Balance the scales: Rethinking justice for women
As often happens in the lead up to International Women’s Day (IWD), we find ourselves reflecting on the state of gender equality across the world.
Are women better off than this time last year?
Do we have even further to go to achieve equality and justice?
What continue to be the main barriers preventing access to rights and resources?
How can we better support women in ways that are meaningful, not symbolic?
If we’re going to take a moment of your time in an already crowded March calendar, we want it to count. So here are a few reflections on this year’s IWD theme, Balance the Scales, and why ensuring fair, inclusive and accessible justice for every woman and girl remains as urgent as ever.
Court is in session
When we think of justice, we often picture criminal courts, convictions, sentences, and consequences for wrongdoing.
In a world where one in three women worldwide will experience physical or sexual violence in her lifetime, accountability matters and impunity must be challenged.
But here is the uncomfortable truth: most women who experience violence will never see the inside of a courtroom. Most will never seek formal help or justice. And for many women, legal systems feel distant, intimidating, inaccessible, or downright dangerous.
This tells us something.
Because for most women, justice plays out everywhere except inside the legal system.
It tells us that there continues to be an immense gap between legal protections on paper and real outcomes for survivors in practice.
It tells us that seeing “accountability as punishment” rarely makes women safer, but potentially reproduces the cycle of violence over and over again.
It tells us that legal systems are not neutral. In fact, many were built to exclude, silence and control certain groups of people, including women, in the first place.
And it reminds us that if we don’t name these inequities, we are only ever going to treat symptoms and not create the widescale change that is needed.
A broader definition of justice
What if our definition of justice started to look a little different?
As a grassroots organisation, alongside formal systems, we see justice as something more practical, structural, economic, and collective.
We know it rarely begins with a judge. It begins with shifting power. With women and communities coming together. With equipping women with the tools and resources to take action in whatever way feels right. With transforming unjust systems from the inside out and the outside in.
Because, if justice is only defined by what happens after harm, are we not already too late?
In this broader sense, justice includes:
• Knowing your rights before they are violated
• Having the income to leave an unsafe situation
• Having childcare so you can attend training or a legal appointment
• Having access to sanitary products so you can attend school
• Having a loan to start a new life or access your own money
• Centring survivor-led solutions and having a community that believes you
• Investing in housing, healthcare and education as violence prevention
• Building accountability models that do not rely solely on policing or incarceration
In this way, justice starts to look like: having real options.
The impossible trade-offs
Right now for millions of women around the world, the barriers to justice are too high — financially, socially, culturally, and practically. Across communities, women are still forced into impossible trade-offs that put justice so far out of reach.
This is where we need to balance the scales.
Because no one should ever have to choose between justice or safety. Between justice or food on the table, justice or medical care, justice or belonging.
True justice should not be a luxury, and it should never require sacrifice. And yet, too often it does. Especially because violence does not occur in a vacuum.
Gender inequality intersects with poverty, racism, displacement, disability, colonial legacies, and economic exclusion. These overlapping systems compound and shape who is most at risk of harm, and who is least likely to be heard or believed when they do speak up or pursue justice.
If we only respond at the point of crisis, we miss the broader picture. So what needs to happen?
Balancing the scales, starting with community
Since 2013, The Global Women’s Project has worked with long-time grassroots partners to shift the conditions that make injustice and inequality possible in the first place.
To build community spaces where women can gather safely.
To provide access to legal information and rights education.
To fund skills training and micro-loans that create financial independence.
To support counselling and leadership development.
To strengthen networks so women are not navigating harm alone.
In Nepal, that looks like Rural Women’s Hubs supporting thousands of women with business skills, legal knowledge, loans and community connection.
In Burundi, it looks like survivors of gender-based violence building co-operatives, generating income and reclaiming agency through business development and market access.
In many ways, this is justice in its most practical form. The kind of work that rarely makes headlines, but is pivotal to strengthening communities, reducing harm and building resilience.
A way to give women access to resources, networks and knowledge, not only to balance the scales but to tip them entirely and build something better.
The kind of world we want to live in
We want to live in a world where women can have justice and…
Justice and economic independence.
Justice and education.
Justice and healthcare.
Justice and community.
A world where reporting violence does not mean risking homelessness or social isolation.
Where seeking legal support does not mean sacrificing your children’s school fees or not being able to put food on the table.
Where escaping harm does not mean entering poverty or leaving your entire community behind.
Balancing the scales means making these options real.
It means building systems where justice is accessible, affordable and culturally safe.
It means ensuring women have the income, information and networks to act.
It means investing in prevention alongside intervention and response.
This is the world we are working toward. And it is the world your support helps us build.