RYV e-zine August 2025

August 2025 I Issue 13

RAISE YOUR VOICE Against Sexual Harassment

IN THIS ISSUE P1 Introduction P2 Ending Violence Against Women And Girls Shared Learning Event Dr Jackson Katz Beam Creative Network P3 Racism, Islamophobia and Violence Against Women and Girls.

P4 Violence Against Disabled Women and Girls P5 Workshop Availability P6 Raise Your Voice Out and About P7 No More Box-Ticking: The Case for Ambitious, Inclusive Co-Design P8 Get in Touch

raiseyourvoice.community RaiseyourVoice RaiseURVoiceNI RaiseyourvoiceNI raiseyourvoiceni.bsky.social /Company/raise-your-voice-ni contact@raiseyourvoice.community

Ending Violence Against ALL Women and Girls In this issue we hear from experts on the particular needs of those experiencing violence against women and girls from different communities and backgrounds.

The Ending Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy was developed by co-design, aiming to ensure the diverse needs and experiences of all women and girls would be included. Elaine Crory (P7) writes on about how valuable this model is, and how it should be the standard for future policy development.

We need to take into account the many different ways violence against women and girls can impact people, and the various barriers to accessing support faced. In this issue we’ve highlighted some particular issues for disabled women and girls (P4).

Coumilah Manjoo (P3) shares her insight into racism, islamophobia and violence against women and girls.

We hope these articles provide some information and spark conversations on how we can begin to end violence against all women and girls, after all community safety begins with ending sexual harassment and violence.

Throughout the issue you’ll find plenty of updates on what the Raise Your Voice team has been up to from work shops and stalls, to attending events, and working in partnership.

For more discussion about how we can all take action, host a Raise your Voice workshop or information stall, you can read more about what we’ve been up (p6) and find information on how to get in touch (P8) in the following pages.

Ending Violence Against Women And Girls Shared Learning Event Raise Your Voice and our lead partner WRDA caught up with the other Regional Change Fund Organisations and representatives from Councils at a Shared Learning event in Mossley Mill.

Together we reflected on the first few months of the Ending Violence Against Women and Girls programme and heard about future work. There is so much planned in the next months within and across all Councils.

Dr Jackson Katz at the ICTU Biennial Delegate Conference Some of the Raise Your Voice Team (pictured here with Jackson Katz and Jane McCarthy EVAWG Directorate) attend a key note speech and fringe event with Dr Jackson Katz. He explored how trade union leaders can model behaviour and take action to challenge gender inequality and end cultures which facilitate men’s violence against women and girls.

We use Dr Katz’s work to inform our Bystander Intervention workshop and this masterclass let us know we are on the right track!

Beam Creative Network Train the Trainer As well as our work under the Regional Change Fund we are pleased to support other projects under the Local Change Fund of the Ending Violence Against Women and Girls Strategy.

We trained the team at Beam Creatives who will be delivering the R.I.S.E. programme to postprimary schools across Northern Ireland. This programme will raise awareness around EVAWG and will promote the importance of healthy relationships among young people.

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Racism, Islamophobia and Violence Against Women and Girls.

By Coumilah Manjoo Society portrays girls as nurturing, caring, innocent and naïve, and that’s how the initial formative years are for some. And yet, there are many spaces where girls are exposed to the most atrocious crimes. As a girl, I saw my neighbour expose himself in public, I told no one, this indecent exposure remained unaddressed. As a teenager, a stranger put his hands on my thigh whilst I was in school uniform on the bus, I told no one. As a woman, I have been exposed to various forms of violence, for years I told no one, because society had conditioned me to believe that I was not to tell anyone. That my whole being was centred around, being caring, nurturing, motherly and above all else to maintain honour. But whose honour?

Where is the honour in violence perpetrated against women. It took years of healing and exposures to come to the realisation that I didn’t cause these actions against me, no girl or women ever do.

