The release of the Jeffrey Epstein files reignited public outrage and the aftermath demonstrated an age-old pattern: intense attention and collective outrage followed by a gradual return to silence—and eventual forgetting.

This pattern indicates that we are not failing to see gender-based violence but we are failing to understand it. When media centers the public’s attention on a particular scandal, without contextualization of the systems of power that make such violence possible, it conveys a myopic view of the problem while dismissing the root causes that produce it.

Gender-based violence and child sexual exploitation are often framed as the pathology of individual “monsters” rather than as the product of systemic failures. Media attention focuses on individual wrongdoing, while the systems that enable harm remain largely unexamined—allowing the cycle of harm to continue.

Narrative power is foundational to our collective understanding of a social issue. It shapes what we recognize as a problem, who we hold accountable, and what solutions we believe are possible. In this case, when violence is understood as individual deviance—rather than as a systemic problem—institutions evade scrutiny, prevention remains peripheral, and the broader conditions that enable harm remain intact. As a result, survivors are pushed to the margins, while the institutions and elite networks that perpetuate harm continue without sustained accountability.

This narrative is not incidental. Powerful individuals and institutions routinely deploy enormous financial resources to suppress survivor testimony, fund coordinated smear campaigns and rehabilitate perpetrators’ reputations. Therefore, shifting these narratives is critical and this work is inseparable from the need for sustained investment in the movements, organizations, and systems capable of transforming the conditions that perpetuate violence. This is where philanthropy has a crucial—and largely unmet—responsibility in our collective work to enable prevention, response, and healing.

If philanthropy is serious about ending gender-based violence, it must treat narrative infrastructure as essential public infrastructure—investing in the storytellers, cultural workers, researchers, community leaders and movements actively challenging the narratives that make violence seem inevitable.

Read the full article about investing in narrative power to end gender violence by Natalie A. Collier, Maheen Kaleemand, and Jody Myrum at Nonprofit Quarterly.