International Women’s Day is a wonderful time of celebration where we honour the strength, leadership, achievements and resilience of women around the world.

I cannot dismiss our need, though, to also allow International Women’s Day to call us to action regarding the confrontation of a painful reality – that violence and abuse against women remains widespread across the world. It often exists covertly in Western families, cultures and churches, and is deeply damaging, impacting not only individuals, but the generations.

To truly support healing and safety, we must understand the facts, acknowledge survivors’ experiences, and COLLECTIVELY respond with compassion and conviction that produces change. This is a societal problem – not an individual one and requires great paradigm and cultural shifts.

What are the Types of Violence Against Women?

Violence against women involves physical, emotional, psychological, financial, spiritual, and sexual abuse ~ often coexisting, creating a complex web that can be difficult to untangle or escape.

Many women have described their experiences of abuse as a slow erosion of their confidence and identity, especially when Coercive control plays a part.

What Is Coercive Control? Understanding Hidden Abuse

Not all abuse leaves bruises. One of the most damaging and least understood forms of abuse, especially in Western cultures, is Coercive control.

Coercive control is a subtle yet deeply damaging pattern of power and control behaviours in which one person systematically erodes another’s autonomy through manipulation, fear, and restriction rather than overt force.

Freedoms are increasingly limited and controlled, realities are distorted, and the person’s sense of self is undermined. This inflicts serious psychological harm that can be difficult to recognise from within the relational dynamics. It can include:

  • Restricting access to money, transport, or medical care
  • Monitoring phones, social media, or daily movements
  • Isolating a woman from friends, family, or faith communities
  • Discrediting or humiliating a partner in private and public
  • Gaslighting—making her doubt her own memory or reality of events
  • Threats, manipulation, intimidation, or constant criticism
  • Using children, scripture/religion, or threats to maintain control

Coercive control erodes a woman’s sense of self. Over time, she starts to doubt her own reality, feels confused and disorientated. This allows her partner to dominate and control her.

For survivors, naming coercive control can be deeply validating. It provides language for an experience that felt confusing, invisible, and profoundly disempowering.

Why Don’t Women Just Leave Abusive Relationships?

For survivors, leaving is rarely a simple process. Fear, confusion, lack of support/belief from others, financial dependence, concern for children, low self-esteem, cultural or faith pressures, and the very real risk of escalation of violence upon leaving, all contribute to why women may stay longer than outsiders expect. Staying is not a sign of weakness; it is a testament to extraordinary strength and effort to survive in complex, challenging circumstances.

Women who have experienced any type of power and control behaviours demonstrate extraordinary resilience every day. Research shows that being believed and validated, receiving practical and reliable help and trauma-informed support significantly improve recovery outcomes for survivors of family and domestic violence.

International Women’s Day reminds us that resilience is not just an individual trait—it is strengthened when communities listen, believe, and act together to protect and change cultures and paradigms that foster abuse.

What is the Intergenerational Impact of Violence and Trauma?

Violence not only affects the individual — it echoes across the generations and leaves deep imprints on the functioning of future generations. Research consistently shows that children who witness intimate partner violence are at higher risk of developing anxiety, depression, behavioural challenges, and have greater difficulties with trust, attachment, learning and positive social interactions. Their sense of safety in both their internal and external worlds is deeply affected. This legacy of violence shapes how the brain and body respond to stress and safety, often affecting their trajectory throughout a lifetime.

Healing does not erase the past, but it positively disrupts the cycles of harm. When survivors receive compassionate care, therapy, financial and community support, they reshape their futures — and their children’s futures — toward safety, possibility and a passing of a legacy of courage rather than fear.

What is God’s Heart for Women? –  Safety, Dignity, Freedom, and Justice

Amid these realities, we must clearly proclaim God’s heart for women.

God’s character is incompatible with control, domination or abuse. Those dynamics reflect human brokenness, not divine intention.

Scripture consistently affirms the dignity, worth, and agency of women. From the beginning, women are created in the image of God—not as property, not as lesser, but as equal bearers of divine worth.

Jesus’ ministry repeatedly elevated women in a culture that often silenced and diminished them. He honoured them, listened to them, healed their wounds, loved them into wholeness, protected them, and entrusted them with leadership and testimony. He restored dignity to those who had been shamed or excluded.

God’s heart is not for the endurance of harm, but freedom from it. Not silence, but truth. Not control, but love rooted in respect and mutuality.

For survivors, this matters deeply.

Scripture should never be used to excuse or minimise violence, demand submission to harm, or pressure women to stay in unsafe relationships.

Forgiveness does NOT automatically equal trust or reconciliation.

God’s desire is wholeness, justice, and restoration—not suffering disguised as faithfulness.

International Women’s Day- Is OUR Collective Call to Protect and Support Women

International Women’s Day calls all of us—individuals, churches, organisations, and communities—to respond.

We can:

  • Listen without judgment and validate a woman’s experience
  • Learn to recognise and name the signs of abuse and coercive control
  • Speak up against systems, cultures and attitudes that excuse or minimise violence
  • Support trauma-informed care and safe pathways to freedom
  • Reflect God’s heart by choosing compassion and action over silence

When we speak up, we protect women and families. When we support healing, we transform generations.

Today, let us honour women not just for their resilience, but for their right to live free from violence, the misuse of power and control and fear. Let us COLLECTIVELY commit ourselves to building a world—and a faith community—where women are safe, protected, seen, and valued as God intended.

Women’s Domestic Violence Helpline:

Website: https://1800respect.org.au/

Phone: 1800 737 732

SMS: 0458 737 732

Hours: Available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week