Vanina Escales

Vanina Escales believes in activism. She believes in speaking up for those who can’t speak up for themselves.

“We go out into the streets for those who died, those who died fighting for the rights that we still don't have and those who died without the opportunity of defending themselves,” she says.

Vanina and her fellow journalists grew tired of the endless stories of murdered women. They were fed up with the persistent violence against women, the inaction and passive response.

“In the face of that, we said STOP! We need to say STOP! With a simple, clear and common language, we said, not one [woman] less,” she says.

That’s how Vanina and other women journalists and writers founded Ni Una Menos [Not one less] – a campaign to give visibility to all forms of violence against women, including economic, physical and sexual violence. It spread through Argentina and the entire Latin America region and then the rest of the world, calling attention to the everyday sexism in homes and communities.

“Certain behaviours stopped being invisible and they stopped being normalized. We will rebel against this over and over again, until it actually stops happening,” Vanina says.

The best way, according to Vanina, to end gender-based violence and sexual violence is to tear down the systems that have allowed inequalities to persist.

“Sexual crimes are crimes of power, and rape is part of the pedagogy with which a patriarchal moral order is maintained. Preventing sexual violence must be based on deep social change. Culture must change and the roles within it,” she says.

For meaningful culture change, intersectionality matters. “What I know and see is the difference between the access to rights of women, lesbians, and trans people in all parts of the world... There is a combination of factors that lead to more inequality, the lack of economic, social or cultural rights, or access to health care…[and] the lack of sexual and reproductive rights of women and girls.”

To Vanina, building the future we all deserve means equality for all, regardless of gender identity, background, race, religion, sexual orientation or nationality.

“There’s no real equality unless there are substantive equalities for all women,” she says. “Not only [for] white women, but for indigenous women, women of African descent, and trans women.