Seasons Greetings

We, at AWAVA and WESNET, wish you all a restful and relaxing break over the end-of-year holidays. We will be back with the first of next year’s editions on the 11th of January.

It has been a pleasure to reconnect with you again. Thank you for some lovely feedback, and please remember to send your contributions to [email protected]

Around the Country

• The Australia Institute has released a briefing note explaining the new laws concerning charity advocacy, how they have changed, and what the consequences might be for the charities sector.

• Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins launched 'Set the Standard', the Australian Human Rights Commission’s Report on the Independent Review into Commonwealth Parliamentary Workplaces.

• The Federal Government has announced $2.8 million funding for the Australian Human Rights Commission’s landmark 'Wiyi Yani U Thangani' (Women’s Voices) project that will see it through to a national summit for First Nations women and girls, the first of its kind in Australia.

• The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare Homelessness and homelessness services report shows women and children experiencing domestic and family violence continue to be the primary users of crisis accommodation services. 

• New figures reveal Ballarat's rate of homelessness is almost double the national average, with family violence being one of the key culprits driving the crisis.

• The Carers Recognition Bill 2021 (ACT) has passed the ACT Parliament recognising the care relationship and establishing a set of principles imposing specific obligations for care and carer support agencies.

• The 'Realising the Benefits for all: APS Gender Equality Strategy 2021-26' was launched, noting that women now represent 50 per cent of the Senior Executive Service for the first time and that the gender pay gap has continued to trend down to the current 6.6 per cent. At the same time, the NSW Public Service Commission’s 2021 Workforce Profile Report shows that the difference in median remuneration between men and women in the public sector was 4.1 percent or $3905.

• Queensland Indigenous Family Violence Legal Service's Principal Legal Officer, Thelma Schwartz, has been named Indigenous Lawyer of the Year at the Lawyers Weekly Women in Law Awards 2021.

• Australia’s Disability Strategy 2021–2031 has been launched as Australia’s national disability policy framework. It sets out a plan for continuing to improve the lives of people with disability in Australia over the next ten years.

• The first report of the Women’s Safety and Justice Taskforce 'Hear her voice' has presented the Queensland Government with a four-phase plan to prepare for and implement legislation to address coercive control in Queensland.

• A parliamentary inquiry into the human rights of women and girls in the Pacific has released its report, focusing on the role of civil society, the advancement of the human rights of women and girls, and the effectiveness of Australia’s overseas development assistance programs in supporting these rights.

• A Melbourne City Mission report 'Amplify: Turning up the Volume on Young People and Family Violence' recommends clear actions for responding to young people, as distinct from younger children and their parents, to stem the tide of young people falling through gaps into homelessness, justice, and mental health systems.

• The Community Legal Centres Queensland Impact Report 2021 tells stories of change in Queensland communities and presents evidence of the effect community legal centres have on their clients and stakeholders.

• The ACT Government has made further progress against its commitment to sexual assault reform with the release of the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Steering Committee final report on 13 December 2021.

• The Victorian Government has announced a new policy which mandates increased representation for women in the construction industry. The Building Equality Policy (BEP) is an Australian first and aims to disrupt gender stereotypes in the country’s most male-dominated industry.

• SA Labor has vowed to abolish domestic violence intervention fees where women can be made to pay $297 to file a domestic violence intervention order with the court.

• A new family violence court has opened in Melbourne's southeast, offering specialised support, expertise and facilities for people experiencing domestic abuse. Victorian Attorney-General Jaclyn Symes officially opened the site in Frankston on Tuesday, the fifth Specialist Family Violence Court to open in Victoria since 2019 after courts were launched in Shepparton, Ballarat, Moorabbin, and Heidelberg.

• Sanitary products would be accessible across the national capital to anyone who needs them under a new proposal to stamp out period poverty in the ACT. The Period Products (Access) Bill 2022 would see some public places in Canberra, such as health facilities, public toilets and libraries stocked with free tampons, pads, and other sanitary products.

Around the World

• Acclaimed feminist author and activist bell hooks has died at the age of 69. She was considered a trailblazer within the intersectional feminism movement, and published some 40 books during her life.

• The New Zealand government has launched 'Te Aorerekura', the country's first National Strategy to Eliminate Family Violence and Sexual Violence.

