Welcome once again to the AWAVA Weekly Round-Up. This week has seen people from incredibly diverse backgrounds and in a large variety of locations expressing their support and solidarity with victims and survivors of violence against women. In acknowledging that violence against women is both a consequence and a cause of gender inequality, AWAVA believes that support and action from the entire Australian and global community is vital if we are to protect the right of all women and girls to live free from all forms of violence and abuse. Preventing and eliminating violence against women and girls is everyone’s responsibility.
Around the Country
- The Foundation to Prevent Violence against Women and their Children and VicHealth have announced a new three-year partnership to develop a national framework to the prevention of violence against women which has been welcomed by many services across the sector
- The Australian Human Rights Commission has found that half of all Australian women have experienced pregnancy related discrimination in the workplace
- The transitioning of clearinghouse functions previously delivered by the Australian Centre for the Study of Sexual Assault (ACSSA) at the Australia Institute of Family Studies (AIFS) and the Australian Domestic & Family Violence Clearinghouse (ADFVC) at UNSW to the National Centre of Excellence to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children (NCE) has begun
- Over six hundred people attended a candle-light vigil for murdered French student Sophie Louise Collombet in Brisbane
- In Victoria, courts are struggling to deal with large numbers of family violence offenders breaching intervention orders multiple times
- In 2012-13, there was a 34 percent increase in older women seeking assistance from homelessness services in Victoria, often as a result of fleeing domestic violence
- Journalist Thomas Oriti has spoken about the deeply disturbing nature and huge importance of the evidence being presented at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse
- The Women’s Centre for Health Matters in Canberra is surveying residents to learn more about how people get around safely at night
- Ken Lay and Luke Ablett have condemned an article written by an anonymous AFL player which objectified women and glamorised harassment and abuse
- A court in the ACT has set a precedent by accepting expert evidence that approximately half of all sexual assault victims experience a paralysis response to their assault
Around the World
- Buzzfeed employees share 28 stories of street sexual harassment [Trigger Warning: descriptions of sexual harassment, violence and threats]
- In Norway, a shock campaign has been launched to raise awareness of domestic violence [Trigger Warning: image of assault]
- In India, a sentence of death in the Shakti Mills rape cases has forced women’s rights activists to speak out against the suitability of the penalty as a ‘regressive judgement’
- Feminists in the UK have highlighted the vast difference between flirting and harassment
- In Lebanon, the future of legislation criminalising domestic violence for the first time remains unclear
- In Brazil, a surge of public attention has followed the results of a study on attitudes towards violence against women
- Amnesty International reports that 2014 may be a “make-or-break year for Afghan women”
Research and Reports
- The NSW Ombudsman has tabled a special report into the Child Protection System in NSW: ‘Review of NSW Child Protection System: Are things improving?’
- New research has found that many young women do not report harassment and abuse because they view it as normal [Trigger Warning: descriptions of sexual abuse of children]
**Articles published do not necessarily reflect the views of AWAVA and are included as items of interest only