A strategy to eliminate violence against women and girls (VAWG) should be met with rounds of tumultuous applause. Yet, while there is much to celebrate in the Freedom from Violence and Abuse Strategy, we must press pause on the plaudits.
When the strategy was published on December 18, 2025, the organisation End Violence Against Women, or EVAW, released a statement welcoming many of the changes and implementations proposed. However, it's clear that, even at this early stage, the ten-year strategy is likely to run into problems.
Among concerns raised on funding clarity and undercover policing, EVAW calls for a "more robust firewall for migrant survivors that would meaningfully ensure data is not shared with immigration enforcement."
“This will require sustained leadership and robust accountability across government, alongside urgent action to fix the chronic underfunding of specialist services. Without this, women and girls will continue to pay the price.”
Further warnings were raised by the organisation Decrim Now, who tell Glamour that, while they are pleased to see that the VAWG strategy (volume two) commits to a review of laws on prostitution and how they protect women, the implementation of the strategy must place the voices of sex workers at the centre of policies and laws on sex work.
"Policy and law development must be intersectional, reflecting the increased risk of harm faced by LGBTQ people, particularly trans people, migrant women, and women of colour, who are all overrepresented in sex work," a spokesperson for Decrim Now explains.
This view is echoed by Madelaine Thomas, founder of Image Angel, and sex worker.
"Ultimately, [the government] need to support decrim," she tells Glamour, “Because when people who do this job aren't seen as valid, then our experiences aren't considered valid. So our concerns around that experience aren't considered a concern.”
Galop, an LGBT+ charity specialising in support for domestic abuse, sexual violence, hate crime, and conversion practices, warned that “The strategy’s focus on support and prevention must involve and include LGBT+ victims and survivors if the government is to be effective in reaching its aim of halving VAWG in ten years.”
“It's not only a violation of her body; it’s a violation of her faith.”
It's noteworthy that, while there may be overlaps with other strategic intentions in both government strategy documents, Trans+ people aren't mentioned once, and LGBT+ people are only mentioned once in both documents directly.
“The government speaks of providing clarity, and the new VAWG strategy speaks of education. But instead, we’re met with erasure,” says Marty Davies, founder of Trans+ History Week.
She tells Glamour that, while Trans+ History Week is pleased to see a focus on violence against women and girls, they'd further welcome a strategy that seeks to understand gender-based violence not through a binary lens, "but through the lens of misogyny and how that informs violence against all of us, including trans women and girls and non-binary people.”
An urgent recommendation, considering a 2025 study reported that Trans+ people consistently experience more discrimination than cisgender LGB folks across Europe. Furthermore, the Journal of Gender Studies in 2025 pointed out that, while Trans+ people make up a small percentage of the population, they experience disproportionate levels of sexual violence.
We’re all facing down the future of sexual violence in app form.
Marginalised women are society's shock absorbers; this has to change
This renewed focus on eliminating VAWG is an exciting prospect for the many campaigners and organisations who have been tirelessly working behind the scenes for decades to improve the lives of women and girls across the nation. However, there is an undercurrent to this cautious optimism and tentative celebration.
"As we have seen with the recent case of Grok, VAWG is not about porn or nudity: it's about power," says Dr Carolina Are, digital criminologist at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Dr Are explains that women, often marginalised women, are society's shock absorbers. And that while there are many good things about the strategy, it is still heteronormative and overlooks the negative consequences of short-term fixes on marginalised groups.
"It's all lip service," says Megan Prescott, actor, writer, director and OnlyFans creator and Chair of National Ugly Mugs, an organisation dedicated to ending all forms of violence against sex work. "This is all to protect 'the right kind of women'."
Prescott expresses profound worry at the prospect of the UK adopting the Nordic model for sex work. A model that has been linked to increases in VAWG and expressly condemned by the London School of Economics.
"I worry that this seems like another smoke screen to more harshly punish sex workers for something that is not a problem they created," Prescott says, before explaining that for VAWG strategies to live up to the expectations of elimination, they must be truly intersectional in their approach.
A Glamour campaign pushed the government to introduce this vital legislation in 2025 – why did it take so long to become law?
Intersectionality is the heartbeat of sustainable and profound social change – so why is it missing?
Intersectionality is a term originally coined by Dr Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989 to describe the unique oppression felt by Black Women. "Intersectionality is a lens through which you can see where power comes and collides, where it interlocks and intersects," she told Columbia Law School in 2017.
The social theory and framework have evolved since then, but the premise remains the same: that the dimensions of our identity, such as our race, class, gender identity, and religious beliefs, overlap in ways that elevate us from some prejudices, while exposing us to others. And, that depending on how and where those aspects of ourselves fold to meet one another, there are "distinct advantages or disadvantages, benefits or harms".
This speaks to the uniqueness of prejudice, as well as the collective impact of shared experiences between marginalised groups of people.
If the government intends to make good on their promise to end VAWG, then it must include every woman and girl. As it currently stands, Trans women, cisgender LGB people and sex workers haven't been included nearly enough, and the omission of their unique experiences of VAWG could even harm them further.
"Sex workers have overwhelmingly said that current criminalisation harms them," a spokesperson for Decrim Now says, before adding that more than half (54%) of respondents to a recent Decrim Now survey of sex workers said that the most important message they wanted to tell the government was that the criminalisation of sex work harms them.
Equally, with Trans populations most at risk of polyvictimisation, specialist care and thought must be given to Trans+ survivors of domestic violence and VAWG.
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If you want to stand up for women, all women. Then you know what to do. Write to your MP and demand intersectional frameworks that are inclusive of Trans and LGB cisgender people and sex workers.
Katie Baskerville is a feminist author and journalist. Her book Beyond Belief: A Defence of Gossip and the Women Who Do It is published by HQ (Harper Collins) on 12 March, 2026.
Gender-based violence is not inevitable.
