The power of small acts to disrupt systemic gender-based violence: A reflection from KAIROS’ Executive Director
As we mark the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence, we do so at a time when systemic forces – political, economic, colonial and environmental – are converging in ways that intensify harm for women, girls, Two Spirit, trans, lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and gender-diverse people. Gender-based violence is not only interpersonal. It is embedded in the decisions governments make, the resources they withhold, the rights they roll back and the voices they silence.
This year’s KAIROS 16 Days theme, small acts of change and resistance, reminds us that transformation often begins quietly. It is a recognition of how change often begins in systems designed to suppress it. Small acts matter because they disrupt the daily functioning of systemic violence. They interrupt isolation, create openings for truth, expand safety and rebuild agency.
We see them in women peacebuilders in Colombia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Sudan and Palestine who create networks of protection, economic independence, climate resilience and trauma-informed healing in places where state structures have failed to keep them safe. We see them in migrant leaders organizing for status. In teachers and health workers who continue despite harassment. In families demanding justice. In community organizations, including KAIROS’ partners, who refuse to let political backtracking erase decades of progress.
This backtracking is undeniable in Canada. The Prime Minister’s remarks at the G20 Summit signalled a clear retreat from both a Feminist Foreign Policy and the Feminist International Assistance Policy (FIAP). This retreat is one example of how systemic violence functions. FIAP has recognized that gender-based violence is shaped by structural inequity, by conflict, displacement, climate breakdown, economic injustice and colonial legacies. Stepping away from this commitment dismantles supports for women human rights defenders and peacebuilders and reduces global investments in programs proven to reduce violence. When governments shift priorities, survivors feel the impact. When funding for equality weakens, the conditions that foster violence strengthen.
Gender-based violence persists not only because individuals cause harm, but because systems enable it.
Across this land, gender-based violence continues to take multiple forms. Indigenous communities confront the ongoing crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA+ people, where slow implementation of the Calls for Justice leaves families without answers and communities without the structural change they have long demanded. Lack of safe housing, chronic underfunding of shelters, inequitable health resources and disproportionate child apprehension deepen vulnerability and perpetuate colonial harm. These are not gaps; they are structures that undermine safety and perpetuate vulnerability.
Across Canada, we also see a rise in public harassment targeting women, racialized and Indigenous leaders and gender-diverse advocates. This gender-based violence is enacted through political discourse as violence that seeks to drive people out of public life and suppress democratic participation. Online hate campaigns, threats to school trustees and journalists and the targeting of migrant justice organizers form a continuum with other forms of violence. They work together to shrink civic space and silence those pushing for change.
Globally, similar patterns are accelerating restrictions on bodily autonomy, rollbacks of LGBTQIA+ rights, criminalization of women human rights defenders and the normalization of authoritarian governance. These movements feed one another. They cross borders. And they shape the political climate in which gender-based violence grows.
Systemic violence relies on the belief that nothing can change. That the structures are too large, the decisions too entrenched, the inequalities too deep. But every small act of resistance, every refusal to be silent, every community gathering, every demand for resources, every step toward peace, every insistence on dignity chips away at that foundation.
The 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence ask us to see gender-based violence not as a series of isolated events but as a system that must be confronted at every level. And we are reminded that while governments retreat, movements advance.
Small acts matter. Collective action matters more. And when movements rooted in justice and care come together across borders, cultures and generations transformation becomes possible.
This is our moment to choose that path.
By Tania Principe, Executive Director
