First things first: This article wasn’t written (just) for you. It’s meant to be shared. Rather than skimmed silently, it should be read aloud. It aims to create a dialogue that sparks similar dialogues with relatives, friends, colleagues, and children—including, perhaps especially, the men in your life.
Because this article—despite appearing on International Women’s Day to cover the latest chapter of the Pomellato for Women 2025 initiative—is no mere celebration of a project focused on female empowerment and fighting violence against women, from a brand that has been caring for women since 1967. It is meant as an active exhortation to society, in particular its youth. As Pomellato CEO Sabina Belli puts it, “We must un-learn in order to re-learn a different way—a way that will be second nature to future generations.” The goal is for International Women’s Day to be not only an easy tribute to female achievements, but also a chance to find one’s voice, break silence, and take action. And it can all start with the simple act of sharing these words.
One in three women is a victim of domestic violence: a staggeringly high number, meaning at least one woman in all our immediate circles is impacted. And violence against women thrives in silence. So how can we fight it? With a cultural revolution, in which we all must do our part. Change is possible only if we enact it together.
But how? This is, in fact, the key word of the campaign, because this is the question we must ask. How do we fight this problem? How can we turn International Women’s Day into a chance for concrete change?
By talking about it, first of all. And by embracing that verb in its most active and powerful meaning: not merely mentioning a topic, but breaking the silence, raising our voices, making the point. It’s an invitation to shatter taboos, to share and face crucial ideas with courage and awareness. That’s what this article aims to be: a call to truth and collective responsibility.
This call is made together with award-winning actress and activist Jane Fonda; actress, director, producer, and activist America Ferrera; actress and founder of the Joyful Heart Foundation Mariska Hargitay; actress Laura Harrier; record-breaking athlete Mattia Furlani; and Gianvito Martino, professor of experimental biology at the Vita-Salute San Raffaele University, in Milan. All were recruited for Pomellato’s International Women’s Day campaign to join their voices in a statement of conviction: “This is the time to act.”
Sabina Belli, CEO of Pomellato for the past 10 years and the promoter of the #PomellatoForWomen initiative, urges women and men to take an immediate stance against violence together. “Domestic violence is a collective wound, which leaves a scar on all of society,” she says, “and a physical scar on one in three women. Pomellato believes that change begins with accepting our role as social sentinels. That means being vigilant and brave enough to act, and recognizing that silence is not neutrality but complicity. We all must shift from awareness to action, from compassion to systemic change.”
The brand’s 2025 campaign against domestic violence traces a path toward change through three vital steps: breaking the silence that isolates women; using our voices to create spaces where survivors can meet and share their stories; and listening to them so they always feel believed. By being social sentinels—watchful, compassionate, and unafraid to step in—we can effect the real change required.
But since every victim equals at least one aggressor, this path toward change also concerns at least a third of men. Which is why Pomellato’s call on March 8 is also aimed at them, to help spotlight the spiral of silence that acts of violence bring. Survivors face not only their aggressors’ violence, but society’s judgement. The devastating choice between speaking up and reliving trauma, and remaining voiceless lest their words not be believed, traps many in what Belli calls “a silent epidemic.”
How do we escape this cycle? Real change is possible only when all of society opposes violence as one. Real change demands that men also step forward as active allies, joining in solidarity to shape a world where fear has no place in any woman’s story. Accordingly, Pomellato has once again called upon two representatives of the gender to stand alongside the 2025 #PomellatoForWomen campaign’s godmothers. “Violence is not a tradition,” says international track-and-field athlete Mattia Furlani. Professor Martino agrees: “Domestic violence is not a private issue, nor is it a matter of tradition.”
Some call it sisterhood, others collective intelligence: the powerful network of friends, family, women’s shelters, and support groups binding women to one another. And breaking the silence is only the first step: Society must also do its part. “We must amplify the voices of survivors and honor their truth, actively dismantling our culture of silence and its harmful habits, ensuring that perpetrators face real consequences,” says actress America Ferrera. “Only through a stalwart sense of responsibility and strong legal protections—from our homes to our workplaces—can we effect lasting change.”
The testimonial of actress and activist Mariska Hargitay, founder of the Joyful Heart Foundation NGO, ends with a similarly stirring vision: “One day, when we look back, we will know this was the moment that we chose to rewrite history.” And the message of this campaign keeps spurring us all on with a unified voice, to let women know there is both hope and help. As Jane Fonda exhorts, “let us work toward a future where domestic violence is no longer a shadow over our homes, our communities, and in our hearts.”
In line with the campaign’s powerful messaging, Pomellato is also renewing its support of CADMI, the Safe House for Mistreated Women, Milan’s first-ever women’s shelter; and FreeFrom, a Los Angeles-based partner to the Kering Foundation that provides long-term financial stability to domestic-violence survivors.
Let us turn isolation into community, fear into hope, silence into a mantra we’ll never tire of repeating to our daughters, sisters, sons, husbands, fathers: No woman is alone, and there’s only one way forward…all together. The time is ripe. Let us discuss these topics with our families, between mothers and daughters, daughters and mothers, but also—especially—between brothers, fathers, and sons. Let us talk about them with our friends, in workplaces, on social media.
Each of these conversations can make a difference, spark an opportunity, save a life. Because, in this instance, silence is not golden.