Violence against women and girls remains an urgent collective crisis of our time

As the ​“men-in-crisis” narrative grows increasingly prominent in the public and media discourse, MenEngage Alliance warns that this focus must not eclipse the global crisis of violence against women and girls; and calls for a unified and transformative agenda for gender justice.

Today, on International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women and Girls—which marks the beginning of 16 Days of Activism to End Gender Based Violence—we recall that patriarchal violence is rooted in systemic gender and power inequalities and rigid, stereotypical notions of manhood.

16 Days of Activism is a global campaign that runs from the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women and Girls on 25 November through to Human Rights Day on 10 December each year.

This year’s #16DaysOfActivism comes at a moment of heightened public attention around ​‘men and masculinities’. In this context, we call for recognition of — and commitment to — a common agenda in which efforts to improve men’s well-being are explicitly aligned with and framed through a gender justice approach. Recognizing and acting on this is an indispensable foundation for positive change for all people.

The most recent global data on violence against women and girls is stark, reminding us that it is a human rights crisis that has seen little to no reduction in over two decades:

• An estimated 840 million women—nearly 1 in 3 globally — have experienced physical and/​​or sexual violence at least once in their lifetime.
• In the last 12 months alone, 316 million women (11% of those aged 15 and older) were subjected to physical or sexual violence by an intimate partner.
• Globally, around 50,000 women and girls were killed by their intimate partners or other family members in 2024, meaning an average of 137 lives every day.
• 24% of adolescent girls and young women—close to 19 million — have experienced physical and/​​or sexual intimate partner violence by the time they turn 20 years old.
• Transgender people over four times more likely than cisgender people to be victims of violent crime

With the majority of violence against women and girls being at the hands of men, these figures underscore that the issue is a persistent, systemic, and deliberate reality of societies globally. As a global alliance for calling men and boys in on gender equality, climate and social justice, we reaffirm our belief that this reality must urgently change.

We are witnessing a notable shift in public conversation, policy framings, and funding streams that consider and deal with gender-related issues among men and boys in silo from the work of gender transformation and equality. We call for a holistic approach that acknowledges — and seeks to transform — the root causes of gender based violence: the patriarchal norms, ideas, and systems that lead to negative outcomes for men and boys and underpin violence against women, girls, and people of diverse gender identities.

A shared stake in gender justice

As we note in our recent report, 10 Ways to Engage Men & Boys to Counter Backlash, we believe that men and boys have a shared stake in actively supporting a transformative vision of gender equality and the prevention and elimination of all forms of sexual and gender-based violence, across online and offline spectrum. As gendered beings, men and boys are uniquely positioned to denounce and challenge patriarchal norms, fully developing their capacities to reject violence and embrace care.

As we advocate in our 10 Policy Recommendations from lessons learned on effective transformative work with men and boys for sustainable gender equality, ​“the work to advance gender equality must aim to transform gender norms, stereotypes and patriarchal masculinities, and includes uprooting the underlying assumptions that shape harmful notions and expressions of manhood”.

The 16 Days period includes the commemoration of a misogynistic mass-murder of 14 young women at a university in Montréal, Canada in 1991. The White Ribbon campaign, which was borne out of the tragedy, calls on men and boys to pledge to never commit, excuse, or remain silent about violence against women.

This year’s International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women and Girls calls for an end to digital violence. We reaffirm our past collective call on the issue of technology-facilitated gender-based violence. Digital spaces are an integral part of the lives of billions of people around the world. Yet they often mirror and amplify the structural inequalities and violence of the offline world. From individualized online harassment to coordinated misogynistic campaigns, sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) in digital spaces is rooted in the same patriarchal norms that fuel offline harm.

As an alliance of 1000+ members across 90+ countries, we urge policymakers to urgently step up to support gender-transformative efforts to dismantle rigid and stereotypical gender norms and patriarchal power inequalities at the roots of all forms of gender based violence. We call on media professionals to go beyond the ​“men-in-crisis” narrative, and tell the whole story of a world that urgently needs to address the root causes of inequalities and gender based violence. And we call upon all men and boys to to step up to tackle the root causes of gender inequalities, and to dismantle structures that continue to make the world unfair and unequal.

In doing so, we can pave the way for a world that can tell a different story; one in which women, girls and people of all genders live free from violence, and where men are no longer seen as in crisis.

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Image credit: Izabela Markova