About Us

To mobilize community-based experiences and evidence-informed resources from an intersectional, anti-oppressive, feminist and critical race theory, analysis, and practice.

The Learning and Knowledge Exchange will organize and facilitate inter-sectoral collaboration and sharing that moves away from the “universal woman” notion. It understands that women and people of marginalized genders in Canada have intersecting social, cultural and political identities that create their unique experiences of discrimination and abuse. 

To end gender-based violence and to achieve gender equity in British Columbia, and beyond, through community-based, intersectional learning and knowledge sharing.

The Gender Equity Learning and Knowledge Exchange was initially driven by the vision and guidance of a Provincial Advisory Group comprised of leaders from various organizations in British Columbia with regional and provincial interest in addressing gender inequities and ending gender-based violence.

Battered Women’s Support Services (BWSS) provides education, advocacy, and support services to assist survivors of violence.

We work from a feminist perspective to eliminate gender-based violence and to promote gender equity in all individual, relational, community and societal conditions. The founding women at BWSS recognized that gender-based violence and gender-based oppression do not take place only between two individuals in isolation. Rather, violence occurs in a social context and a worldview that systemically reinforces the power of some people to oppress others. Our approach, grounded in intersectional, critical race, and decolonizing feminism, is central to our core mission and informs our service provision, training program, systemic advocacy, and community-based research.

For over forty years, we have been working towards ending violence against cis and trans women, girls, femmes, transfeminine, and non-binary survivors of violence. Many of the survivors we support are racialized women, Indigenous women, newcomer immigrant and refugee women, young girls who have experienced sexualized violence, LGBTQ2S+ survivors of violence, seniors and elders, and survivors in the interior and northern regions of the province.

BWSS applies community-based knowledge, theoretical frameworks, and academic and participatory research in all areas of our mission and mandate. Our various collaborations, initiatives, and training programs help prepare competent professionals and engage policy-makers through understanding intersectionality and the need to advance human rights and gender, racial, social and economic justice across systems.

Financial support for this initiative provided by My Sister’s Closet and Vancouver Foundation.