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This Glossary provides a central place to find the meaning of key terms in Gender-Based Violence (GBV) work and to access resources for further learning. It will grow and change as the GBV field does. If you find a term should be added or revised, please contact us at gbvln@uwo.ca

You can view the terms associated with a letter by selecting the letter below. Crossed out letters do not have any terms.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Weight Bias

Weight bias “refers to negative attitudes and views about obesity and about people with obesity.” [1] It is also known as fatphobia or anti-fat.

Weight bias can have negative mental health impacts on individuals including feelings of shame and blame, anxiety, depression, poor self esteem and more. [1]

It can lead to weight discrimination where biases about obesity impact how people with obesity are treated either personally or within systems and services. [1]

For instance, discrimination can manifest as negative behaviours towards people with obesity, public spaces that don’t accommodate for people in larger bodies, making assumptions about someone’s health, and inadequate medical treatment (e.g. being told that an unrelated health condition is due to being overweight). [2]

Such discrimination also allows power imbalances to occur leading to various forms of gender-based violence.

Learn More:

Footnotes:

[1] Obesity Canada. (n.d.) Weight Bias. Retrieved from https://obesitycanada.ca/weight-bias/

[2] Vandelinde, T. (2019). “Should You Be Wearing That?”: Fatphobia’s Connection to Rape Culture. Prevent Connect. Retrieved from https://www.preventconnect.org/2019/07/should-you-be-wearing-that-fatphobias-connection-to-rape-culture/

White Supremacy

“White supremacy generally refers to a nineteenth-century Euro-American doctrine that positioned specific racialized groups—‘whites’—and the societies they developed—“the West”—as superior to other peoples, nations, or communities.” [1] 

Accordingly, it is a system based on the assumption of the “rightness of Whiteness” in which political, economic and social systems result in White people having more privilege and power than racialized people. [1]

Although this doctrine is often associated with the discriminatory attitudes and behaviours of individuals and relatively small groups, critical race theorists have shown that it emerges from a broader system of domination in society:

“[White supremacy] does not require individuals to hold racist ideas but rests upon a structuring of the interests of white-dominated societies as superior to others and on a systemic exploitation and control of other racialized groups and societies. It operates to maintain and defend a system of white wealth, power, and privilege — an ideology and not a skin color — that also takes for granted the role of those who adhere to the ideology as national and global leaders, thinkers, creators, authorities, and decision makers… Moreover, white supremacy does not always require a distancing, exclusion, or hatred of the racial Other. When steeped in neoliberalism, it can express a longing for the presence of, or a desire to help, the Other, neither of which unsettle unequal racialized relations of power.” [2]

Footnotes:

[1] Kempadoo, K. (2015). The modern-day white (wo)man’s burden: Trends in anti-trafficking and anti-slavery campaigns. Journal of human trafficking.  1:1: 8-20.  P. 13. 

[2] Springtide Resources. (2008). An integrated anti-oppression framework for reviewing and developing policy: A toolkit for community service organizations. Retrieved from http://www.oaith.ca/assets/files/Publications/Intersectionality/integrated-tool-for-policy.pdf

 

White supremacist cisheteropatriarchy

“White supremacist cisheteropatriarchy describes how cisheteropatriarchy in, for example, Canada and the United States (U.S.), is shaped by the history and ongoing reality of settler colonialism, which forwards the notion that those who are not white, cisgender, heterosexual, able-bodied and minded, or class-privileged are less deserving of sexual pleasure and protection from GBV than cis, straight, able-bodied and minded, affluent men.” [1]

Learn more:

Footnotes:

[1] Wright, JJ. (2024). Gender-based Violence as the Systemic Erasure of Queer and Trans Joy: Understanding 2SLGBTQ+ Youth Experiences. Learning Network Issue 43. Centre for Research & Education on Violence Against Women & Children. https://www.gbvlearningnetwork.ca/our-work/issuebased_newsletters/issue-43/index.html

Workplace Violence

“The exercise of physical force by a person against a worker, in a workplace, that causes or could cause physical injury to the worker. It also includes an attempt to exercise physical force against a worker in a workplace, that could cause physical injury to the worker; and a statement or behaviour that a worker could reasonably interpret as a threat to exercise physical force against the worker, in a workplace, that could cause physical injury to the worker. Every employer in Ontario must prepare and review, at least annually, a policy on workplace violence, as required by the OHSA [section  32.0.1 (1) (a) and (c)]. The workplace violence policy should show an employer’s commitment to protecting workers from workplace violence; address violence from all possible sources; outline the roles and responsibilities of the workplace parties in supporting the policy and program; and, be dated and signed by the highest level of management of the employer or at the workplace as appropriate.” [1]


Learn More:

Footnotes:

[1] Ministry of Labour. (2016). Workplace violence and harassment: Understanding the law. Toronto: Government of Ontario, p. 6-7. Retrieved from https://files.ontario.ca/wpvh_guide_english.pdf

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