Ending Gender-Based Violence Is Possible—If We Choose to Do the Work

Editors’ Note: This article was informed by the report Systemic Challenges in Navigating HRA Services for GBV Survivors by Hozaifa Mir, Mirum Zafar, Bansi Bhatt, Namrata Sharma, and Reshmi Sengupta. The author would also like to acknowledge the work of Tarana Burke and MeToo, which developed the framing of ending gender-based violence.

When I stepped into my role as executive director of Sakhi for South Asian Survivors over eight years ago, I was returning to a movement carrying the weight of personal trauma. My decision to lead Sakhi was driven by vision, yes, but also by a deep need for redemption—for myself and for those I love.

In the early years, my leadership was marked by urgency: an attempt to right personal wrongs and push against the injustice I had witnessed. Over time, that urgency matured into collective vision. Together with our staff, board, and community, we transformed Sakhi from an organization serving mostly cisgender heterosexual women into one that welcomes all survivors of violence. We redefined our work away from “empowerment”—a word that implies survivors are powerless—and instead built around survivor power and survivor leadership. We cofounded a national umbrella in 2021 for South Asian and Indo-Caribbean survivor-led organizations. And we established a space where healing is not exceptional but expected.

It was against this backdrop of growth and reimagination that I came across a statement in the movement last year that stopped me cold: Gender-based violence is a solvable issue.

We redefined our work away from “empowerment”—a word that implies survivors are powerless—and instead built around survivor power and survivor leadership.

My first instinct was resistance. How could something so vast, so generational, possibly be solved? But I could not ignore what I had already seen at Sakhi: Survivors who first came to us decades ago to stabilize their lives are now returning as donors, volunteers, and advocates. Their children—once young witnesses to violence—are now standing beside us as leaders. These generational shifts show us that cycles of violence can be interrupted. Healing is possible. Change is real.

This is not naivete—it is evidence. But evidence alone will not end gender-based violence. To do so, we need three things working in tandem: a cultural shift, systemic change, and philanthropic transformation.

The Crisis We Choose to Ignore

The scope of this crisis is staggering. Nearly 48 percent of South Asian Americans experience gender-based violence (GBV). One in three women in the United States will experience intimate partner violence in their lifetime. In the United States alone, intimate partner violence costs an estimated $5.8 billion annually in healthcare, lost productivity, and related expenses. GBV is not only a moral crisis, it is one of the most urgent public health challenges of our time.

And yet, we have built a society that treats violence as inevitable.

For too long, our culture has framed GBV as a private tragedy rather than a collective responsibility. That narrative protects those who cause harm, especially those with privilege and power. Whether in politics, entertainment, or our own communities, violence is minimized, rationalized, or ignored. Survivors are silenced, while those who cause harm are shielded and not held accountable.

Survivor-centered systems make cultural change sustainable by ensuring survivors can rebuild their lives with dignity.

If we are serious about ending GBV, we must begin with a cultural shift that refuses tolerance for harm, no matter the profile of the individual. Accountability cannot be selective. Culture does not shift only through institutions or leaders; it shifts through people. Each of us must have agency in the spaces we inhabit, be it in our families, in our workplaces, in our neighborhoods, and in the communities we claim. Every time someone interrupts a harmful remark, believes a survivor’s story, challenges harmful behavior, or refuses to excuse violence because of someone’s status or talent, the culture begins to shift.

Communities, institutions, and leaders are ultimately the sum of individual choices. If each of us leans into our own power and responsibility, the collective effect is transformative. We move from a culture that normalizes violence to one that refuses it outright. Without this cultural refusal, system reforms and philanthropy will always remain surface-level, working around a society that still excuses harm instead of eradicating it.

Systems That Trap Survivors

Even when survivors step forward, they are met with systems that entrench their hardship rather than ease it. Sakhi’s recent survey of survivors navigating New York City’s Human Resources Administration (HRA) revealed staggering inequities: 77 percent of respondents reported waiting more than an hour for help, survivors with limited English or disabilities faced additional barriers, and many were denied food or housing assistance despite overwhelming need. One survivor described being asked to share intimate details of her abuse in a crowded waiting room.

I became the executive director of Sakhi seeking redemption. Today, I lead with a different conviction—that our collective liberation from violence is possible.

These failures are not mere bureaucratic inefficiencies. They actively retraumatize survivors, keep families in cycles of poverty, and make it harder to break free from violence. Ending GBV requires systemic transformation: legislation that prioritizes privacy and accessibility, policies that ensure housing security, and benefits systems designed to support survivors rather than punish them.

Culture sets the expectation that violence is intolerable. Systems must then deliver on that promise by providing safety, dignity, and stability.

Philanthropy Must Fund What Works

Philanthropy, too, must confront its failures.

The overwhelming data from The Accelerator for GBV Prevention’s What Counts report shows that GBV work remains woefully underfunded. Just over 2 percent of US philanthropic giving goes to women’s and girls’ organizations, with even less directed to addressing GBV. For funders investing in GBV work, few direct their resources toward organizations in the United States. Philanthropy continues to concentrate funding among a small number of high-profile institutions, while culturally specific, survivor-led groups are left to compete for what remains.

This is not a resource problem—it is a priorities problem.

If we are to believe GBV can end, philanthropy must break away from funding the cycle of scarcity and spectacle. That means making long-term, unrestricted investments in grassroots organizations that survivors trust; resourcing culturally specific programs that understand the intersections of race, immigration, language, and poverty; and rejecting the star system that rewards visibility over impact.

Culture, systems, and philanthropy are not three separate spheres. They are interdependent forces. A cultural refusal to tolerate violence pushes systems and funders to transform. Survivor-centered systems make cultural change sustainable by ensuring survivors can rebuild their lives with dignity. And philanthropy fuels both by resourcing the work at the scale required.

The Hard Work of Transformation

I became the executive director of Sakhi seeking redemption. Today, I lead with a different conviction—that our collective liberation from violence is possible. But this possibility will remain unrealized unless we are willing to do the hard work of transformation.

The question is not whether gender-based violence can end. The question is whether we are willing to refuse tolerance for harm, legislate with survivors at the center, and fund communities with the scale and trust they deserve. Survivors, such as the ones Sakhi has stood behind, are already leading us toward that future.

The rest of us must decide whether we are ready to follow.