Women's Freedom Center

05/04/2026

SAVE THE DATE

Exciting news! Grab your paddle and mark your calendar!

Join us for a day of fun, friendly competition, and community at our 1st Annual Coed Pickleball Tournament!

Saturday, September 19, 2026
Living Memorial Park

More details coming soon… you won’t want to miss it.

04/22/2026

Join us for Femmes & Thems Collage Club — a creative, no-pressure space for survivors of intimate partner violence to gather, create, and breathe. Our next gathering is May 1st.

No art experience needed. Just bring yourself. We'll provide magazines, scissors, glue, and good company.

04/13/2026

Throughout the year, our Youth Advocate is in local schools—providing education, support, and creating safe spaces for young people to learn, ask questions, and build healthy relationships.

This work doesn’t just happen in April—it’s ongoing, intentional, and rooted in prevention and empowerment.

If your school or community group is interested in partnering with us, we’d love to connect. Reach out to learn more about bringing this important work into your space. 802-257-7364.

Together, we can create safer, more informed communities.

03/29/2026

Starting next week!

03/29/2026

One day. 84,146 victims, survivors, and children reached out for help -- and someone was there. That snapshot of a single day tells you everything about how vast the need is and how extraordinary the people doing this work are.

"All across the country, dedicated organizations support people seeking safety from abusive relationships. Each year, the National Network to End Domestic Violence tallies the impact of these programs over the course of a single day.

The 20th annual NNEDV Domestic Violence Counts Report, released Wednesday, surveyed 85 percent of domestic violence services in the United States about their activities on September 10, 2025.

It found that 84,146 victims of violence were helped, with the bulk of assistance related to housing, including access to emergency shelters. Of those receiving aid, 33,009 were children. A significant portion of programs provided legal support, transportation, bilingual services or mental health support.

Here are some of the ways the organizations took steps that day to end violence:
-> 53,590 adults and children were provided with housing
-> 23,747 people contacted a local, statewide or national domestic violence hotline
-> 18,843 people were trained on domestic violence prevention or early intervention

But the need exceeds what these programs are able to provide: 13,018 requests for help went unmet. The majority of these gaps were related to housing, which is limited and expensive.

Domestic violence impacts people of all genders. Four out of every 10 women say they’ve experienced violence at the hands of an intimate partner, according to a survey from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Among men, a quarter reported being victims; over half of transgender people said the same.

Intimate partner violence can be deadly, particularly for women: More than half of all women homicide victims are killed by a current or former partner, according to a CDC study.

The Trump administration has made it harder for domestic violence nonprofits to support survivors by introducing changes including restrictions on eligibility, threatening access for immigrant and transgender survivors.

Domestic violence services remain operational. Confidential, anonymous help is available 24/7 through at 1-800-799-7233 or online." -- Jasmine Mithani, The 19th News

For a potentially life-saving book for older teens and adults about the early warning signs of abusive relationships, myths about abusive personalities, and how to get help, we highly recommend "Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men" at https://www.amightygirl.com/why-does-he-do-that

To teach younger children -- girls and boys alike -- about asserting their own boundaries and respecting the boundaries of others, we highly recommend "Let's Talk About Body Boundaries, Consent, and Respect" for ages 4 to 7 (https://www.amightygirl.com/body-boundaries) and "Consent (for Kids!)" for ages 6 to 10 (https://www.amightygirl.com/consent-for-kids)

For two excellent books about a tween girls' experience with sexual harassment - both for 10 and up - check out "Maybe He Just Likes You" (https://www.amightygirl.com/maybe-he-just-likes-you) and "That's What Friends Do" (https://www.amightygirl.com/that-s-what-friends-do)

If you’re a parent concerned that your daughter may be in an unhealthy relationship, check out the books “But I Love Him: Protecting Your Teen Daughter from Controlling, Abusive Relationships” (https://www.amightygirl.com/but-i-love-him) and “Saving Beauty From The Beast: How to Protect Your Daughter from an Unhealthy Relationship” (https://www.amightygirl.com/saving-beauty-from-the-beast)

03/28/2026

A recent study has confirmed what every woman instinctively knows: men and women experience the simple act of walking through the world in fundamentally different ways -- with women performing an invisible, automatic threat assessment that begins the moment they step outside alone.

