Blog (thoughts and musings)

When the State Fails, Why Are Women Expected to Pay the Price?

More than 7,000 victims and survivors of crime and their families, have now received letters informing them that the person responsible for the harm they experienced is likely to be released early this September, having served only around a third of their sentence.

The prison system is in crisis. Years of underinvestment, overcrowding and political short-termism have left it struggling to cope. Few would dispute that the situation is serious or that government must act.

But there is a fundamental question that should sit at the heart of this debate.

Why are women once again being asked to bear the consequences of the state's failures?

The Government is now reviewing aspects of its early release scheme after widespread public concern that two of the men convicted for the killing of Police Constable Andrew Harper would be eligible for release. His family are absolutely right to be outraged. Their pain is unimaginable, and they should never have been placed in this position.

But many other victims had already been raising the alarm.

Women subjected to domestic abuse had spoken of living in fear of the man who controlled and terrorised them returning to their community. Survivors have questioned how justice could mean serving only a fraction of a sentence. Families bereaved through male violence had expressed disbelief that perpetrators could be released so early. Victims had asked what would happen if licence conditions were breached and whether anyone would act quickly enough to protect them.

Those voices were there long before this latest review.

The difference is not the legitimacy of their fears. It is whether those fears attracted sufficient political attention.

This is not about setting one victim against another. PC Harper’s family have been clear, every victim deserves to be heard. Every family deserves compassion. But it is impossible to ignore a wider pattern: women have repeatedly warned of the consequences of policies that increase their risk, only to find those concerns minimised, delayed or treated as secondary until a case captures national attention.

The Government has sought to reassure victims that those released will remain on licence and subject to conditions.

For many women, that reassurance carries little weight.

Many of these men ignored bail conditions before trial. They breached restraining orders and  non-molestation orders. They repeatedly demonstrated that court orders meant very little when weighed against their determination to continue controlling, intimidating or harming women.

Why should victims now believe that the same men will suddenly comply with licence conditions simply because they have been released from prison?

The reality is that licence conditions are only as effective as the systems enforcing them. Probation services are under extraordinary pressure. Police resources are stretched. Specialist services supporting victims remain underfunded. Women know from bitter experience that legal protections on paper do not always translate into protection in practice.

Sadly, this is not an isolated issue.

When rape prosecutions collapsed, women were told the justice system was under pressure.

When specialist support services closed because of funding cuts, women were expected to manage with less, or nothing.

When maternity inquiries revealed women and babies dying because concerns were dismissed, we were told services were overstretched.

When girls were systematically sexually exploited over many years, countless reviews found that professionals failed to listen, failed to act and failed to believe them.

Different systems. Different institutions.  The same underlying message.

Women's safety is too often treated as something that can be compromised when public services are under strain.

What makes the early release scheme particularly troubling is that the burden of solving one state failure is simply being transferred onto another part of the system and ultimately onto victims themselves.

The prison crisis was created by decades of political decisions. Women did not create prison overcrowding. Survivors did not create the shortage of prison places. Bereaved families did not create the lack of investment in probation or rehabilitation.

Yet they are the ones now being asked to live with the additional risk.

There is another way of thinking about this.

If early release is genuinely unavoidable, then public protection not prison capacity must determine eligibility. Victims should be consulted meaningfully, risk assessments must be robust, and specialist services should be strengthened (and properly funded) before any release takes place, not afterwards.

Ultimately, this debate is about more than prisons.

It is about whose safety is regarded as negotiable when the state comes under pressure.

Again and again, when systems fail, women are expected to absorb the consequences: to change their routines, improve their security, carry alarms, relocate, remain vigilant, trust orders that have previously failed to protect them, and somehow live with the knowledge that the man who harmed them is back in the community.

That is not an unfortunate consequence of public policy.  It is a political choice.

A society committed to ending violence against women cannot continue balancing institutional failure against women's safety and deciding that women should carry the greater burden.

One question the Government should now answer is whether it carried out a robust Equality Impact Assessment before introducing this policy. If it did, did it fully consider the disproportionate impact on women as the primary victims of domestic abuse, sexual violence, stalking and coercive control? Did it consult specialist women's organisations? Did it assess the additional demands on already overstretched support services? And if those risks were identified, why was the policy allowed to proceed in its current form?