• Cases of violence against women in Indonesia have recorded a two-fold increase reaching 4,500 cases as of September 2021 compared to 2020, the Indonesian National Commission on Violence against Women (Komnas Perempuan) has informed.

• In the United States, the Office on Violence Against Women announced awards to 11 Indian Tribal governments to support them in exercising special domestic violence criminal jurisdiction. 

• Italy's government has approved a bill to tackle gender-based violence and strengthen surveillance on suspects, amid growing worries over high levels of hate crimes against women. The Interior Ministry says 93 women have been killed in 2021 by partners or relatives, while almost 4,000 women have been sexually assaulted so far this year, and 13,990 have been victims of stalking.

• Pittsburgh City Council has passed legislation that would bar employers from discriminating against workers who are experiencing domestic violence.

• Northern Ireland’s new Civil Service chief is leading a group aimed at reducing violence against women, after the Executive was urged to act to protect women following an increase in deaths from domestic violence and a rise in drink spiking.

• In the Ivory Coast, hundreds of women marched in Abidjan to protest violence against women and to demand punishment for rapists.

• UNFPA has launched its bodyright campaign, demanding that images of bodies are given the same respect and protection online as copyright gives to music, film, and even corporate logos.

• Rutgers University scholar Mona Lena Krook has won the 2022 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order, for exploring the nature of violence against women in politics and suggesting ways to prevent it in her book “Violence Against Women in Politics”.

• The NGO Alliances for Africa (AfA) Mission has launched ‘Kpoturum App’ for reporting and documenting cases of violence against women and girls in Nigeria’s South-east.

• UN Women have released a project brief on 'Strengthening civil society capacities and multi-stakeholder partnerships to advance women's rights and gender equality' in Turkey.

• In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, gender-based violence survivors learn to rebuild engines as they rebuild lives with the UNHCR training for women to learn useful skills that enhance their self-reliance while challenging gender stereotypes.

• To step up efforts to address different forms of gender-based violence (GBV), the World Bank is launching a Regional Action Plan to address GBV in the Middle East and North Africa.

• The European Court of Human Rights ruled that Russia has not done enough to curb domestic violence and ordered it to pay substantial compensation to four women who were victims of brutal attacks.

Research and Publications

• The latest HILDA data has revealed that, in heterosexual couples with children, women still do 21 hours more unpaid work at home compared to men – narrowing from 29 hours in 2002. 

• The new ABS article, 'Sexual Harassment', focuses on the prevalence and characteristics of sexual harassment, drawing on data collected in the 2016 Personal Safety Survey (PSS). Key statistics include that 53% of women and 25% of men have experienced sexual harassment in their lifetime.

• ANROWS has released a new research report 'Reducing relationship and sexual violence: Findings from reviews about the effectiveness of respectful relationships and bystander programs in school and tertiary education settings.'

• A University College of London study has shown that teenage girls are overwhelmingly affected by the impact of unwanted image-sharing and that the practice has become 'dangerously normalised' for many young people.

• According to Bankwest report 'Hidden Costs', nearly one in three Western Australian residents have experienced financial abuse, while one in four know someone personally impacted.

• 'Coercive control' played a part in 15 per cent of intimate partner homicides according to a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation investigation that analysed almost 400 cases in Canada between 2015 and 2020, prompting calls for criminalisation.

• Women’s Legal Service Queensland has released the findings of its 'Understanding and responding to coercive control' research project. Factsheets and community legal education resources will be distributed to community legal centres early next year.

• A Council of Europe study Protecting women and girls from violence in the digital age, explores the extent to which the Istanbul and Budapest conventions help address online and technology-facilitated violence against women through coordinated policies, prevention, protection, prosecution, and international cooperation.

• The Australian Institute of Criminology has released Boxall H, Pooley K & Lawler S (2021), ‘Do violent teens become violent adults? Links between juvenile and adult domestic and family violence’, Trends & issues in crime and criminal justice, no. 641. https://doi.org/10.52922/ti78450

• Monash Gender and Family Violence Prevention Centre members have contributed to the following journal articles:
  1. Walklate, S. and Fitz-Gibbon, K. (2021), ‘Why criminalise coercive control? The complicity of the criminal law in punishing women through furthering the power of the state’, International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy. 10(4): 1-12. https://doi.org/10.5204/ijcjsd.1829
  2. Segrave, M. (2021), ‘Temporary Migration and Family Violence: How Perpetrators Weaponise Borders’, International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy, 10(4): 26-38. https://doi.org/10.5204/ijcjsd.1995
  3. Godfrey, B., Richardson, J.C. and Walklate, S. (2021), ‘The Crisis in the Courts: Before and Beyond Covid’, The British Journal of Criminology, https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azab110

Media

• The Conversation published an article on How Latin American feminists shifted global understanding of gender-based violence.