Researchers at Brigham Young University showed nearly 600 college students photographs of campus walking paths at four Utah universities and asked them to click on the areas that stood out most as they imagined walking through those spaces alone. They turned the responses into heat maps -- and the differences were stark.

Men looked at the path ahead. The destination. A streetlight, a garbage can, the walkway in front of them. Women scanned the periphery -- the bushes, the dark corners, the spaces alongside the path where someone could be hiding. As lead researcher Robert Chaney put it, they "expected to see some differences, but we didn't expect to see them so contrasting. It's really visually striking."

The gap widened dramatically at night and in what the researchers call "high-entrapment" settings -- narrow bridges, walled paths, spaces where escape would be difficult. In those conditions, the heat maps were so structurally different that the two groups were essentially looking at entirely different environments.

And there is good reason for that vigilance. Women aged 18-24 are four times more likely to experience sexual violence than women of other age groups. Among college women, there are two sexual assaults for every one robbery -- a complete inversion of the ratio in the general population. That scanning isn't paranoia. It's pattern recognition built on a lifetime of lived experience.

But the study reveals something beyond individual behavior -- it reveals who our shared spaces are built for. Those walkways, bridges, and campus paths were designed by people who see space the way the men in this study do: eyes forward, focused on the destination. A narrow walled bridge with a single light at the end works fine for the person who looks straight ahead. It doesn't work for the person whose eyes go immediately to the dark edges on either side.

It's not that anyone set out to make public spaces feel unsafe for women. It's that many of the people making design decisions rarely had to scan for danger themselves -- so they never thought to design for those who do. The threat isn't just in the shadows. It's in the fact that no one considered the shadows at all.

Co-author Alyssa Baer said her hope is that having concrete data will start conversations that lead to meaningful action in designing safer spaces. Chaney went further: "Why can't we live in a world where women don't have to think about these things?"

--> We want to hear your thoughts. Do these findings match your own experience? What do you do when you're walking alone at night -- and have you ever tried to explain it to someone who didn't understand? What do you notice that the men in your life don't?

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For a groundbreaking look at how a world built on male-default data -- from urban planning to medicine to car safety -- systematically disadvantages women, we highly recommend "Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men" for ages 14 and up at https://bookshop.org/a/8011/9781419735219 (Bookshop) and https://amzn.to/2Qzqg8H (Amazon)

Urban design isn't the only area where sexist bias affects research; for two excellent books for adult readers about how medical systems often fail women, we recommend the new "Unwell Women: Misdiagnosis and Myth in a Man-Made World" (https://www.amightygirl.com/unwell-women) and "Ask Me About My Uterus: A Quest to Make Doctor's Believe in Women's Pain" (https://www.amightygirl.com/ask-me-about-my-uterus)

To read the full study, "Gender-Based Heat Map Images of Campus Walking Settings: A Reflection of Lived Experience," published in the journal Violence and Gender, visit https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10951437/

To read BYU's coverage of the study, including additional heat map images, visit https://news.byu.edu/intellect/study-visually-captures-hard-truth-walking-home-at-night-is-not-the-same-for-women

03/06/2026

Looking for a way to celebrate Women’s History Month with the young people in your life? Stories are a powerful way to spark curiosity, build empathy, and introduce the incredible women who have shaped our world.

A Mighty Girl has gathered a list of inspiring books on women's history for young people featuring trailblazers, changemakers, scientists, artists, activists, and everyday she-roes whose stories continue to move history forward.

Explore the reading list here:

The world's largest collection of books, toys, and movies for parents, teachers, and others dedicated to raising smart, confident, and courageous girls.

03/05/2026