People Before Profit representative and women’s rights campaigner Maeve O'Neill said,
"People Before Profit send our sincere sympathies to the children, family and friends of Amy Doherty.
We feel a weight of both sadness and anger at the loss of another woman's life to gender based violence. Only two weeks ago, on the weekend of International Women's Day, Ellie Flanagan was also murdered.
Thirty women have been murdered since 2020, making the North of Ireland one of the most dangerous places to be a woman in Europe.
At the most basic level, men should stop murdering women. The calls for men to step-up and do more to challenge all forms of misogyny are absolutely right. Attitudes must be challenged and changed.
And we know many men abhor Amy's murder and misogyny. We urge our male comrades, friends, family, co-workers, teammates and neighbours to do more and all they can to stand with us and for us.
However, undoing the scourge of gender based violence will only happen if its structural underpinnings are completely uprooted. Stormont's response to violence against women and girls has been loud but lacking in substance. The Stormont Executive has been content to provide minimal funding for overburdened community organisations to raise awareness and asks women to have faith in the PSNI, a thoroughly misogynistic organisation itself from top to bottom.
Stormont has shown no sign that it will tackle the systemic causes of gender based violence. We still live in a society dripping in sexism, a society that undervalues and mistreats women.
Amy was a care worker, one of the most undervalued and lowest paid jobs in our society, a job predominantly done by women, a job that is one of the most essential and important jobs in our communities, a job that does not deserve poverty pay.
The Stormont Executive has refused to implement the Safe Leave Act to support those facing domestic abuse. The political resistance to comprehensive Relationship and Sexuality Education (RSE) in our schools must end. Learning about healthy relationships, consent, sexual health and online safety is an absolute requirement for children and young adults for fundamental change.
Stormont has failed once again to implement an anti-poverty strategy or address the housing crisis, both of which have a disproportionate impact on women.Women bear the brunt of poverty in our society. Lone parent households here have a 40% rate of poverty. Living in poverty alongside the housing crisis means that it is harder for women to leave violent relationships. The economic violence at the hands of the state on ordinary people perpetuates domestic violence.
Our women's shelters have been underfunded for decades. They go above and beyond, working beyond capacity to support women, yet a pittance of funding goes their way.
Medical misogyny is rife across the health service, from inadequate women's health care, such as the woeful lack of provision for endometriosis to the experience that many women have of not being heard or believed. For decades women lacked bodily autonomy, were denied free, safe, legal and local abortion. This meant women did not have control over our own bodies, teaching men that women were inferior and that they had power over us.
Horrific wars and genocidal violence around the world are supported and celebrated by some in government. When this violence is glorified and normalised, how can we expect our communities not to be violent? We have just witnessed the DUP and UUP go to the White House to stand and smile with Donald Trump, an open misogynist and central associate of Epstein, and the man leading the charge to undo decades of hard fought women’s rights, including the right to choose in the US. We cannot forget Trump did his utmost to impose the degenerate Conor McGregor as the next President of Ireland. What a day that would have been for women’s rights and standing against gender based violence in Ireland!
Trump greenlighted the bombing of an all girls school in Iran and epitomises violence against women and girls. Going to the White House to fawn over the misogynist-in-chief and then condemning gender based violence in the same breath is rank hypocrisy. We must address the systemic rot in our society that allows Elon Musk and parasitic billionaires to promote the likes of Andrew Tate and Conor McGregor and profit from their warped view of women and girls.
It is not wrong to despair at what has happened to Amy and Ellie and what so many women and girls face on a daily basis. Misogyny is not just a women’s issue, uprooting it will be liberating for everyone of all genders.
Working-class households and communities will benefit the most from genuine equality for women. Billionaires and government facilitating them will resist challenges to the structures allowing sexism to flourish. Only a bottom-up movement can deliver the change we need."