Welcome to the latest edition of the AWAVA Weekly Round-Up! This will be our last edition for 2014 and we would like to thank you for your support throughout the year. Thank you to everyone who has provided us with thoughtful input, suggestions and feedback through surveys, emails, and by commenting on social media. Thank you to those who have spread the message further by sharing our posts and emails with your friends, family and co-workers. We are thankful for this opportunity to continue learning about violence against women, its impact on women and children throughout Australia and the many innovative and effective initiatives that are being developed to prevent and better respond to this violence. We are also proud to be a part of a feminist movement that continues to speak out against sexism and misogyny and to highlight the links between gender inequality and violence against women. We look forward to continuing this work in 2015!
The AWAVA office will close on 24 December and will re-open on 5 January next year. We look forward to working together with all of you, and with our entire community, to reduce and eliminate violence against women.
Around the Country
- Questions continue to be raised about the violent history and bail conditions of Sydney gunman Man Haron Monis. Many writers have considered the lack importance placed on his history of violence against women
- Also following the siege in Sydney, the hashtag #illridewithyou has become news around the world withvarying levels of support
- Amy Wise has analysed the disconnect between the reality of sexual assault for women and the way it is reported by the media
- In Melbourne, two recent deaths have raised fears about violence against women in the Australian Indian community [TRIGGER WARNING: murder-suicide, car crash]
- Police and women’s services warn that violence can often increase around the holidays and urge those who are in danger to have a safety plan in place
- Sarah Macdonald writes about the men she’d like to thank in 2014
Around the World
- In Timor-Leste, the expulsion of a large number of foreign judges and legal workers may cause many domestic and sexual violence cases to be reheard and force victims to give their testimony over again
- In the United States, domestic violence rates in police families are up to 4 times higher than in the general public
- In Tunisia, for the first time a woman has carried a case of sexual violence against police officers all the way through the country’s court system
- In Spain, researchers have compared different methods of assessing levels of violence experienced by pregnant women
- In Fiji, four anti-violence against women projects have been named among UN Women’s Pacific Regional Ending Violence against Women Facility Fund (Pacific Fund) grant recipients
- Young scientists around the world face high rates of sexual violence when participating in fieldwork and often have nowhere to turn after having experienced a traumatic event [TRIGGER WARNING: Descriptions of sexual assault, victim blaming]
- In Canada, performer Shania Twain has created a video with the Canadian Mounted Police about violence within the home [TRIGGER WARNING: Images of distressed people]
- In Papua New Guinea, Bishop Arnold Orowae has condemned violence against women that occurs under the guise of ‘witch hunts’
- On December 17, many people around the world engaged in activism for the International Day to End Violence against Sex Workers
- In the United States, a small number of Michigan State University graduates have held a separate ‘survivors’ graduation ceremony’ after the university chose columnist George Will as their commencement speaker
Research, Resources and Reports
- White Ribbon Australia has published the latest report in their Policy Research Series entitled ‘Women’s Safety is a Men’s Issue: Men’s attitudes to violence against women and what that means for men’ by Dr Kristin Diemer
- In the Journal of Family Violence, Cerulli et al have published an article entitled, ‘In Our Voice: Survivors’ Recommendations for Change’
- GSDRC have published a research report by Siân Herbert entitled, ‘Links between women’s empowerment (or lack of) and outbreaks of violence conflict’
- Dean Peacock and Gary Barker have published ‘Working with Me and Boys to Prevent Gender-based Violence: Principles, Lessons Learned, and Ways Forward’ in the journal Men and Masculinities
Get Involved!
- Victim Support Service (VSS) aims to develop a new tagline and would like your input! Fill out the very short survey here
**Articles published do not necessarily reflect the view of AWAVA and are included as items of interest only.