The famous actress and dedicated activist wrote a powerful essay for TIME, in which she called the COVID-19 pandemic the ‘latest excuse’ for abusers to use violence against women. Here’s what she had to say!
Just like many others who are working on changing the world for the better, Angelina Jolie is well aware that the domestic violence concerns have increased a lot ever since people have started the quarantine.
After all, there is just nowhere the victims can even go to escape their tormentors for even one minute while in lockdown, so the situation is probably worse than ever for such cases.
Of course, Jolie made sure to point out that the pandemic is definitely not the only cause for the threats against women all over the world, including domestic violence but also cases of genital mutilation, which are usually motivated by religious and customary beliefs.
‘While the virus has inflamed inequities in societies, it did not create them. Humans—not disease—are responsible for unjust laws and systems, and racial and social inequality. The coronavirus is just the latest excuse for all that we didn’t fix ourselves,’ Angelina Jolie explained, going on to cite how only in the United States, ‘more than three women a day on average were murdered by their husbands or boyfriends.’
And since the presidential election is right around the corner, Jolie stressed that protecting women against violence shouldn’t be a ‘partisan issue.’
‘The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) was allowed to lapse in February 2019 and has yet to be reauthorized. Only Joe Biden has committed to the authorization of VAWA in his first 100 days in office and to America leading in the fight against gender-based violence globally,’ she wrote, making it very clear who she’s going to be voting for in November as well as why.