Women for Change South Africa
Impact Snapshot:
Focus Area: Gender-Based Violence, Femicide Prevention, Survivor Support, and System Accountability
Who They Serve: Women, girls, survivors, and families affected by gender-based violence and femicide
Where: South Africa
Why This Matters:
South Africa is facing one of the most severe femicide crises in the world. Africa Check reports that South Africa’s femicide rate was 12.2 per 100,000 in 2022, compared with a global female homicide rate of about 2.2 per 100,000, making it about six times higher. Women for Change South Africa has shared that more up-to-date data shows femicide rates have soared to eight times higher than other countries.
How This Organization Advances Women’s Equality:
Women For Change works at the intersection of survivor support, national advocacy, public education, and institutional accountability. Their work helps women access guidance in moments of crisis while also pushing the government and broader systems to treat violence against women as the national emergency it is.
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About the Organization
Women For Change is a South African survivor-centred non-profit founded in 2016 to confront and end gender-based violence and femicide. What began as an awareness effort has grown into one of the country’s largest anti-GBV movements, combining direct survivor support with digital mobilisation and systemic reform.
Today, the organization provides trauma-informed guidance to survivors and families, runs public campaigns, educates communities, and pressures institutions to respond more seriously and effectively. Their website describes three core pillars of work: survivor support, advocacy + mobilization, and awareness + education.
That combination matters. Women For Change is not only calling attention to violence. It is helping survivors navigate it while demanding that the country’s police, health, justice, and political systems stop treating this crisis as background noise.
The Problem They’re Addressing
South Africa’s femicide crisis is extreme by any standard. Africa Check reports that the country has one of the highest femicide rates in the world, with a rate roughly six to eight times the global female homicide rate.
Women For Change’s own campaign materials state that South Africa continued to record some of the highest femicide rates globally while survivors faced systemic failures across policing, healthcare, and the justice system.
This is not only about homicide. It is also about the ecosystem around violence:
- Survivors often struggle to access timely, trauma-informed support.
- Reporting can feel unsafe and justice delayed or out of reach.
- Institutions may fail to act quickly enough to protect women even when warning signs are present.
When a country reaches this level of violence against women, equality becomes impossible to separate from survival. Women cannot live freely, safely, or with dignity when the threat of violence shapes daily life so profoundly. That is why this issue is not marginal. It is central to women’s rights.
Their Work in Action
Women For Change’s work is practical, visible, and deeply rooted in survivor needs.
They provide direct guidance and support to survivors and families through their digital platforms, and in March 2025 they launched a confidential, trauma-informed Survivor SupportLine delivered primarily through WhatsApp. The organization says this service offers structured, accessible assistance and referral pathways for people in crisis across South Africa.
They also mobilize at scale. Their advocacy includes national petitions, public campaigns, direct engagement with government and institutions, strategic media advocacy, policy reform efforts, and implementation monitoring.
Education is another major part of their work. Women For Change publishes practical guides on survivor rights, reporting, legal processes, trauma-informed understanding, and prevention. Their site makes clear that information is part of protection: silence protects perpetrators, while information helps communities act.
One of the clearest examples of their impact is the campaign that pushed for gender-based violence and femicide to be treated as a national disaster. According to Women For Change, the movement surpassed 1.1 million signatures, was backed by sustained national mobilization, and helped lead to President Cyril Ramaphosa’s November 2025 declaration classifying GBVF as a National Disaster.
Why Support is Critical Right Now
Women For Change’s advocacy helped achieve a major national milestone, but their own site is clear that recognition alone is not enough. After the 2025 declaration, the organization shifted from demanding recognition to monitoring delivery because a declaration without implementation, funding, timelines, and accountability can remain symbolic.
That point is crucial. South Africa does not only need outrage. It needs systems that work. It needs faster protection mechanisms, better implementation, clear budget pathways, survivor-centred support, and measurable accountability. Women For Change is now building public-facing tracking and monitoring around those commitments.
Support is also critical because this organization is doing more than one job at once. It is helping survivors in real time, educating the public, documenting institutional failure, and turning public grief into sustained political pressure. That kind of work is difficult to sustain without ongoing funding. Their homepage explicitly states that donations support survivors as well as advocacy and policy change.
Why Every Woman is Worthy Supports This Work
At Every Woman is Worthy®, we believe women’s equality means very little if women are not safe enough to live it.
A society cannot claim progress while women are being killed and survivors are left to navigate broken systems on their own. Organizations like Women For Change are helping shift that reality by standing with survivors and refusing to let institutions look away. Their work protects dignity, demands justice, and treats women’s lives as urgent and non-negotiable.
This organization also reflects something deeply aligned with our mission: Change happens when frontline support and public pressure work together. Women need immediate protection, but they also need systems to change so fewer women are placed in danger in the first place. Women For Change is doing both.
A Personal Connection to This Work
Every Woman is Worthy founder Maggie Winzeler partnered with Women For Change on a social media campaign to launch international attention and pressure South Africa’s president to declare femicide a national disaster ahead of a women's shutdown. The campaign reached over a million people and helped build momentum at the beginning of what became an internationally recognized movement with media attention, press coverage, and eventual national recognition of the crisis. Women for Change made history.
During that campaign period, Maggie and Cameron Kasambala, spokesperson for Women For Change South Africa, also held an Instagram Live discussion to raise awareness. ~12,000 people from around the world tuned in, many changing their profiles to purple in solidarity and helping propel the movement forward.
How to Support
- Visit: womenforchange.co.za
- Donate: womenforchange.co.za/donate
You can also follow and share their campaigns. Public pressure has already helped move this issue from outrage to national recognition, and that visibility still matters.
Help Us Fast-Track Women’s Equality
Supporting organizations like Women For Change helps ensure that women facing violence are not left without support, visibility, or advocacy. When we invest in survivor-centred work and systemic accountability, we help build a world where women’s safety is not treated as optional, delayed, or secondary, but as the foundation of equality itself.
In this together,
The Every Woman is Worthy Team