I always thought being in the West, a developing country where women are constantly fighting for their rights, would finally be my salvation. But it wasn’t, the laws are never enough to protect the women and girls.

Every girl of colour I have met in Northern Ireland leaving college or university now tell me the same thing “I can’t wait to leave Northern Ireland”. A place where we call home, but can never be accepted despite it all. Imagine living in a place you call home, only to find you aren't welcomed. This is the grim reality facing many women and girls from minority backgrounds in Northern Ireland today. Nurses and healthcare care workers, women dedicating their lives to helping others are among those who have been assaulted simply for existing. These racist attacks are driving them to consider leaving, abandoning the very communities they’ve been part of and are actively contributing to. But the problem goes deeper. Northern Ireland is failing women. It lags behind the rest of the UK in protecting us from violence.

Every woman has the right to feel safe, to be safe, yet the gaps in legislation leave many unprotected and unheard. For minority women this is compounded by the institutional failures to address Racism, Islamophobia and prejudice. We cannot ignore this any longer. We owe it to these women, to all women, to demand change—now.

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Violence Against Disabled Women and Girls

Every July, the UK honours the achievements and lived experiences of Disabled People.

Colours on the Disability Pride Flag represent different disabilities that affect people in different ways:Red - Physical disabilities Gold - Neurodivergence like autism and ADHD White - Invisible and undiagnosed disabilities Blue - Mental illnesses Green - Sensory disabilities Disabled women are twice as likely to experience domestic abuse than non-disabled women, and Disabled People are more likely to experience abuse from an adult family member compared to non-disabled people (14% vs 6%). People with learning disabilities are three times more likely to experience domestic abuse.

Disabled women are also twice as likely to experience sexual assault and rape.

Disabled people encounter differing dynamics of domestic abuse, which may include more severe coercion, control or abuse from carers.

Abuse can also happen when someone withholds, destroys or manipulates :medical equipment access to communication medication personal care meals transportation Barriers to Disclosure and seeking support:Disabled victims may already be socially isolated because of their disability. They may also find it harder to disclose abuse because they have no opportunity to see health or social care professionals without their abuser being present.

For a victim-survivor with disabilities, the concerns about moving out of their homes to flee abuse come with additional and vital concerns about accessibility of a new home or refuge.

Their house may have been specially adapted for them. Care packages have been organised and they may be worried that they will lose their current level of independence if they are forced to move elsewhere.

They may be reluctant to report domestic abuse from a partner whose care they depend on, and which they believe enables them to stay out of institutional care.

Disabled People are more vulnerable to domestic abuse and often face additional barriers to accessing support.

D i s ab l e d wom en are twi c e a s l i k e l y to ex p er i en c e dom e s t i c ab u s e a s n on - di s ab l e d wom en .

Reducing the Risk - Disabilities and DA

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Workshop Availability We host a range of interactive workshops (delivered online or in-person) around Northern Ireland that explore sexual harassment and sexual violence.

Topics include:Sexual harassment and violence Consent Victim blaming Digital/online abuse Allyship Bystander interventions Misogyny Raise Your Voice are offering our workshops to community groups, workplaces, sports teams and more, fully funded, all over Northern Ireland.

Find out more and book your workshop by emailing contact@raiseyourvoice.community or visit www.raiseyourvoice.community/host-a-workshop

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Raise Your Voice - Out and About We attended the Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon Borough Council event ‘Ending Violence against Women And Girls - It’s in Your Hands’ Conference’. We Heard from a number of speakers on coercive control, safeguarding, and how we all can spot the signs - as well as bumping into Donna Traynor!

Raise Your Voice hosted a stall at UNISON NI and Causeway Pride Health and Wellbeing day in Portrush Town Hall. We spoke to many people about our work and shared our postcards on key issues like Bystander Intervention, Victim Blaming, and Image Based Sexual Abuse.

