live or who they are.
There is perpetual invisibility of the lives of women and girls in our communities experiencing gender-based violence. I am proud that one of my first acts as President & CEO of CFW was to focus our spring 2020 grantmaking on exploring community solutions, interventions, and deeper interrogations to understand the foundational causes of this ongoing violence epidemic and support organizations like Affinity Community Services, Brave Space Alliance, Mujeres Latinas en Acción, and Kenwood Oakland Community Organization, who are working directly with those impacted in their communities.
We are dedicated to expanding women’s, girls’, trans’, and gender nonbinary individuals’ freedom from violence in all its forms, including family violence, intimate partner and community violence, child and elder abuse, dating violence, sexual assault, sexual harassment, stalking, sexual exploitation, and human trafficking. These forms of violence are interconnected and often share similar root causes. We believe this is of great importance and extend our voice to draw sustained attention and resources to this issue.
As a reflection, I leave you with a quote from Fannie Lou Hamer, civil and voting rights activist, “When I liberate others, I liberate myself.”
If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence or the threat of domestic violence, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline for help at 1–800–799-SAFE (7233), or go to www.thehotline.org for anonymous, confidential online chats, available in English and Spanish.
A version of this article was originally published as part of Chicago Foundation for Women’s “GoWomen” Monthly Newsletter which you can read here.