If those questions cannot be satisfactorily answered, then this is more than a prison policy. It is another example of women's safety being treated as an acceptable trade-off when public systems come under pressure.

How Many More Inquiries Before Women and Girls Matter?

We can no longer describe these as isolated failures.

Whether we are examining maternity scandals in which women and babies suffered avoidable harm, inquiries into grooming gangs where girls were systematically ignored, reviews in to deaths caused by domestic abuse, or countless other cases where women have been failed by institutions charged with their care and protection, a common thread runs through them all: the devaluation of women and girls.

The details may differ, but the pattern is painfully familiar. Women report symptoms and are dismissed. Mothers raise concerns and are not believed. Women and Girls disclose abuse and exploitation and are ignored. Women challenge decisions and are labelled difficult, emotional, or unreliable. Time and again, those with power and authority choose not to listen.

This is not an accident. Nor is it simply a failure of process. When one individual can treat another human being with such disdain, contempt and harm and those around them do nothing, and worse minimise it, we must look at the society that enables that.

It is the consequence of a society in which misogyny remains deeply embedded in our institutions, our cultures, and our assumptions. A society that continues to treat women's knowledge of their own bodies as less credible than professional opinion. A society that routinely expects women and girls to endure pain, tolerate risk, and accept mistreatment. A society in which the suffering of women and girls is too often normalised, minimised, or regarded as an acceptable cost.

The maternity inquiries reveal women whose concerns about their own health and the wellbeing of their babies were repeatedly disregarded,  with catastrophic consequences. The grooming gang inquiries reveal girls who were treated as troublesome rather than vulnerable, blamed for the abuse inflicted upon them rather than protected from it. Numerous domestic homicide reviews expose how often women share their fears that they will be killed, for those fears to be dismissed. Different contexts, different institutions, but the same underlying message: the voices of women and girls carry less weight.

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of these failures is that they occurred within professions that define themselves through care, protection, and public service. Healthcare professionals, police officers, social workers, and others enter these professions with a commitment to help. Yet good intentions alone are not enough. Without a willingness to confront the misogyny that shapes institutional cultures and decision-making, harmful patterns are reproduced regardless of individual motives.

What is striking is not that we lack evidence. We have evidence in abundance.

For decades, women, girls, mothers, survivors, bereaved families, feminist researchers, campaigners, and frontline practitioners have been documenting these failures. Review after review has identified the same themes: women not being believed, girls not being protected, institutional reputations prioritised over accountability, and systemic failures dismissed as unfortunate exceptions rather than recognised as symptoms of a deeper problem.

The question is no longer whether we understand what is happening. The question is whether we are prepared to confront why it keeps happening.

That requires more than procedural reform. It requires honesty about the role misogyny plays in shaping whose voices are heard, whose expertise is respected, whose pain matters, and whose lives are protected. It requires institutions to move beyond defensive responses and acknowledge that patriarchal power operates within their structures, whether they intend it to or not.

Amid this history of failure, however, there is also extraordinary courage.

Every truth that has come to light has done so because women and girls, often at immense personal cost, refused to be silenced. Mothers who fought for answers after losing their babies. Survivors who spoke out despite disbelief and hostility. Campaigners who persisted when institutions hoped the issue would disappear. They forced society to confront realities it would rather not see.

We owe them more than gratitude. We owe them transformation.

A society that repeatedly fails women and girls cannot claim ignorance. We know what happens when women's voices are discounted. We know the cost of looking away. We know the consequences of treating misogyny as a marginal issue rather than a structural one.

The measure of our humanity is not whether we can express outrage after another scandal emerges. It is whether we build institutions in which women and girls are listened to, believed, respected and protected before harm occurs.

The evidence is before us. The testimonies have been heard. The question now is whether we finally value women and girls enough to act.

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Ten years apart. Different countries. Different courts. The same message.

