Petition to Facebook - NCWNZ needs your urgent support!

The National Council of Women of NZ, in association with the White Ribbon Campaign, has launched a petition calling for Facebook to immediately remove pages which promote sexual and other violence against women.

The petition is a response to Facebook’s decision to allow pages which promote violence against women. These pages include, ‘Punching pregnant women in the stomach,’ ‘You know she's playing hard to get when you're chasing her down an alleyway’, and ‘Riding your girlfriend softly ‘cause you don't want to wake her up.’

Facebook allows these pages to remain online despite their violation of the site’s Terms of Service which clearly prohibit users from posting material which is hateful, threatening, incites violence or contains gratuitous violence. There are also rules against bullying, intimidating or harassing other users, and using Facebook to do anything discriminatory.

But Facebook has refused to remove a proliferation of pro-rape and other pages promoting violence against women, despite receiving numerous complaints.

As we’re all aware, violence against women is an issue in New Zealand. Statistics tell us that one in four women will experience sexual assault, and one in three women experience partner violence in their lifetime.

Please support our campaign by signing the petition and letting your networks and contacts know about it. We’d love you to sign it straight away because we’re shortly going to send out a media release and the first thing the media will do is check to see how many names are on it!

Its very easy to sign, go to http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/violenceagainstwomenonfacebook/ and add your name. It’s quick and all you need is a valid email address.

Once you have signed it, you will be taken to a page requesting donations. This is an ipetitions request generated automatically by the website– it is not an NCWNZ request so click the cross to get out of the page. Your signature has already been recorded.

To see a list of those who have signed, click the Signatures tab under the heading in the Green Box.

Towards the top of the petition page you can link it to your own Facebook page (click on Like) and you can email it to others (click on Send to open a new email).