Ending violence against women is one of NOW’s six core issues. NOW recognizes that violence against women is perpetuated through gender bias in the judicial system and systems of economic oppression and that we must address these deeply-seeded structural problems.
Urge the House of Representatives to Swiftly Pass VAWA BACKGROUND THE ISSUE: The Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act (VAWA or H.R. 1620) is urgently-needed legislation to protect abuse survivors and allocate funding for survivor services. VAWA strengthens the health care system’s response to domestic abuse and improve access to resources like housing for survivors while also expanding assistance to LGBTQIA+ individuals and communities of color. Beyond helping survivors, VAWA critically invests in prevention, ends impunity on tribal law enforcement officers, Read more …
WASHINGTON, D.C. — NOW salutes Representatives Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), and Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) for introducing the bipartisan Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2021(VAWA), which will fund critical programs that support survivors. VAWA’s authorization expired in 2018, but the scourge of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault, stalking, and other crime remains. According to the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, one Read more …
Watch this discussion. Speaker Bio’s The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic has been devastating to people around the world. The socioeconomic implications will be felt for many years to come. However, a more insidious side of the pandemic has been the recklessness of far-right extremists, including elected leaders, attempting to scapegoat the Asian Pacific Islander Read more …
There are few subjects more personal and urgent than the issue of violence against women. Ending violence against women and educating the public about resources for survivors is one of NOW’s core issues. I wrote recently in this column for PRISM, a national news outlet run by women of color, about my feelings as a Black mother of a Read more …
WASHINGTON, D.C.—As a national conversation around police brutality continued this year, activists brought attention to another issue impacting Black Americans and our nation as a whole — violence against the transgender community. In 2020 alone, at least 35 transgender and non-binary people have been killed, many of them Black and Latinx trans women. This figure has increased exponentially from 2019 and previous years. This week, NOW joins LGBTQIA+ rights activists and organizations around the country in observance of Transgender Awareness Read more …
Although October – Domestic Violence Awareness Month is coming to a close, it is still important to draw attention to the lesser known issue of dating abuse. Dating abuse falls into the large category of IPV, or interpersonal violence, which is addressed under NOW’s core issue of Ending Violence Against Women. As such, it requires Read more …
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Every minute, an average of 24 individuals in the United States are the victims of physical abuse, stalking, or sexual assault at the hands of their intimate partners, with 35.6 percent of women in the U.S. experiencing some form of domestic violence in their lifetime. This October NOW observes Domestic Violence Awareness Month as a means to advocate for survivors and mobilize towards a future that puts an end Read more …
WASHINGTON – One of the cruelest initiatives yet proposed by the Trump Administration threatens to send victims of violence applying for asylum in the U.S. back home to face even more violence or perhaps death. The National Organization for Women (NOW) and our allies in the domestic violence and sexual assault prevention communities have worked for over 20 years to Read more …
The June Medical Services v. Russo case involving Louisiana’s Act 620, which requires doctors performing abortions to have admission privileges at a state-sponsored hospital within 30 miles of the clinic is now before the Supreme Court, but in many important respects the verdict is already in. A wave of anti-abortion violence and harassment is growing, with threats against doctors, attacks on Read more …