As Pride events begin across the region we delivered Allyship and Bystander Intervention to the Omagh Pride Committee along with other organisations from the area. Sexual Harassment and Violence can happen to anyone regardless of gender identity or sexual orientation.

Waterside Women’s Centre hosted Raise Your Voice Workshops over consecutive weeks, allowing for lots of conversation and exploration of the issues. Our workshops can be delivered as stand alone sessions or a longer programme.

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No More Box-Ticking: The Case for Ambitious, Inclusive Co-Design

By Elaine Crory, Women’s Sector Lobbyist

Co-design has come under a lot of scrutiny in recent months and years, particularly with regards to the social inclusion strategies on which work began in 2020, but which have yet to be delivered.

Why bother with co-design in the first place? Certainly, some elected representatives have said that it is unnecessary and helpful. On the other hand, good strategy, especially one that is vital and long overdue, is best when co-designed with the experts working in the field and the people directly impacted or with lived experience. The strategies produced are supposed to lead to concerted actions, across Government and society, to improve things in whatever area the strategy focuses on, and the people best placed to identify those actions are the people with expertise.

Many people working within the Community and Voluntary sector have taken part in several co-design processes and found similar themes and similar concerns in how they are approached and enacted – or indeed if they ever are enacted. In particular, there is a tendency towards unnecessarily self-limiting approaches to what can be discussed, and a push towards agreeing on recommended actions that are already planned by the Department running the process, often leaving participants feeling uncomfortable standing over a final product that lacks any serious ambition to make the most crucial changes needed.

When done well, however, co-design can be really transformative. Good co-design takes into account a wide range of professional experience and is inclusive of those with lived experience. It is also essential that it be intersectional; not only in terms of those included in the process, but by encouraging participants to look at all suggested actions and all the issues considered through an intersectional lens, so that it can better reflect the ways that any actions or inactions will impact diverse communities and people in all their nuance. The principle is simple: nobody knows better what will help and what will hinder marginalised groups than those groups themselves.

The process to co-design the Ending Violence Against Women and Girls Strategic Framework managed to achieve this, and should be the model for future co-design processes in Northern Ireland.

One reason that it was so remarkable is that it was limitless in ambition. Participants were constantly encouraged not to feel limited by the cost of proposals, or by their perceived radicalism. The message was that we should set the bar high first, and then work to identify the actions that would help us meet that high bar.

With that said, we can build on the learning and continue to improve it. Ideally, participants would come from groups including community and lived experience groups that are properly funded to participate and to have the relevant expertise needed. At a time when the sector is squeezed for funding and for time, this means investment in these groups at grassroots level to enable them to build their capacity. Ideally, also, we can get to a place where Ministers and government as a whole see these processes not as a threat to their authority, but as an asset to be encouraged and enabled.

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Special thanks:

Women’s Resource and Development Agency is pleased to be one of the 8 organisations delivering on the NI Executive’s Regional Change Fund to End Violence Against Women and Girls, expanding our Raise Your Voice Project with partners RTA, WSN, and NIRWN. This publication is grant aided by Belfast City Council and TEO. The views expressed are not necessarily shared or endorsed by the Council. The Council does not accept any responsibility or liability for same.

The Executive Office (TEO) EVAWG Programme runs the Change Fund through Belfast City Council (BCC) which contributes to this publication; in doing so, TEO/EVAWG hold no responsibility for the content and are not necessarily endorsing all content used.

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RaiseyourVoice RaiseURVoiceNI RaiseyourvoiceNI raiseyourvoiceni.bsky.social /Company/raise-your-voice-ni contact@raiseyourvoice.community

Raise Your Voice is a collective led by Women's Resource and Development Agency with partners Reclaim the Agenda (who organise Reclaim the Night Belfast), Women's Support Network (who operate Rape Crisis NI) and NI Rural Women's Network. RYV is advised by the Anti-Sexual Harassment Forum which includes trade unions, LGBTQ+, feminist, youth, and community groups and organisations.