Why Women’s Aid? It should be easy to explain, but somehow it’s not.
It was an easy choice – absolutely – and there’s no shortage of reasons. But maybe that’s the thing. There are so many reasons, so where do you even start? How do you ever do it justice?
This isn’t personal for me. I’m not a victim of domestic abuse and I’ve somehow been extremely fortunate with the men I have known and been close to. I can’t point to one event or experience and say: This is why.
I could say, of course, that 90% of women killed in Ireland are killed by a man they know, or that Women’s Aid recorded over 40,000 cases of domestic abuse last year – but when pointing to one clear and simple fact like that to illustrate the injustice that Women’s Aid’s work combats, I can’t help but immediately feel that I’m failing to paint the full picture.
It’s not one statistic, and it’s not one story – it’s a structural, systemic, relentless oppression that’s so deeply ingrained in so much of society that we’ve almost become blind to it. And one fact presented alone could easily be mistaken as anecdotal.
For me to attempt to explain why there was never really any question about which charity I would fundraise for, I need to paint a fuller picture.
I need to tell you to go watch the Netflix drama series Maid, which is based on a woman’s real-life experience of domestic abuse and a society that let her down – a series that made me cry with rage so much, on multiple occasions, that I was unable to talk.
I need to mention the experience of writing a blog post about the mainstream media framing of the murder of Clodagh Hawe and her sons by her husband and their father – a post that went viral and resulted in countless friends, acquaintances and strangers writing to me in recognition, thanking me for putting the spotlight on a reality they were all too familiar with (whereby I realised how many people I knew who were familiar with it, who had presumably been familiar with it for a very long time without my knowledge).
I need to tell you about subsequently being invited to speak at Women’s Aid’s launch of the Behind Closed Doors report and take part in the SAFE Ireland Summit, where powerful, knowledgeable speakers helped me begin to contextualise that inherent, low-level but constant exasperation I’ve always felt simmering away somewhere deep in my gut – the one that flares and burns with every new case, every mention of another injustice, every assault and every woman killed.
I need to tell you to look, any day at all, at any news source or social media platform, where there are reports upon reports upon reports of women being attacked, controlled, raped, killed by their partners.
Last week alone, you could read about the death of Olympic athlete Rebecca Cheptegei, whose partner doused her in petrol and set fire to her, and about Gisèle Pélicot, whose husband drugged her and invited other men to come to their house and rape her (more than 50 of them did; not one of the others reported a thing).
I’m fundraising for Women’s Aid because of the relentless, brutal, structural injustice that expresses itself not only in the statistics of male violence against women and the number of women who are killed by a partner or ex-partner, but in sexual assault, in rape used as a weapon of war, in children suffering at the hands of someone who should have been their safe space.
I’m doing it because it’s everywhere, in all classes and cultures; because no matter if we close the gender pay gap and representation quotas are filled and there’s universal, free childcare and well-paid parental leave, this painful injustice remains a fundamental, ever-present threat. And as I write that, I realise that maybe I was wrong; of course this is personal for me.
I’m doing this because frankly, I’ve been feeling quite powerless in my politics recently – and, honestly, what else can I do?
This is one thing I can do. It’s basic and maybe not a huge deal to some, but it’s putting my feet where my heart is, for the lack of a better term. I can get the runners on, put one foot in front of the other, then do it again, and again, and again. It’s a show of commitment, if nothing else. And when the tiredness kicks in, I think of those headlines and use the rage.