In 2016, the world reacted with fury when Brock Turner, a promising Stanford swimmer, received a six-month sentence after sexually assaulting an unconscious woman behind a dumpster. The judge justified the leniency by focusing on Turner’s future, his age, and the “severe impact” prison would have on him. Turner ultimately served just three months.

The public outrage was not simply about one sentence. It was about what the sentence represented: a justice system that seemed more concerned with protecting the life chances of a young man than acknowledging the devastation inflicted on a woman whose life had been permanently altered.

Now, in 2026, here we are again.

This week in Hampshire, three teenage boys convicted of raping two girls, filming the assaults, and sharing the footage were spared custody altogether. The judge cited their youth, low intellectual capacity, ADHD diagnoses, and the need to avoid “unnecessary criminalisation”. (The Times)

Again, we are told to think about the boys’ futures.

Again, we are invited to sympathise with perpetrators because they are young, because prison may harm them, because we need to protect their ‘potential’.

Again, the violence done to girls is treated as secondary.

The victims’ statements tell the real story. One girl described feeling emotionally numb and suicidal. Another was recorded lying motionless while boys continued to assault her.

But even now, even after decades of campaigning around male violence against women and girls, even after #MeToo, even after endless public promises that rape will be treated seriously, the same cultural reflex remains embedded in our institutions: protect the boys.

The parallels with the Turner case are chilling. In both cases, public attention drifted toward the perpetrators’ prospects, families, education, mental state, and social standing. In both cases, the suffering of women and girls was somehow balanced against the inconvenience of accountability for men.

The infamous phrase from Brock Turner’s father  “20 minutes of action”  became symbolic of a culture that minimises sexual violence while centering male discomfort.

And what has changed since then?

Young men today are growing up immersed in an online ecosystem saturated with violent pornography, misogynistic influencers, sexual entitlement, and contempt for women. Girls are reporting increasing levels of harassment, coercion, choking, image-based abuse, and sexual violence in schools and social spaces. Yet when some boys act out that misogyny in the real world, the response from the justice system is still to ask whether punishment might derail their lives.

What about the girls’ lives?

What about the lifelong trauma, the fear, the mental health consequences, the collapse of trust, the interrupted education, the knowledge that your violation was filmed and shared for entertainment?

What message do these sentences send to survivors? What message do they send to boys watching online?

Certainly not that rape is a grave abuse of human dignity.

Certainly not that women and girls matter equally.

A justice system that consistently softens its response to male violence against women teaches society exactly whose futures count.

And we Women see that clearly.

The sentence in the Hampshire case should be urgently reviewed under the unduly lenient sentence scheme. These crimes involved rape, coercion, filming abuse, and the distribution of that abuse. They demanded a response that recognised the seriousness of the offences and the profound harm caused to the victims.

Instead, the court delivered another reminder that when men commit violence against women and girls, the system shows sympathy too often towards the perpetrators rather than survivors.

Enough.

Male violence against women is not a misunderstanding. It is not “boys being boys”. It is not an unfortunate mistake on the path to an otherwise promising future.

It is violence.

And until our courts treat it with the seriousness it deserves, women and girls will continue to receive the same devastating message: your suffering matters less than his potential.

Why the UK Needs the Equality Model Now

I’ve just returned from Paris, where I stood alongside hundreds of women, survivors, activists and allies marking ten years of France’s abolitionist law. It was not just a commemoration it was a glimpse of what is possible when a country decides, collectively, that women are not for sale.

What struck me most was not only the scale of the movement, but the clarity of its message: prostitution is not inevitable, and it is not neutral. It is a system rooted in inequality, sustained by demand, and experienced by women as a form of male violence.

In the UK, the conversation is shifting. The current government has acknowledged prostitution as part of the wider landscape of male violence against women and girls (MVAWG). That matters. Naming the harm is an important first step.

But naming is not enough.

The gap between recognition and action

Despite this recognition, the UK still fails to hold men accountable for creating demand. Men who attempt to buy access to women’s bodies are rarely robustly investigated or prosecuted. The burden, instead, continues to fall disproportionately on women many of whom are navigating poverty, coercion, migration, trauma, or addiction.

