Safety

Safety and women’s health are inextricably linked.

About Safety

Safety and women’s health are inextricably linked. This link intersects with all other Priority Areas for Collaboration identified through the consultation process and is an essential area for community capacity building work.

Women conceptualized safety as:

  • Freedom from interpersonal physical, sexual, mental, emotional and financial violence
  • Freedom from systemic and structural violence, such as anti-Black, Brown, Asian and Indigenous racism, homelessness, poverty, gender-based discrimination, homophobia, and more
  • Essential to promoting health and well-being, preventing HIV, and ensuring women have helpful linkages to care

Community based responses included:

  • Gathering with a common purpose of sharing and supporting one another
  • Having a safe place to sleep and take some respite,
  • Spaces to connect with people linked by shared identities, experiences of racism and discrimination, or immigration, violence and/or poverty
  • Increased knowledge about the impacts of gender-based violence and strategies to provide support and advocacy in culturally thoughtful and anti-racist ways
  • Trauma-informed care, and strategies to support and foster women’s autonomy and self-determination
whai-safety-institutional-violence-icon
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52% of women who participated in 1:1 interviews during WHAI’s community consultations indicated that they have experienced violence, including institutional violence, in the past year (n=101).1
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41% of all women who participated in WHAI’s community consultation process had experienced violence in their lifetime (n=501).2

What is WHAI doing?

Moving this work forward, WHAI’s community capacity building work includes:

  • Raising awareness about women’s layered realities of violence and how these intersect with HIV risk and health outcomes through a range of community development initiatives, training, and resource sharing
  • Collaborating with community organizations and networks to facilitate spaces for women from WHAI’s priority populations to come together and develop community-based responses related to safety, including safety as related to accessing HIV care and prevention
  • Creating spaces for learning about systemic and interpersonal violence, including anti-Black and Indigenous racism, and supporting women where appropriate, to share their knowledge with community partners
  • Providing knowledge translation and capacity building for community partners (centring women’s voices) to learn skills and strategies for fostering physically, emotionally, spiritually, culturally and mentally safe places and peer-led strategies for women to connect and access safe HIV care and support

Featured Resources From WHAI

Report, WHAI Original Resource
Report, WHAI Original Resource

A Collaborative Evaluation of the Women and HIV/AIDS Initiative’s Anti-Black Racism Work

Mar 21, 2023
Bouquet of lavender in a metal bucket with text: "Women, HIV & Stigma: A Toolkit for Creating Welcoming Spaces.
Toolkit/Guide, WHAI Original Resource
Toolkit/Guide, WHAI Original Resource

Women, HIV & Stigma: A Toolkit for Creating Welcoming Spaces

May 9, 2024
Poster, WHAI Original Resource
Poster, WHAI Original Resource

Creating Welcoming Spaces Poster

May 9, 2024
Logo of the Canadian Mental Health Association with a green and blue icon and the text "Mental health for all.
Report
Report

Access to and Safety for Women at Supervised Consumption Services

May 6, 2021
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