International Women’s Day
Empowered voices: Women shaping law reform
Throughout Canada’s history, countless women have worked tirelessly to advance gender equality. In 1884, women in Ontario fought to enact the Married Women’s Property Act. This granted married women the same legal rights as men, including the ability to own property and enter legal agreements. The women’s suffrage movement led to women gaining the right to vote in political elections. In 1929, the Famous Five successfully petitioned to have women legally recognized as “persons” under the law. Still today, women continue to mobilize for the advancement of gender equality.
Law reform and advocacy is central to our work. Over 20 years ago, our organization was born as a community response to a tragedy resulting in the death of a child.
Since opening our doors to women in 2002, we’ve:
- Supported thousands of survivors navigate family court through support services and resources
- Trained thousands of service providers to improve their understanding of the intersections of intimate partner violence (IPV) and family law
- Developed resources for advocates supporting women leaving abuse
- Engaged in significant research to understand systemic responses to IPV
This work has uniquely positioned us to engage in law reform and advocacy. Our advocacy work is informed by the voices of the women we support and their experiences navigating the family law system.
A few examples of the advocacy work we have engaged in over the past few years include:
- Supporting Jennifer Kagan-Viater, the mother of Keira Kagan, to advocate in favour of Keira’s Law. Keira’s Law called for changes to the legislation that would require IPV to be included as a topic to be considered for judicial training. In our support, we testified before the Standing Committee on the Status of Women and submitted a discussion paper outlining the importance of having legal decision-makers who understand all aspects of IPV.
- Collaborating with the National Association of Women and the Law (NAWL) and many other gender-based violence organizations to advocate in favour of changes to the Children’s Law Reform Act and the Divorce Act that would better protect survivors in family court.
- Intervening at the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court of Canada in the case of Ahluwalia v. Ahluwalia in favour of the new tort of family violence to provide a more accessible and responsive legal remedy to survivors of IPV.
- Testifying at the Inquest into the deaths of Carol Culleton, Anastasia Kuzyk, and Nathalie Warmerdam about the history of IPV responses in Ontario. We’ve since engaged in ongoing advocacy for the implementation of all 86 of the jury’s recommendations for change.
- Advocating against the criminalization of coercive control to address IPV and instead urging the federal government to focus on building the infrastructure needed to support survivors of IPV to engage meaningfully with the criminal system before creating any new criminal offences.
We are committed to ongoing advocacy to improve the safety and experiences of women leaving abuse. To learn more about our past advocacy work, please see our advocacy page.
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