This contradiction sits at the heart of our current approach: we recognise prostitution as harmful, yet tolerate the very behaviour that drives it.

France and other countries adopting the Equality Model have taken a different path.

What the Equality Model does differently

The Equality Model (sometimes called the Nordic Model or Survivor Model) is built on a simple but transformative principle: those who are exploited should be supported, and those who exploit should be held to account.

In practice, that means:

• Decriminalising women in prostitution

• Providing meaningful, funded exit support

• Criminalising the purchase of sex

• Targeting pimps and traffickers

• Investing in long-term cultural change

In Paris, I heard directly from women whose lives had been transformed by this approach. One survivor described how access to exit services gave her and her daughter something previously out of reach: stability, safety, and a future. Housing, employment and  independence, these are not abstract ideals, but tangible outcomes of political will.

This is what it looks like when policy aligns with reality.

Culture change is possible

Perhaps most striking was the level of public support for the law in France now reported at over 90%. That kind of cultural shift doesn’t happen overnight. It is the result of sustained political leadership, survivor advocacy, and a refusal to accept that exploitation is inevitable.

It also challenges a persistent myth in the UK: that tackling demand is unrealistic or unenforceable.

And yet, countries like Sweden and France show us that it is both possible and effective. Where demand is addressed, trafficking decreases. Where women are supported, exits become viable. Where the law sends a clear signal, attitudes begin to change.

Listening to survivors

Throughout my time in Paris, one message came through again and again: change happened because survivors were heard.

Not as symbols. Not as statistics. But as experts.

They spoke not of “choice,” but of constraint. Not of empowerment, but of survival. They challenged the idea that prostitution can ever be separated from the inequalities - economic, racial, global that shape it.

If we are serious about addressing MVAWG in the UK, we must be serious about listening to those voices.

A call to act

The UK stands at a crossroads.

We can continue with a fragmented approach that acknowledges harm while enabling it. Or we can choose a model grounded in accountability, support, and equality.

The Equality Model is not a silver bullet. It requires investment, enforcement, and political courage. It demands that we confront uncomfortable truths about demand, entitlement, and the normalisation of buying sex.

But it also offers something else: a pathway out.

A pathway where women are supported to leave prostitution when they want to.
A pathway where men are no longer entitled to purchase access to women’s bodies.
A pathway where we align our laws with our stated commitment to ending male violence against women and girls.

As our French sisters told us at the close of the conference: we did it—and you can too.

The question is no longer whether change is possible.

It’s whether we are willing to demand it.

5th February 2026

When Powerful Men Matter More Than Women’s Safety

Again and again, we are told that the abuse of women by powerful men is an aberration. An unfortunate exception. A shock. A scandal.
And yet the pattern is so consistent that denial has become absurd.

Jeffrey Epstein did not “slip through the cracks.”
Andrew Windsor was not “unaware.”

These men were protected not despite what they did to women, but because of what they represented to the systems around them: money, influence, access, status, continuity.

What their stories expose is not just individual corruption, but a deeper social truth: in a patriarchal society, men’s value is measured by power, and women’s value is negotiable.

Power Is a Shield.

Violence against women is not punished consistently. It is filtered through a hierarchy of worth.

When an ordinary man harms a woman, the system may, (sometimes not often enough) respond.
When a powerful man harms a woman, the system asks a different question:

What would it cost us to hold him accountable?

If the answer is too much politically, economically, reputationally  then women’s testimony becomes inconvenient, destabilising, even dangerous.

This is why Epstein was protected for years.
This is why his victims were dismissed as unreliable, greedy, or complicit.
This is why powerful institutions closed ranks.

Power is a continuum, so its not just royalty or billionaires protected but business leaders, community leaders, and police officers.

Andrea Dworkin was clear that violence against women must be understood not as isolated wrongdoing, but as a structural feature of male dominance. In Letters from a War Zone, she situates men’s violence within a broader political economy that depends on women’s disposability:

“We see a major trade in women. We see the torture of women as a form of entertainment. We see women treated as things, as commodities. And this is the foundation of male power.”
Andrea Dworkin.

Violence is tolerated not because it is invisible, but because it is useful. It keeps women cautious, compliant, and expendable, especially when the men involved are deemed “too important” to lose.