• Other The Conversation articles concern Unpaid leave and toxic cultures: new research shows workplaces must do better on family violence and Technology-facilitated abuse of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women is rife in regional and remote areas.

• The New Humanitarian asks What happened to the emergency UN money promised for gender-based violence?

• The Guardian writes As a women’s rights lawyer, here’s my manifesto for fixing Britain’s broken system.

• Coming home, a podcast by Juno, traces the lives of three women through their experiences of homelessness, looking deeply at the systemic drivers that lead to women becoming homeless: gender inequality, economic disadvantage and family violence, and the unaffordable housing market in Australia.

• Ramisa Raya's new article 'We must acknowledge diverse women experience domestic violence differently',  delves into how we can develop and deliver support that recognises the very real differences in the lived experiences of women in today’s multicultural Australia.

Surveys

• Women with Disabilities Australia (WWDA) is developing targeted health promotion resources on menstruation and contraception for young women, girls, feminine identifying, and non-binary young people with disability (YWGwD) and want to hear from you! The survey is open until 10 January 2022.

• 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.

• Barnardos Australia is undertaking a study on domestic and family violence and its impact on children, and adults are invited to undertake a short survey to build understanding on what can be done to support children and young people exposed to domestic and family violence. 

• The Women’s Electoral Lobby are asking women to complete a survey to have their say on the issues important to them in the lead up to next year’s federal election.

Guide and Guidelines

• The Gender Institute at the ANU has released 'Media Changing the Story: Media guidelines for the reporting of domestic, family and sexual violence in the Northern Territory'.

• People with Disability Australia has released a language guide written by people with disability to assist the Australian general public and media outlets in talking about and reporting on disability.

• The Human Rights Commission has issued a new Disability Action Plan Guide to assist organisations to develop and implement a DAP in accordance with the provisions in section 61 of the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (Cth) (DDA).

• The UNFPA has released Guidelines for Establishing Hotlines to Support Survivors of Gender-based Violence.

• The Canadian Violence Evidence Guidance Action (VEGA) project has produced a range of free and publicly available resources to assist health-care and social service providers in recognising and responding safely to family violence (child maltreatment and intimate partner violence).

Calls for Submissions and EOIs

• Women With Disabilities Australia (WWDA) have received federal funding for the first time as a National Women’s Alliance, and are calling for expressions of interest to join their Policy Advisory Group.

• The federal government has called for submissions from individuals, businesses and community groups on their views regarding priorities for the 2022-23 Budget prior to 28 January 2022.

• The Tasmanian Government is seeking input on proposed Criminal Code amendments creating a new offence of choking, suffocation, or strangulation and adding to the definition of consent regarding behaviour colloquially known as ‘stealthing’. Submissions must be received by 18 February 2022.

• Expressions of interest are now open, for current and aspiring prevention of violence against women practitioners in WA regional areas, to participate in the Domestic Violence Literacy Project.

• Preventing Violence Together invites WA primary prevention practitioners and organisations to share their knowledge and experience by showcasing their initiatives, projects and plans that they have developed, on their Promising Practice Portal.

• The UNSW Law Journal is currently welcoming submissions for Issue 45(3), due by 4 February 2022. The theme is ‘Law and Economics’ and submissions on a range of topics, including modern slavery, and interactions between feminist economics and law on areas such as unpaid domestic labour, maternity leave, and workplace discrimination, are invited. 

Events

• Preventing Violence Together – a new, Western Australian-based initiative aspiring to end violence against women and their children through a specific and dedicated focus on primary prevention (of violence against women) - is launching a new Community of Practice for PVAW practitioners.

• ANROWS conference “On the Agenda” (22-25 February 2022) schedule and program are now available.

Training and Education

• 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.

Grants

• The Afghan-Australian Community and Settlement Support grant program is now open with applications closing on 23 December 2021. The program provides grants to organisations to facilitate positive settlement outcomes for newly arrived Afghan people.

*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.