Женская помощь: история, деятельность и критика организации Women's Aid

Women's Aid provides services through its publications and website, and runs a Freephone 24 Hour National Domestic Violence Helpline in partnership with Refuge. Former Spice Girl Melanie Brown became a patron of the charity in 2018 after leaving what she described as an abusive relationship and was made an MBE in 2022 for services to charitable causes and vulnerable women. Women's Aid has faced criticism for uncritically accepting all untested women's claims, including false allegations for financial gain or custody advantages, despite the significant repercussions for innocent men, children, benevolent individuals, and taxpayers.

Women's Aid was set up as a national United Kingdom federation to co ordinate almost 40 services that had been established over the country. It was originally known as the National Women's Aid Federation, before the launch of Scottish Women's Aid in 1976, and both Welsh Women's Aid and the Women's Aid Federation Northern Ireland in 1978. The first Women's Aid federation was set up in 1974, shortly after the founding of the first refuge for women experiencing domestic violence. The organisation provided practical and emotional support as part of a range of services to women and children experiencing violence. The charity was instrumental in lobbying for the 1976 Domestic Violence and Matrimonial Proceedings Act, and for having women and children at risk of domestic violence to count as homeless under the 1977 Housing Act. During the 1980s, Women's Aid established the first ever National Domestic Violence Helpline service to meet the increasing number of calls to Women's Aid national office. The Helpline not only provided help and support for abused women and children, as well as agency professionals seeking advice, it also became a national referral point for access to the national network of refuge and support services. The charity continued to lobby for greater consideration and support for women and children experiencing domestic violence. Through the 1990s, Women's Aid continued its lobbying work, as well as increasing its public campaigning. In 1994, the charity released the first ever domestic violence cinema advert, and supported the television soap opera Brookside in a long running, high profile storyline on a family affected by domestic violence. In 1999, Women's Aid launched the first comprehensive domestic violence website in the UK and The Gold Book, the first ever UK wide public directory of local refuge and helpline services. Since 2000, Women's Aid has run a number of high profile campaigns, continued its work lobbying government, and launched a number of educational resources aimed at schools and teachers to encourage the teaching of healthy relationships as a preventative measure against domestic violence. Katie Ghose was the CEO of Women's Aid, having started in July 2017. She took over the post from Polly Neate, and stepped down in February 2019, after complaints from a number of women groups after her public praise of UKIP.

In 1978, Women's Aid carried out a study of 1,000 women living in refuges, in light of statistics demonstrating that 1 in 4 crimes in Scotland was 'wife assault.' This was the beginning of significant amounts of research performed by Women's Aid and a number of partners into issues around domestic violence, which has developed into the release of Women's Aid's 'Annual Survey of Members', which gives details of the services in England working to support women experiencing domestic violence, and the women who use them.