The Sacrifice of Women to Preserve Male Power

Dworkin insisted that women are not merely harmed under patriarchy; they are traded.

“Under patriarchy, no woman is safe to live her life, or to love, or to mother children..”
Andrea Dworkin,

This is not because all men are individually violent, but because the system itself is structured to absorb women’s suffering while protecting men’s status.

When women accuse powerful men, they are not simply naming abuse. They are threatening networks of male loyalty, institutional reputation, and economic interest. The response is therefore swift and predictable: disbelief, minimisation, character assassination.

Women are expected to carry the cost and quietly.

The Myth of the Indispensable Man

We are often told that these men are “monsters,” as if their violence places them outside society rather than at its centre.

But monsters are feared.
These men were celebrated.

They were invited into palaces, parliaments, and boardrooms.
They were consulted, defended, protected.

Germaine Greer dismantled this mythology decades ago, particularly the fantasy of male exceptionalism  the belief that some men are simply too valuable to be held accountable.

She wrote:

“Women have very little idea of how much men hate them.”
Germaine Greer.

This is a confronting statement, but a clarifying one. What Greer exposes is not personal animosity, but structural contempt a system in which women’s pain is tolerated, even normalised, in service of male power and male solidarity.

When a woman threatens a powerful man’s position, she is treated not as a victim, but as a problem.

Why Women Will Never Be Safe Until We Are Valued as Equals

This is the truth we keep circling but rarely name: women’s safety is impossible in a society that does not value women equally.

Not symbolically.
Not rhetorically.
Materially.

As long as:

• men’s reputations matter more than women’s bodies

• men’s futures matter more than women’s trauma

• men’s power matters more than women’s truth

violence against women will be managed, minimised, and explained away, not prevented.

We can change laws.
We can introduce safeguarding policies.
We can issue apologies after the fact.

But unless we confront the underlying value system one that treats women as collateral damage in the preservation of male dominance women will continue to be unsafe, particularly around the most powerful men.

Belief Is Not Enough, Power Must Be Redistributed

We are told to “believe women.”
But belief without consequence is meaningless.

What women need is not sympathy, but structural courage: the willingness to lose powerful men in order to protect women.

Until society is prepared to say:

No man is so valuable that women must be harmed to keep him

then nothing fundamental will change.

This is not a failure of awareness or a lack of evidence.
It is a question of priorities.

And until women are valued as fully human not expendable, not negotiable, not sacrificial the violence will continue to be predictable, systemic, and defended.

What This Means, And Why This Work Matters

Ending violence against women is not about better optics, stronger statements, or reputational risk management. It is about changing what and who we value.

My work with organisations, institutions, and partnerships starts from this premise: violence against women is sustained not only by individual perpetrators, but by cultures that prioritise male power, comfort, and status over women’s safety and dignity.

If we are serious about prevention, we must be willing to interrogate:

• how male entitlement is reproduced and protected

• how women’s harm is minimised to preserve influence and hierarchy

• and how institutions repeatedly choose powerful men over vulnerable women

Until we are prepared to challenge the systems that excuse, enable, and reward men’s abuse, women will continue to pay the price.

📩 Let’s talk — sally@sallyJconsulting.co.uk

21st September 2025

Why the VAWG Sector Must Be Explicitly Anti-Racist and Challenge Supremacist Ideologies

Last week, I attended the CWASU Summer School, an excellent and intensive course exploring supremacist movements in the UK and their implications for women’s rights. The sessions examined far-right networks, fundamentalist movements, the rise of the Manosphere and Incel ideology, and the ways these intersect with male violence against women and girls. What follows are my reflections on why we must be explicitly anti-racist and committed to challenging supremacist ideologies in all their forms

The VAWG sector has long been at the forefront of tackling violence, abuse, and exploitation. But in today’s climate where supremacist movements are emboldened, misogyny is mainstreaming through digital spaces, and far-right ideologies are intertwining with other forms of fundamentalism, our sector faces a pivotal choice. We can either limit our focus to the symptoms of male violence, or we can confront its deeper roots in racist, patriarchal, and supremacist ideologies.

