WHY THIS WORK MATTERS

"Before you can treat a disease you have to diagnose it. Violence against women is an epidemic that takes four lives a day in the USA and leaves millions living in terror or facing the torture of rape, beatings, stalkings, and abuse. Even those of us who are not direct victims are impacted by living in a world where such gender violence is both common and normalized or trivialized, where any woman may be harmed because she is a woman. This is a major force preventing women from being free and equal. Women Count USA provides a crucial service in documenting the width and breadth of this forever-overlooked crisis and showing the faces and sharing the stories of many of the murder victims."

"Through Women Count USA, we bear witness to the lives lost and harmed through our society's failure to stop the horrific toll of violence against women. We must not let these women pass into obscurity; we should know their faces, names and stories. We owe them that honour, at the least. More than that, we must actively give witness about them. The purpose of awareness must be to advocate for social and justice system changes that lead to safety for all women. Women Count USA is an important step in facing the magnitude of violence against women so that we will be compelled to stop it."

"The incredibly high number of women murdered in our country (the world) is staggering. The awareness raised by this page is incalculable. The attention to each individual woman/person and the fact that the many articles portraying these murders often don't speak about them by name, is testament to the importance of this information."

“Occasionally the story of a woman killed by her husband and killed by her ex-boyfriend or killed by a strange man while she was out on a run will capture the nation’s attention. We say how sad it is and then we forget. The Women Count project shows that these are not isolated incidents. They happen over and over again, all the time, and the people who are left behind are often all too quick to classify the incident as an aberration. We need to understand clearly the magnitude of this problem if women are ever to be safe.”

"Dawn Wilcox's commitment to putting the epidemic of woman-killing on the national agenda with Women Count USA is a major step forward. Violence against women occurs on a continuum, beginning with sexist language and culture, and reaches its logical conclusion in femicide.
If we do not document these tragic murders, we cannot know the scope of the problem. If we do not know the scope, we will never address it effectively, and women will continue to die. Women Count USA is doing the work of creating a more just and free world for women, and for men."

"As a survivor of domestic violence, I never felt seen; I was invisible, as was my pain. The work being done by WCUSA reminds me every day that I am not alone, and that is even more important to the women that are still suffering."