It’s International Women’s Day!

While International Women's Day is a day to celebrate the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women, it also historically marks a call to action for accelerating gender equality.

This year’s theme is #BreakTheBias. Women and non-binary people continue to face barriers to achieving equality associated with economic insecurity, violence, rigid gender stereotypes, and lack of representation in decision-making roles. Many of these are underpinned by conscious or unconscious bias, by individuals, systems and institutions. 

In the face of the pandemic, climate change and significant threats to world peace, many of these existing inequalities are being exacerbated, and new ones emerging (or re-emerging). We are becoming more aware too that gender equality cannot be considered or measured in isolation from other inequalities and biases associated with race, culture, ability, or other identity. 

It is clear that the fight for gender equality requires vigilance and perseverance. Whether you choose to celebrate or protest - or both - we wish you a happy and reflective day.

There’s No Place Like Home

AWAVA’s own Karen Bentley, CEO of Women’s Services Network (WESNET), features in episode 3 of There’s No Place Like Home, which goes live at 6 pm AEDT tonight, Tuesday March 8. The There’s No Place Like Home podcast puts survivors of family violence at the centre of the story. Learn more by heading to the podcast website.

Around the Country

• The federal government has pledged an extra $189 million for domestic, family and sexual violence services in the next budget, including $104 million over five years to support Our Watch.

• The Western Australian government has awarded $889,000 to the Centre for Women's Safety and Wellbeing to build a Primary Prevention Framework that will help reduce family, domestic and sexual violence; and $68,000 to Starick Services to develop a bespoke version of the Respectful Relationships Program tailored to sport and recreation clubs and organisations.

• Australia’s sex discrimination commissioner, Kate Jenkins, has warned confidentiality agreements to settle sexual harassment claims can allow perpetrators to continue or even escalate abuses of power, while preventing victims from accessing proper support.

• The CEOs of Victoria’s 12 women’s health services are calling for an immediate uplift in investment to secure the health and wellbeing of Victorian women, following the release of data that shows Victorian women have gotten sicker, more anxious, and depressed since the start of the pandemic.

• Activist group 'Homes Not Prisons' is campaigning for the Victorian government to scrap the planned expansion of the state’s largest women-only prison and instead invest the money into public housing, with a priority for women, First Nations people, and trans and gender diverse individuals.

• Blue Mountains City Council will establish a Mayoral Reference Group for family and domestic violence.

• An Albury Wodonga domestic violence centre is struggling to meet demand, calling for more funding and noting that some women are waiting up to three months to access services. The centre’s general manager notes that “we can't tap into that [the new national plan] and make it work if we're running on funding that is from back in the '80s”.

• Women's shelters across the Northern Territory are having to shut down for weeks at a time as staff members and residents test positive to COVID-19, according to a Darwin-based refuge.

• The Greens have released their policy platform on ending violence against women, including pledging $12 billion over 12 years to fully fund frontline domestic violence support services, and double funding for women’s legal services and Family Violence Prevention Legal Services, and reform the family law system to adopt a safety-first approach.

• The Australian College of Nursing (ACN) is urging policymakers to replace superficial platitudes with tangible action to ensure the nursing profession is central to solutions focused on ending violence against women.

• The federal government has released its review of the Workplace Gender Equality Act 2012 (the WGEA Review), eliciting disappointment from the women’s sector that the review did not take the opportunity to strengthen the WGEA compliance mechanisms. 

Around the World

• The Global Network of Women’s Shelters (GNWS) will be launching Lila.help in coming weeks. Lila.help is a directory about direct services for women and girls fleeing from violence, and lists accurate, vetted, and safe helplines and shelters for every country and territory in the world. You can learn more via this animated video. GNWS would love to have every organisation that provides trustworthy direct services to people experiencing gender-based violence included in their directory. Organisations can fill in their information via this link.
• The United Nations Population Fund reports that conflict in the Ukraine is compounding the vulnerabilities of women and girls as humanitarian needs spiral.
• Save the Children estimates that at least 400,000 children are fleeing Ukraine and at risk of hunger, illness, trafficking, abuse, and that at least 40% of the 1 million people who have fled Ukraine are children.
• President Biden’s gun crime reduction strategy includes a focus on Keeping Guns Out of the Hands of Domestic Abusers.
• The UK Home Secretary has launched a new, multi-year national communications campaign ‘Enough’ to violence against women and girls.
• Around 34,000 women registered complaints regarding different types of offences last year across Pakistan, according to the official data depicting the deteriorating condition of the country’s women.
• The UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) has issued its findings on the Dominican Republic, Gabon, Lebanon, Panama, Peru, Senegal, Uganda and Uzbekistan, the eight States parties that it reviewed during its latest session.
• In Mexico, a reform has been introduced to the Senate that recognises acid attacks as a form of extreme violence against women.
• The Turkish government is working on a new reform package aiming to end violence against women, advising that good conduct abatement will not be automatically applied on suspects and that harsher sentences will be given in case of deliberate assaults against women.
• There is growing concern that Ireland’s Third National Strategy on Domestic, Sexual and Gender-Based Violence (DSGBV), expected to be published within weeks, will fail to address the problem of garda violence against women.

