“Wake Up To A Good Cause” – Focus on ending violence against women

Women’s Aid Organisation (WAO)
Press statement, 7 March 2015

For more information: Siti Hazwani, hazwani.wao@gmail.com

This month, Women’s Aid Organisation and Marie Claire are teaming up for a social media campaign, “Marie Claire Wake Up To A Good Cause”.

This campaign aims to spread awareness on violence against women and raise funds to help WAO provide vital services for domestic violence survivors. For every post of an out-of-bed “selfie” that is uploaded to Instagram or Twitter using the hashtags #marieclairemalaysia and #mcwakeup2agoodcause, Marie Claire will donate RM10 to WAO. 

We are extremely heartened by the support this campaign has gained, led by empowered and prominent women. 

Unfortunately, some have chosen to ignore the main message of the campaign and instead have used this campaign to denigrate women. In particular, we are deeply disturbed by the misogynistic attacks against Dyana Sofya, who contributed a picture of herself towards the campaign. She was accused of exploiting her body to collect donations.

Ending violence against women is a human right issue and this campaign calls upon women and men to start their day supporting a great cause and to demonstrate this support through this campaign.

The fact is that those denigrating Dyana Sofya are doing so because they are so accustomed to sexualising and objectifying women, rather than seeing women as human beings with equal worth to men. It is this very attitude that perpetuates a society where violence against women is accepted.

We urge all parties to focus on the campaign’s aim, which is to support our efforts to provide shelter, counselling, and social work services to domestic violence survivors 

To contribute, you can take your own-out-of-bed selfie, and post it on Twitter or Instagram using the hashtags #marieclairemalaysia and #mcwakeup2agoodcause.

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Women’s Aid Organisation (WAO) provides temporary shelter, social work and counselling services for domestic violence survivors and advocates for women’s human rights. Call our counselling line at 03 7956 3488 or SMS TINA at 018 988 8058 if you or someone you know is experiencing abuse. Together, we change lives.