To do the latter, we must make a clear and explicit commitment: the VAWG sector must be anti-racist and actively challenge supremacist ideology.

Supremacy as a Unifying Thread

Whether we are talking about far-right nationalism, Islamist fundamentalism, Christian or Sikh fundamentalism, or the Manosphere, the common thread is supremacy. Supremacy is the belief in dominance and hierarchy of one race, one religion, one sex, one nation, or one way of being. These ideologies construct power through the subjugation of others, and women and girls are always among the first targets.

When the VAWG sector fails to name and challenge supremacy, we risk tackling only the violence at the surface while leaving intact the ideologies that fuel it.

Why Anti-Racism is Non-Negotiable

Racism is not just an “adjacent” issue to sex-based violence. It is a structuring force of violence. We see this in:

• Far-right movements in the UK that mobilise around racial hatred, while domestic abuse is rife among their ranks.

• Islamist fundamentalist networks that impose gender apartheid while weaponising racist narratives of victimhood.

• Christian and Sikh fundamentalist groups that police women’s bodies, while often colluding with nationalist projects.

If we do not take an explicitly anti-racist stance, we leave space for racist logics to creep into policy and practice. For example, the UK government’s Prevent strategy has too often securitised Muslim communities in ways that stigmatise rather than protect. The result? Women’s real safety is sidelined while racism is reinforced.

Linking Private and Public Violence

One of the most important insights from research on radicalisation is the continuum between private and public violence. The same dynamics of control, entitlement, and domination that underpin domestic abuse also drive supremacist politics. The statistic that two in five men arrested in the 2024 UK riots had prior reports for domestic abuse is a stark reminder: violence against women is not separate from extremist violence; it is entangled with it.

By being explicitly anti-racist, the VAWG sector can hold governments, institutions, and communities accountable for addressing the root causes of both private and public forms of supremacy.

The Manosphere and Mainstreaming of Supremacy

The Manosphere illustrates how supremacist ideology mutates and spreads. Online spaces that begin with complaints about dating or “men’s rights” quickly spiral into racialised conspiracy theories, anti-feminist vitriol, and violent fantasies. Andrew Tate’s global influence shows how easily misogyny, racism, and authoritarianism converge.

If our sector does not challenge supremacist ideology as a whole, we risk underestimating the threat of these movements and their impact and influence on young men and boys, and by extension, on women and girls.

Towards an Ethically Grounded Response

Being explicitly anti-racist in the VAWG sector means:

• Naming supremacy as a root cause of sex-based violence.

• Resisting securitised approaches that weaponise women’s safety to justify racist practices.

• Standing in solidarity with migrant women, and women in minoritised communities whose safety is often treated as expendable.

• Building prevention work that recognises the continuum of violence across the private and public sphere.

• Refusing co-option by political projects, left or right, that undermine women’s rights in the name of nationalism, religion, or security.

Conclusion

The VAWG sector cannot afford to treat anti-racism and anti-supremacy as optional extras. They are core to our mission. Supremacist ideologies whether far-right, fundamentalist, or rooted in male grievance pose a direct threat to women’s safety, freedom, and equality.

To protect women and girls, we must challenge not only the acts of violence but also the racist, patriarchal ideologies that sustain them. An explicitly anti-racist, anti-supremacist stance is not just political clarity, it is a matter of survival.

📩 Let’s talk — sally@sallyJconsulting.co.uk

9th September 2025

Beyond Awareness: Turning Feminist Values into Everyday Practice

In our sector, it’s common to hear organisations declare their commitment to feminist values.
They appear in strategies, sit proudly on websites, and are spoken about in meetings.

But here’s the truth:
Awareness isn’t enough. Statements alone don’t change women’s lives.

If we are to end male violence against women, feminist principles cannot sit on the sidelines as abstract ideals.
They must guide the everyday, the decisions we make, the services we design, the funding we provide, and the systems we hold accountable.

The trap of values without action

Too often, feminist principles remain aspirations rather than actions.
They’re admired but not applied.

