It’s the 25th November – the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, and the start of the 16 Days of Action against Gender Violence Campaign. And as I haven’t been posting much recently, and as I’m pretty much laid up at home at the moment following a hip arthroscopy last weekend, I’m going to be blogging throughout it again this year.

So without further ado, here’s my first post for day one of the 16 days, detailing 16 reasons (but there are so many more reasons than that!) why this campaign exists and why it’s still so important.

1. Because femicide. Between January and October this year at least 100 women have been killed through suspected male violence in the UK alone. Across the globe, across all countries and all cultures, women are the most frequent victims of intimate partner violence and they are often killed by their own family members.

2. Because rape and sexual violence are endemic. Research published in January showed that:

• Approximately 85,000 women are raped on average in England and Wales every year
• Over 400,000 women are sexually assaulted each year
• 1 in 5 women (aged 16 – 59) has experienced some form of sexual violence since the age of 16.

And yet just this month it was revealed that police forces in the UK are continuing to find ways to manipulate their figures on rape and other sexual offences, under-recording these crimes by as much as 25%,  in order to meet targets.