Giving Compass' Take:

• Graça Machel speaks about her work with civil society groups that fight gender oppression and violence toward women, highlighting the impact and efforts of grassroots organizations. 

• Can you join local grassroots organizations battling gender oppression? What can donors do on a global scale?

• Check out the Giving Compass Gender Equality guide for donors. 


It is estimated that 35% of women worldwide — 1.3 billion people, equivalent to the entire populations of North America and Europe combined — have experienced intimate partner violence or sexual violence at some point in their lives. This is an unconscionable nightmare that terrifies our daughters, sisters, mothers, aunts, and friends in every part of the globe.

Violence against women is also an instrument of economic harm: first and foremost to women themselves, but also to wider society. The financial costs of violence against women to private businesses have been found to be as high as 3.7% of GDP in Peru and 6.5% of GDP in Bolivia. In the United States, the cost of intimate partner violence exceeds $8.3 billion per year. Above all, violence against women is a moral obscenity and a profound injustice.

Violence against women is not an inherent to any culture on any continent. It can be eliminated if there is sufficient political will to educate populations, especially men and boys, and reform traditional structures, institutions, and practices.

I have fought for women’s liberation my entire life: as a freedom fighter in Mozambique, as education minister when my country had achieved its independence, as a representative of the United Nations, and today as a member of The Elders, the group of independent leaders I co-founded with my late husband Nelson Mandela.

The Elders have been working with civil society groups worldwide to highlight diverse human rights issues. There is much to learn from their efforts to dismantle harmful patriarchal practices. From the Women’s Law Centre in Moldova to Rien Sans Les Femmes in the Democratic Republic of Congo, these brave grassroots defenders provide critical lessons on how to end gender-based violence.

Read the full article about fighting gender oppression from Thomson Reuters Foundation at Global Citizen.