International Women’s Day is celebrated on March 8th each year, which is a day that is dedicated to celebrating the economic, social, political, and cultural achievements of women worldwide. International Women’s Day is a day for collective action, where people mobilize for equality while raising awareness of gender inequality. Also foster solidarity among people of all genders in support of women’s rights and gender parity (International Women’s Day, 2025).
It is important to acknowledge the dominance of women in the victim’s advocacy field. 87% of victim’s advocates are women (Zippia, 2021). Each day, women who work in the advocacy field are helping many clients through their experiences with trauma. According to the New Hampshire Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence, 33.4% of New Hampshire women have experienced intimate partner violence. In addition, 43 million women and 38 million men have been victims of psychological aggression during their lives. Benuto et al. (2019) found that victim advocacy workers are likely to experience secondary traumatic stress from their work. The participants of their study primarily identified as female and the level of secondary traumatic stress that they experienced depended mainly on the amount of hours of direct contact they had with the clients they were supporting. When taking time to think about the many accomplishments women have contributed to humanity, it is important we consider the impact that women have had in the victim advocacy field and the tremendous amount of time and effort that they have put in for the betterment of their communities and the world around them.
It is important to acknowledge the women who went on to found HAVEN. In 1979 a group of volunteers from the YWCA (a non-profit women’s association) founded the Women’s Resource Center. The Women’s Resource Center decided to take further steps towards women’s equality. They offered support through counseling and began to realize a lot of people were concerned about consent. At the time, the legal definitions of consent in marriage turned out to be virtually non-existent. Because of this, the Women’s Resource Center engaged in efforts to change public policy in order to allow victims of domestic violence more access to legal services. Later, in the 1991 they would rename themselves Sexual Assault Support Services, which would eventually join forces with another organization known as A Safe Place. These two organizations would join together to form HAVEN in 2014. Now, HAVEN serves 48 towns and cities in Rockingham and Strafford Counties. HAVEN provides 24-hour hotline support, as well as in-person services at many local courthouses, police stations, hospitals, child advocacy centers, as well as their three HAVEN office locations.
This year, the goal of International Women’s Day is to accelerate progress when it comes to closing the gender gap. #AccelerateAction emphasizes the urgency for gender equality worldwide. Women play a vital role in the field of victim advocacy and with the efforts of many strong women, HAVEN is able to work towards their mission of ending violence and changing lives. For more information: info@havennh.org. If you need help, call our 24-Hour Confidential Support: 1-603-994-7233.
Resources:
https://www.nhcadsv.org/domesticviolencestatistics.html
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6717883/
https://havennh.org/about-us
https://www.internationalwomensday.com/Theme
SASS INFO LINK
https://www.zippia.com/victim-advocate-jobs/demographics/
https://careersinpsychology.org/career-as-a-victim-advocate/
