By Joelle Piercy, LSW, MSS, MLSP
Safe+Sound Somerset Director of Outreach and Community Engagement
Women’s History Month invites us to honor the women who have shaped our world and expanded our understanding of safety, dignity, and freedom — in our homes, classrooms, workplaces, and community spaces. It is also a reminder to reflect on how this work continues through each new generation. This year, we look at how Safe+Sound Somerset’s Choices, Boundaries, and Consent (CBC) Framework helps us understand that progress and imagine the world we are building together.
When women gain freedom, everyone gains freedom.
Honoring women’s choices strengthens families and communities.
Respecting women’s boundaries helps shift our norms toward safety.
Centering consent teaches future generations what healthy love looks like.
The benefits ripple outward, reaching all of us.
CHOICES: Expanding What Freedom Looks Like
Women have fought and continue to fight for the power to make meaningful choices about their lives, bodies, education, and economic opportunities. These moments appear throughout our history and illuminate how far-reaching the impact of choice can be:
- Choosing civic participation: At Seneca Falls in 1848, women refused silence and demanded political rights and human dignity, beginning a broader push for autonomy and visibility.
- Choosing education and opportunity: Title IX, passed in 1972, reimagined access to education. It opened doors for girls and women across classrooms, campuses, and athletic fields, creating places where belonging and bodily autonomy could take root.
- Choosing safety and support: The 1970s saw the creation of rape crisis centers and the first domestic violence shelters. These lifelines were built from the belief that survivors deserved real options and the freedom to seek safety.
- Choosing to live authentically: LGBTQIA+ and trans women have modeled a powerful truth: freedom must include the ability to live openly, to form relationships on one’s own terms, and to access affirming services without fear of discrimination. When we embrace inclusivity, the realm of choice expands for everyone.
At Safe+Sound Somerset, we witness the impact of these legacies every day. Survivors thrive when they have the freedom to choose their next steps, the resources to support those decisions, and partner organizations that trust and respect their right to make decisions for themselves.
BOUNDARIES: Challenging Systems That Restrict Safety
Boundary‑setting is one of the oldest expressions of resistance and one of the clearest indicators of freedom. Throughout history, women have insisted that their boundaries – physical, emotional, social, and structural – should be heard and honored.
- Naming violence and demanding protection: Advocates and survivors refused to accept domestic violence as a ‘private matter.’ Cases like Tracey Thurman’s in 1984 forced institutions to confront the consequences of failing to protect victims and helped drive coordinated system changes.
- Criminalizing marital rape: By 1993, every state had formally recognized that marriage does not erase the right to bodily autonomy. This change reshaped cultural expectations around consent and safety.
- Building coordinated responses: In the 1980s and 1990s, law enforcement, healthcare settings, courts, and service agencies worked to create community-wide responses to domestic and sexual violence that centered survivor needs and voices. These efforts made clear that honoring boundaries is a shared responsibility.
Today, boundaries show up in everyday places: a survivor developing a safety plan, a hospital making a warm handoff to advocacy, a school enforcing policies that protect students, or a workplace offering leave so someone can safely leave an abusive relationship. Each reinforces the message that safety is both personal and structural.
CONSENT: From Silence to a Shared Cultural Value
Consent is a modern term, but the idea that people deserve control over their own bodies has been at the heart of women’s advocacy for generations. What has changed is how openly and collectively we are now willing to name and protect that right.
- Rape crisis hotlines and survivor advocacy: In the 1970s, grassroots activists reframed sexual violence from a personal failing to a community responsibility.
- Campus safety and equity: Policies like the Clery Act and strengthened Title IX enforcement pushed institutions to take reports of sexual harassment and assault seriously and to create safer learning environments.
- Culture‑change movements: Movements like #MeToo brought long-silent truths into public view and helped communities understand consent within the context of power, coercion, and accountability.
When survivors learn about consent, or when teens in Safe+Sound Somerset programs ask about pressure, digital consent, or mixed signals, they are stepping into a living history. Consent is not a one-time question. It is an ongoing practice of respect, communication, and freedom from pressure that shapes relationships, communities, and systems.
Why Women’s Freedom Frees Everyone
- Children learn early on what healthy love and respect look like.
- Teens inherit norms that make boundaries expected and consent non-negotiable.
- LGBTQIA+ and trans women are affirmed and protected in ways that strengthen safety for all survivors.
- Workplaces and schools become more equitable and more responsive to harm.
- Survivors are believed, supported, and met with dignity in ways that interrupt cycles of violence.
Women’s History Month reminds us that every step women have taken toward freedom, every right gained, every boundary defended, and every movement sparked, has created a safer, more compassionate world for everyone. Their courage became the foundation we stand on today, and it continues to guide the work ahead.
At Safe+Sound Somerset, we walk alongside survivors and communities as this vision becomes real, one conversation, one policy, and one act of courage at a time.
If you or someone you know needs support
Safe+Sound Somerset’s 24/7 Call and Text Helpline is available at 866-685-1122. You are not alone. Your choices matter. Your boundaries matter. You matter.