For example:

• An organisation may say it is “survivor-centred” while still designing services around existing institutional structures instead of survivors’ lived realities.

• Commissioners may claim to value “equity” but continue to funnel resources away from specialist women’s organisations, especially those led by and for Black and minoritised women.

• Multi-agency work may “recognise perpetrators” in theory but still put the onus on survivors to manage their own safety.

This isn’t about bad intent, but about the dangerous gap between what we say and what we do.

What feminist practice looks like in action

1. Decision-making

• Survivors’ voices must not just be heard but shape the agenda from the start.

• Every choice should be tested against a simple feminist question:
  Does this increase women’s safety and hold men who use violence accountable?

2. Service design

• Services should dismantle barriers for women, not expect them to adapt to broken systems.

• Intersectionality must be non-negotiable. Violence is never experienced in isolation from racism, ableism, homophobia, classism, or immigration status.

3. Commissioning

• Funding must recognise the expertise of women’s services, especially grassroots and minoritised organisations.

• Contracts should enable collaboration and stability, not pit services against each other in endless competition.

Embedding feminist values in daily work

Feminist principles should live and breathe in the everyday:

• Language that never excuses or minimises men’s violence, and never blames women.

• Policies that protect staff who may themselves be survivors of abuse.

• Partnership spaces that reflect on power and privilege, not just tick off agenda items.

• Accountability that focuses on perpetrators, not on the coping strategies of women.

This is what it means to live the values we claim to hold.

Feminist + collaborative = systemic change

Feminist practice alone can be radical but isolating.
Collaboration alone can be efficient but shallow.

Together, they can transform systems:

• Power is shared more equally.

• Survivors’ needs shape not only services but entire systems.

• Men who use violence face coordinated, consistent consequences.

Awareness is only the beginning.
Practice is where change happens.

If your organisation wants to move beyond words and embed feminist principles into decision-making, service design, and commissioning, I can help.

📩 Let’s talk — sally@SallyJconsulting.co.uk

18th August 2025

Collaboration that Delivers: How Partnerships Can Truly Hold Perpetrators to Account

In our sector, we talk a lot about collaboration. Multi-agency meetings, partnership boards, memorandums of understanding — all designed to bring organisations together around a shared goal: ending male violence against women.

But here’s the truth: too often, these structures exist without real follow-through. We meet, we talk, we share updates… and yet survivors still face barriers to support, and perpetrators remain unchallenged.

If we are serious about ending male violence against women, we need collaboration that delivers — partnerships that are bold, accountable, and relentlessly focused on outcomes.

Why “good meetings” aren’t enough

I’ve been in countless partnership settings where everyone is dedicated and hard-working, but the structure doesn’t demand follow-through. Actions are noted but not tracked. Perpetrators’ behaviour is discussed but not directly addressed. Survivors’ safety plans are agreed but not consistently monitored.

Collaboration without accountability risks becoming performative, it feels good, but it doesn’t shift the ground beneath us.

The three essentials of collaboration that delivers

1. Shared, measurable goals
Every partner should know exactly what “success” looks like,  not just in broad terms like “reduce harm” but in measurable outcomes: increased survivor safety scores, reduced repeat offending, improved arrest-to-charge ratios.

2. Accountability mechanisms
If an action is agreed, it needs a named lead, a deadline, and a process for follow-up. Without this, actions evaporate. Accountability isn’t about blame, it’s about ensuring commitments turn into change.

3. Perpetrator focus
Too often, the system orbits around survivors’ responses to violence, not the behaviour of the perpetrator. Effective partnerships keep the focus firmly where it belongs: on the person causing harm.

What this looks like in practice

When partnerships operate with impact:

• Survivors see consistent, joined-up support.

• Perpetrators face a clear, coordinated response.

• Organisations trust each other to deliver, because commitments are met.

It’s not about being adversarial, it’s about being purposeful.

The work to end male violence against women is too important for “polite” partnerships. We need collaboration that challenges, questions, and delivers.

If your organisation or partnership wants to strengthen its approach, I can help you build the structures, relationships, and processes that make accountability unavoidable.

📩 Let’s talk — sally@sallyJconsulting.co.uk