Research and Publications

• AWAVA, WESNET, NATSIWA and WWDA have launched the ‘Report on Young Women and Non-Binary People’s Experiences of Gender-Based Violence across Australia‘. The report is available now on AWAVA’s website here.
• Ending violence against women is ranked as the biggest challenge for Australia with 99.5% of Women’s Electoral Lobby survey respondents demanding adequate and sustainable funding for the National Plan to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children.
• ANROWS has released the Australian Domestic and Family Violence Death Review Network Data Report: Intimate partner violence homicides 2010–2018, finding that in Australia in 2018–19, intimate partner violence (IPV) homicides accounted for 21 per cent of all homicides and for 62 per cent of all domestic homicides.
• Monckton-Smith, Jane, Siddiqui, Hannana, Haile, Sue and Sandham, Alexandra  2022. Building a temporal sequence for developing prevention strategies, risk assessment, and perpetrator interventions in domestic abuse related suicide, honour killing, and intimate partner homicide. Project Report. University of Gloucestershire, Cheltenham, Gloucestershire.
• This Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre Focus on the States report examines the prevalence of poverty within Australia, revealing a gender gap in poverty including the risk of descending into poverty being three times higher for women than for men following separation or divorce.
• The number of reports of sexual misconduct at the Australian National University rose sharply during 2021, according to its report Sexual Misconduct Reports & Disclosures.
• According to the World Bank’s Women, Business and the Law 2022 report, around 2.4 billion women of working age are not afforded equal economic opportunity and 178 countries maintain legal barriers that prevent women’s full economic participation.
• A new ACTU report has highlighted a range of inequalities women still face, including lower than average wages, lower levels of superannuation, and some of the most expensive childcare in the OECD.
• A report on a virtual workshop on the ‘Prevention of Financial Abuse’ has been authored by Monash University, and summarises key points of discussion that emerged throughout the day.
• A new AHURI publication Precarious housing and wellbeing: a multi-dimensional investigation finds that the experience of physical violence is a key driver that precipitates a fall into precarious housing or extends a spell of precarious housing, and that stronger protections against domestic violence that package both housing and non-housing-support measures are needed.
• Sharman, L. S., Fitzgerald, R. & Douglas, H. 2022. Non-Fatal Strangulation offence convictions and outcomes: Insights from Queensland Wide Inter-linked Courts data, 2016/2017-2019/2020.The University of Melbourne/The University of Queensland.
• The Monash Gender and Family Violence Prevention Centre has released a research brief Can men be victims of coercive control? Making sense of men’s experiences of coercive control.
• The Future-proofing Safety consortia (CFRE, CIJ and AIFS) have recently launched their first report, exploring family violence service data before and during COVID-19, responding to questions like “How did people access services during COVID-19?” and “What were client needs during the pandemic?” for three service providers: Drummond Street Services, Good Shepherd, and GenWest.
• The Lancet has published an open access article Quantifying the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on gender equality on health, social, and economic indicators: a comprehensive review of data from March, 2020, to September, 2021, presenting evidence of gender disparities in health, social, and economic aspects, with women being disproportionately affected across several dimensions.
• The Victorian Sentencing Advisory Council has released 'Sentencing Stalking in Victoria', analysing how Victorian courts sentence stalking offences, and finding that stalking is most often linked to family violence.
• eSafety has released Women’s experiences with online abuse in their working lives, exploring the experiences of women who have strong online or media profiles for professional purposes, and finding that more than one third of women surveyed experienced some form of online abuse in a professional context. Incidences of abuse were higher among younger women (43%), LGBTIQ+ (51%) and women with a disability (57%).
• Carrie Leonetti, New Zealand Associate Professor, writes about her study of the use of Family Court arrest warrants on children, explaining how the parents who seek these warrants are often perpetrators of abuse and use them to continue to entrap, control, and harm their victims.

Media

• The webinar launching the AWAVA, WESNET, NATSIWA and WWDA Report on Young Women and Non-Binary People’s Experiences of Gender-Based Violence across Australia can be watched here.

• Domestic violence prevention campaign We’re Better Than That has launched a second video series with two videos featuring Drag Race Down Under contestant Maxi Shield.

• SBS News In Depth podcast discusses Why are migrant domestic violence victims often misidentified as perpetrators?

• Women’s Agenda writes about how women of Ukraine are taking on the invading forces.

• The Conversation examines elder abuse in Abused by our grown-up children: mothers open up about this little-understood form of domestic violence.

