Who We Are:

Cross-sectoral Violence Against Women Strategy Group (CSVAWSG)

What is the CSVAWSG?

• CSVAWSG represents a wide variety of local and provincial women's groups who have come together to develop a response to the issue of violence against women, one that pursues the priorities for all the key sectors involved with the issue
  
  
• We aim to work towards social, political and economic justice for all women through broad social policy and systemic change.
  
  
• What that means is that we want to develop and present a comprehensive approach to addressing the issue of violence against women that understands the core causes and issues in all their complexity, levels and interaction.

Who makes up the CSVAWSG?

• Groups involved include - Ontario Women's Health Network, Immigrant Women's Service Organization - Ottawa based but has provincial and national influence, Ontario Federation of Labour, Ontario Coalition for Better Childcare, Action ontarienne contre la violence faite aux femmes, Housing and Anti-poverty groups, Sistering, Older Women's Network, Teacher's Federation, OAITH, OCRCC, regional shleters and sexual assault centres representing Durham, Hamilton, Thunder Bay, Toronto, AWHL, EWA - women with disabilities
  
  
• The 3 key areas where participant representation is most critical to this provincial group is: regional representation; Representation from all key sectors; and specific women's communities experiencing multiple barriers to inclusion, (i.e. immigrant women and women with disabilities).
  
  

Why Cross-Sectoral?

The best ways to realize a comprehensive strategy of this nature would be to bring all sectors together who are concerned with violence against women, and thus women's equality issues. They would collectively develop a long term approach that synthesizes the key priorities of all the relevant sectors, towards one consistent approach that addresses the core issues of violence against women.

What are the core issues of violence against women?

This cross sectoral approach understands that it is the cuts to housing supports, childcare, legal, health, disability and income supports, that have combined to decrease women's independence and increase women's vulnerability to violence in their homes, workplaces and on the streets.

Clearly research has demonstrated time and time again that women suffer the most from cuts to income security, housing supports, healthcare, immigrant services, disability supports and childcare.

We also know that women are now more economically insecure, unemployed and lacking the access to education and training that they need to afford housing, childcare or legal supports, to escape the violence in their lives.

So it is not just the more obvious cuts to anti-violence services and supports specifically that have led to an increase number of women being killed or violently abused by their male partners over the last decade. A strategy that understands the need to strengthen women's economic and social position in society is at the nucleus of the issue of violence against women, and thus demands a comprehensive cross sectoral approach.

A strategy that answers questions such as:

• How does the economic insecurity of women relate to this issue? What income supports need to be developed based on the real experiences of women's lives? What are women's housing needs? Employment needs? Etc..
  
  
• What social supports are of most priority to women's independence and are they developed in recognition of the barriers and real needs of women? Do these supports recognize how women's needs differ for certain women's communities who experience multiple barriers to accessing them?
  
  
• What are the best ways for women to organize and access the political system regarding this issue? How can we coordinate the bringing together of diverse women and provide forums where we really "hear" diverse experiences and needs, are able to communicate these needs in a unified and coordinated way, and gain access to the bureaucrats, policy makers, politicians, and public?

What are the means that CSVAWSG will use to implement this strategy?

• Advocating for policy reform and challenging policy and program trends provincially, with strategies and recommendations that represent the work and priorities of the key sectors most relevant to the issue of violence against women.
  
  
• Developing strategies that are informed by an analysis that understands and incorporates the specific needs and issues facing diverse women's communities and the diverse rural and urban regions of Ontario.
  
  
• Building a province-wide, cross-sectoral network, to information share, hear women's needs, build awareness and re-politicize the issue.
  
  
• Conducting concrete actions in the form of lobbying, the creation of position papers directed to the policymakers, and public education forums for coordinating and mobilizing women's groups.

What has CSVAWSG done so far?

• Cross sectoral women's groups came together in the Fall 2000 in reaction to a rash of murders against women by their male partners
  
  
• A document called Emergency Measures was developed by the group. This document presented a provincial strategy outlining specific policy and program reforms that were aimed at protecting women from violence. The Emergency Measures document asked policy makers to think more strategically beyond women's services.
  
  
• The central theme of CSVAWSG is that a provincial strategy needs to refocus VAW policy and funding/resources to this more wholistic, cross sectoral need for social and economic supports for women and women's services.
  
  
• It also emphasizes that the law and order response that has been pursued and supported by the Conservative provincial government at that time, does not work.
  
  
• The campaign of 2000, brought groups together to support and push for the recommendations outlined in the Emergency Measures document. A lobby was conducted launching the CSVAWSG campaign , and all parties signed on to the principles of the piece - all except the Conservative government in power.
  
  
• Due to the success of this campaign, the group became formalized in March.
  

Page last updated February 16, 2004

Website design courtesy of Barbara Anello