Cracks in the armour by Shanna Shepard

International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women

There is a day each year, November 25th, when governments tweet slogans, NGOs publish earnest posters, and the world rehearses its condemnation of violence against women. The International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women has become a ritual of recognition, a solemn nod to a crisis so vast and so persistent that it almost resists comprehension. Yet this year, that ritual feels different. Heavier. Fraught. Because the backdrop against which it unfolds is not merely the familiar landscape of gender-based violence but a political era tilting unmistakably toward the far-right, where the very notion of women’s rights has become a battleground.

It is no coincidence that, as extremist politics surge globally, domestic murders, often minimized as "family tragedies" rather than what they are: preventable killings, are rising with grim consistency. The data and headlines do not whisper; they shout. Women killed by partners. Women killed by former partners. Women killed because someone decided their autonomy was an insult. Violence against women is the longest-running pandemic on record, and no vaccine has ever been developed because its root cause is not biological. It is ideological.

Far-right politics is not solely responsible for the phenomenon, but it has certainly become its accelerant. In many countries, political leaders who champion “traditional family values” also champion judicial reforms that quietly, efficiently, and lethally weaken women’s protections. They cast gender equality as an elitist provocation, feminism as a corrupting foreign import, and the concept of systemic violence as a myth designed to emasculate men. The courtroom becomes a theatre where women must perform their pain convincingly enough to be believed, but not so convincingly that they appear hysterical. And the judges, mostly men, often untrained in gender-sensitive approaches, sometimes carrying unexamined biases, retain the authority to decide whose suffering counts.

We are told, in this era of political polarization, that everything must be balanced. But balance is a luxury not afforded to the dead. In many jurisdictions, courts have begun entertaining “parental alienation” claims more readily than testimony of abuse, and such rulings disproportionately place women and their children back into the custody or proximity of their abusers. The message is unmistakable: the system doesn’t merely disbelieve women; it disciplines them for speaking.

If this sounds dramatic, it is because the situation is dramatic. What is happening is a rollback, subtle in its bureaucratic language, blatant in its consequences, of hard-earned rights and protections. And the far-right does not hide the blueprint. Its political vision hinges on the restoration of a patriarchal order: man as provider, woman as dependent. Man as authority, woman as subordinate. In such an ideological structure, domestic violence becomes not only invisible; it becomes predictable.

What makes this moment especially perilous is not just the rise of extremist leaders but the normalization of their rhetoric. Misogyny has rebranded itself as a form of cultural preservation. Online, it flourishes with unchecked ferocity. Influencers with millions of followers preach a gospel of male entitlement, repackaged as self-improvement philosophy. Young men, disillusioned and digitally isolated, find community in anger. And when anger becomes identity, violence becomes expression.

Meanwhile, women remain told by institutions, by politicians, by judges to report violence “through the proper channels.” But these channels are clogged, cracked, or designed to loop women back into harm. When a woman gathers the courage to report abuse, she often enters a labyrinth where her credibility is interrogated more thoroughly than the violence itself. She finds herself having to convince strangers that her fear is valid, that her bruises are not metaphors, that her partner’s volatility is not simply “a private matter.” She may be asked why she stayed, why she left, why she didn’t record the abuse, why she did. It is a procedural ritual that rewards silence far more than it rewards truth.

This is the hypocrisy at the heart of our current moment: we commemorate a day dedicated to eliminating violence against women while simultaneously inhabiting political landscapes that treat such violence as an inevitable by-product of social tradition. We cannot both celebrate women’s resilience and elect leaders who legislate their vulnerability. We cannot claim to protect women while permitting courts to interpret their trauma through prisms of suspicion. And we cannot praise “family values” while ignoring the fact that, for countless women, the family home is the most dangerous place they will ever enter.

The true purpose of this international day should not be to mourn yearly statistics. It should be to confront the ideologies that uphold them. To examine which political movements benefit from keeping women quiet, frightened, and dependent. To acknowledge that violence is not merely an individual act but a structural one: a consequence of narratives that devalue women, institutions that fail them and political movements that exploit them.

The far-right does not ascend because it promises safety; it ascends because it promises certainty. And in that promise lies a dangerous question: certainty for whom? Certainly not for the women whose names appear in grim annual tallies.

On this day, this symbolic day, we owe more than remembrance. We owe clarity. Violence against women does not exist in a vacuum; it flourishes where inequality is policy, where misogyny is political strategy, where the courts are more concerned with reputation than justice. Until we confront that, November 25th will remain not a day of elimination but a day of repetition.