About this Newsletter and EWA...

From Battered Women’s Collective (1978) to Support Services for Assaulted Women (1979) to Education Wife Assault (1981) to a new name yet to be announced, we have struggled to accurately describe and stop violence against women.

In her book, Turning to One Another, Margaret Wheatley writes: “Many large scale change efforts, some of which have won the Nobel Peace prize, began with the simple but courageous act of friends talking to one another about their fears and dreams.”  

Such was the case in 1978 when Sally Cross formed the Battered Women’s Collective, based on feminist principles of mutual self-help, shared leadership, and future-directed community action. Sally’s dream was for a grassroots-generated organization with no ties to large institutions like Family Services Associations. Shared conversation about women’s lives and a dream led the collective to its official name, Support Services for Assaulted Women. After only one year, the organization was so inundated with calls from women in crisis that members decided to begin educating the staff of social-service agencies so that they could respond effectively to the needs of women who were being abused in their intimate relationships. Education Wife Assault was born into a conceptual framework that included principles such as: “it’s violence against women, not family violence”; “it’s a crime, not a sickness”; “it’s a community issue, not a private matter”; and “men beat their wives because they are permitted to.”

For over 25 years, BWC/SSAW/EWA has worked to inform and educate the community in all its diversity about violence against women, with a goal of decreasing and preventing the abuse of women and their children in all its manifestations. To mark this anniversary, EWA invited a few of the many women who have worked with us to share their thoughts about what has changed and what remains the same.

In 1978, the collective socio-political consciousness was dominated by beliefs like “he’s sick and it’s my job to take care of him,” “violence against women (VAW) is part of the culture of poverty and happens only to poor and working-class people,” and “she should be more attentive and understanding so he doesn’t get so frustrated with her.” In gender-neutral style, the reality was named ‘domestic violence’ and the most common response was to encourage reconciliation. “Go home, make him tea, go to bed, and make love,” were the instructions heard by many women in violent relationships.

Shirley Endicott Small, one of the founding mothers of EWA, recalls that “in 1980, funding was a major preoccupation …Volunteer organizations were willing to give money for physical resources such as an electric typewriter but not for the staff to use them, and government only gave ‘project’ funding.”

In many ways, we seem to have come full circle. Between the early 1980s and the mid ‘90s, gains were made in public awareness, legislation, and service delivery. We publicly spoke of violence against women and their children as: an issue of power and control rather than an argument gone wrong; a human-rights issue, a health issue, and a union issue; and a gender-based issue consistently linked with the oppression of racism, poverty, heterosexism, ableism, and elder abuse. We told abusers to stop blaming their victims and take responsibility for their actions, and we worked toward a more coordinated and effective response.

In 1995, we in Ontario realized just how successful we were becoming. Mike Harris’s newly elected conservative government intensified the backlash against the VAW movement by cutting funding for VAW services, including EWA’s core funding for violence-prevention work. Once again, we were competing with other agencies for short-term project funding with little or no money for overhead or staff salaries. The push for a return to gender-neutral language to describe gender-specific acts increased; and legislative reform, such as the proposed amendments to the Divorce Act, nullified many of the gains we had made. We were told to: depoliticize our language and our work because “no one will fund feminists or their agenda”; hire professionals with degrees instead of self-taught community activists; and use business models to prove long-term sustainability for work that seldom generates income. The VAW movement was making a difference and those committed to power and control reasserted their need to dominate.

Yet nearly a decade later, and over a quarter-century after we began, we continue to survive. With this newsletter, we celebrate the courage and strength of women who have lived through, and sometimes died in, abusive relationships. And we celebrate the work of organizations like Education Wife Assault. Our job is not finished but—despite setbacks and continued deaths of women and children—we dare to hope and continue to dream that equality and peace will be realized in our homes and in the world.

The struggle continues and so do we. Join us as we reflect, through these articles, on where we have been and where we still need to go if we are to end intimate violence against women and their children.

~ Marsha Sfeir

The Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario is delighted to announce a new partnership with Education Wife Assault. Beginning with this issue, ETFO is committed to supporting the publication of EWA’s newsletter for the next five years. EWA and ETFO will continue to look for ways to work together on issues of violence against women.

~ Emily Noble, President 

Many thanks to the ETFO for this commitment. Our thanks also to the Air Canada Employee’s Charitable Foundation and the JP Bickell Foundation for contributions that support this newsletter, and to the Ontario Federation of Labour for donating the printing for the hard-copy edition of this publication.

Staff and Board Changes at EWA

In April 2004, the Violence Prevention Affiliate (National Clearing House on Family Violence, Education Wife Assault, and the BC Institute Against Family Violence) was notified that they would no longer receive funding to continue the Canadian Health Network (CHN) project. As a result, EWA was forced to say goodbye to Jila Khodrang, the Information Science Specialist hired for the CHN contract. Jila began working at EWA in June 1999 as a part-time library cataloguer; thanks to her, our library now houses over 5000 catalogued resources related to violence against women and children. Jila had been the full-time staff person for CHN since May 2000. We will miss you, Jila. We are grateful for your generous spirit, commitment to ending violence against women and children, and friendship.

The energetic Jennifer Machado has resigned from the board; her years of contribution to the agency will be greatly missed. We welcome new board members Anita Dhawan and Enza Ronaldi. They bring tremendous experience from public education, anti-homophobia work, equity rights for women with disabilities and Deaf women, and passion for woman-abuse prevention.