Every year on November 25, over 60 countries celebrate White Ribbon Day — an annual campaign dedicated to ending violence against women and girls. And the movement is just as much tied to justice for women as it is to mentoring young men about compassionate masculinity.
“For too long men’s roles in this equation have primarily been seen as perpetrators or potential perpetrators of violence against women, but relatively little has been done to understand the root causes and how that understanding can be leveraged as a primary prevention strategy,” the White Ribbon Campaign stated in a report on gender-based violence.
“We are just at the leading edge of connecting our understanding of men and masculinities with prevention work, and expanding the positive roles men can play to recruit new allies, new approaches, and new paradigms to the effort to end violence against women.”
By targeting men in their campaign, the movement marries early intervention and education in programs aimed towards young men around the world.
As they work to dismantle toxic masculinity, they have also long championed the male allies who speak up against gender-based violence.
That support was on full display at the Milton Keynes art exhibit in London last fall.
For the White Ribbon exhibition, artist and photojournalist Claudia Janke captured the portraits of 16 men in intimate black-and-white photographs. Every single one had been nominated by women in their communities.
The exhibit included subjects like Sal Naseem, a former regional director of the Independent Office for Police Conduct, who had dedicated his career to investigating police-perpetrated violence against women.
"We live in a time of a national emergency. A fifth of all recorded crime in England and Wales involves men's violence against women and girls," he told the BBC. "Too often it's just women advocating for themselves when they're subjected to sexism and misogyny.”
Naseem has seen how women’s voices often go unheard in male-dominated spaces. And until radical, systemic change overhauls the status quo, men like him have to continue using their voice to speak up on their behalf.
"But when a man steps in and intervenes and calls that out or supports the women, it's really powerful,” Naseem acknowledged. “"That sort of allyship makes an imprint."
For Janke, the White Ribbon project was eye-opening — in the most hopeful way possible.
"You keep hearing the statistics about how many women experience harassment in public places,” she said. "It's seven out of 10 women, and I'm one of those statistics. I wanted to actually meet people who stand up for us in these situations.”
“The men in this exhibition are doing exactly that,” she said. “They are amazing role models."
A version of this article originally appeared in the 2026 Feminist Edition of the Goodnewspaper.
Header image via William Fortunato
