When women experience violence, services such as women’s shelters, helplines or rape crisis centres are often the first places they turn to for help. These are known as women’s specialist services. In this episode, we look at how and why women’s movements across Europe created them, and why general or generic services cannot replace them.
Drawing on WAVE’s study Agents of Change: Women’s Specialist Services and Their Feminist, Multi-Level Approach to Tackling Violence Against Women and Girls, we speak with the researchers behind it, Léa Dudouet, Elena Floriani and Marta Konrad. Together, we explore how women’s specialist services support survivors by putting their safety, choices and needs at the centre, taking into account the different realities women live in, and supporting them for as long as they need. We then turn to what is putting this work at risk today, and what women’s specialist services need from all of us to keep going.
Women’s specialist services are agents of social, cultural and political change. Explore their work in our study, Agents of Change, and join us in making sure they are listened to, protected and funded: https://wave-network.org/agents-of-change-study/
Listen to the podcast episode here!Credits:
Created and developed by Léa Dudouet, Elena Floriani, Marta Konrad and Beverly Mtui (WAVE Communications Coordinator)
Hosted, produced and edited by Beverly Mtui