• Econofact (United States) asks Does the Safety Net Help Prevent Family and Youth Violence? .

• Mother Jones (United States) examines How the Mainstream Movement Against Gender-Based Violence Fails Black Workers and Survivors.

• In the context of trans sports bans in the US state of Georgia, Prism writes that trans sports bans lead not only to the harassment of queer and trans youth but also contribute to the continued criminalisation of transness overall.

• OpenGlobalRights concludes that gender-based violence is a significant obstacle to building climate-resilient communities.

Surveys

• Australia’s National Children’s Commissioner wants to hear from children and their families about how living through the past two years of COVID-19 has affected their mental health and wellbeing. She is surveying children and young people aged nine to seventeen, as well as parents, carers, and grandparents.

• The Make Renting Fair in Queensland campaign is seeking feedback through its rental reform survey. This survey will only take a few minutes to complete and will assist in focusing the advocacy of the campaign for all Queensland renters.

Calls for Submissions and EOIs

• The Future-proofing Safety consortia (CFRE, CIJ and AIFS) have recently launched the project’s first interactive report (see above under ‘reports and research’). If your organisation would like to participate in sector focus groups to share your experiences supporting clients experiencing and/or using violence during COVID-19, please contact [email protected] for further information.
• eSafety is looking for 20 young Australians, aged 13 to 24, to join its first ever Online Safety Youth Advisory Council. Applications can be submitted in written or other creative form, such as video, audio, poster, song by 14 March 2022.

• The federal government is seeking views on  the remaining legislative recommendations arising from the Respect@Work Report. Individuals and organisations are invited to complete a survey on Citizen Space, closing on 18 March 2022.

• The Monash Gender and Family Violence Prevention Centre is offering 24 Graduate Certificate of Family Violence Prevention scholarships to family violence victim-survivors. Applications close on 22 March 2022.

• The ACT Government has issued an Advance Tender notice seeking a qualified and experienced Contractor to co-design and deliver a pilot program for children aged 5 to 12 years who have experienced family violence. 31 March 2022.

• The South Australian Attorney-General's Department has released a discussion paper exploring the measures needed to support the implementation of a criminal offence of coercive control, should it be introduced in South Australia. Feedback is sought by 1 April 2022.

• The Melbourne Social Equity Institute, in partnership with Volunteer West, is offering a new scholarship to research the gendered dynamics in community volunteering and volunteering engagement practice. Expressions of Interest are open until Wednesday 27 April 2022.

• The International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health is inviting manuscripts for a special issue ‘Engaging Men and Boys in the Prevention of Violence Against Women and Girls’. Deadline for submission is 31 July 2022.

Events

• The first webinar in the 2022 Monash Gender and Family Violence Prevention Centre Seminar Series is on Wednesday 9 March 2022 from 9:00 am – 10:00 am AEDT. Dr Stef Vasil is speaking about At the borders: Exploring migrant women’s experiences of precarity, family violence, and help-seeking in Victoria, Australia. Bookings and details are here.

• In Sydney, the largest IWD event will be held at Belmore Park, near Central station, at 11.30am on Saturday 12 March. There will be a march from and back to Belmore Park, and then a mini-festival with music, rides and stalls. Registrations are essential due to COVID-19 restrictions.

• An open seminar Responding to Contemporary Social Equity Issues: What Role for Social Innovation? is being held by Professor Jo Barraket, the new director of Melbourne Social Equity Institute, on 1.00pm – 1.45pm AEDT, Thursday 10 March via Zoom. Bookings and details here.

Training and Education

• The RACGP Family Violence GP Education Program assists GPs in developing skills and knowledge to respond to domestic and family violence. The program is open to all Victorian GPs and practice staff and offers two training pathway options – beginner and intermediate/advanced.
• WESNET is offering Technology Safety Online Training for SADFV professionals, for dates and training descriptions please visit https://techsafety.org.au/training
• The Council of Europe has launched a new, free online course on Violence Against Women for Law Enforcement Professionals.

• RMIT’s Graduate Certificate in Domestic and Family Violence provides an exciting opportunity for current and future family violence practitioners, with subjects in gendered violence, responding to family violence, primary prevention of violence against women and specialist case coordination and management. The program is offered online and part-time to support work/life/study balance. Applications can be made online here, or for more information, visit the Program Overview.

• Harmony Alliance has developed a free online course on 'Financial Literacy for Women' available in English, Arabic, Dari, Simplified Chinese, Vietnamese, Nepalese, Punjabi, Hazaragi, Thai, Karen, and Korean.

Share the latest round-up with a colleague
and encourage them to sign up here.

*Articles published do not necessarily reflect the views of AWAVA or WESNET and are included as items of interest only.

If you would like to submit a particularly topical piece of news, research, report, etc. please e-mail to [email protected]. We cannot guarantee this will be included.