Happy New Year

Welcome to the first edition of 2022. Here’s hoping you managed to have a good end-of-year break, ahead of what is shaping up to be another rollercoaster year.

We wish you happiness and good health, with our thoughts turning particularly to those who remain separated from loved ones and for our essential services workers.

Around the Country

• Grace Tame has been named Crikey’s person of the year, with Brittany Higgins running a close second.

• Female candidates are overrepresented for marginal seats at the next federal election, while safe seats for both major parties remain dominated by males, an analysis by Guardian Australia shows.

• The NSW Government has announced coercive control in current and former intimate partner relationships will be outlawed.

• Also in NSW, unions representing rail workers are negotiating extra protections for victims of domestic violence as part of a new enterprise agreement, including a requirement for employers to regularly check the employee’s electronic devices have not been installed with any tracking, listening or other surveillance devices. 

• The federal Online Safety Act commences on 23 January, enhancing and expanding the e-Safety Commissioner’s powers.

• The Queensland government has introduced a new phone app aimed at making it easier for Queenslanders to recognise domestic violence and safely take action to support their friend or family member. 

• South Australians who pursue a private intervention order in domestic and family violence matters will have the court fee waived from the start of this year.

Around the World

• US President Joe Biden made a A Proclamation on National Stalking Awareness Month, 2022.

• A bipartisan group of US senators aims to introduce a bill to reauthorise the Violence Against Women Act when the Senate reconvenes next year.

• In the UK, an MP has called for a change in the law after an abusive husband inherited his wife’s estate despite an inquest linking her suicide to domestic violence. 

• In England and Wales, on the six-year anniversary of landmark legislation that established coercive and controlling behaviour as a criminal offence, Women’s Aid is urging more police forces to get training to better understand the “hidden” patterns of abuse that happen behind closed doors.

• The UK government has announced that victims of domestic abuse in England and Wales will now have longer to report and prosecute an offender for common assault, extending the time limit in which a survivor can go to the police from six months to two years.

• In the Irish republic, with the outlawing of coercive control to come in to effect in February, and with police responding to a domestic incident every 16 minutes, Sinn Fein are calling for more action.

• South African Police Minister Bheki Cele has appealed to families not to protect perpetrators of gender-based violence (GBV) by turning the crime into “a family matter”.

• In Papua New Guinea, the Coalition of Parliamentarians to end gender-based violence has called on the police to investigate acts of violence against women recent caught on video.

• In Indonesia, the National Commission on Violence Against Women (Komnas Perempuan) has recorded a significant increase in the number of cases of violence against women registered this year.

• In France, six French police officers will appear in disciplinary hearings accused of “administrative failings” in one of 113 femicides in 2021.

• Spain claims that it will expand the official statistics on gender-based violence in the country to examine the killings of women and children by men regardless of whether the victim and perpetrator had a prior relationship or not.

• In Iraq, about 17,000 complaints of domestic violence were registered in 2021 by the Interior Ministry's family protection unit. 

• In Brazil, where female homicides were reported as almost double the global average in 2017, Brazilian women are spearheading initiatives to address gender-based violence.

Research and Publications

• A new study by World Vision has found that an additional 3.3 million children are at far greater risk of child marriage due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

• AIHW has released its annual specialist homelessness services web report, summarising data from the Specialist Homelessness Services Collection (SHSC), and describing the characteristics of clients of specialist homelessness services, the services requested, outcomes achieved, and unmet requests for services.

• AIHW has also released its report 'Examination of hospital stays due to family and domestic violence 2010–11 to 2018–19,' breaking down data on grounds including sex, gender, whether Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander, reason for hospitalisation, and by perpetrator (partner or other family member).

• And in another publication, AIHW have released an information paper on 'Family, domestic and sexual violence service responses in the time of COVID-19'.

• The Infant Mental Health Journal has published a journal article 'Evaluating child maltreatment and family violence risk during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Using a telehealth home visiting program as a conduit to families.'

• The World Bank’s gender data portal has 90 disaggregated indicators for 162 countries on violence against women. In a new blog, the World Bank notes that data coming from these new studies confirm that intimate partner violence is more prevalent than sexual violence committed by armed actors.

• A recent joint report by the Inter-Parliamentary Union and the African Parliamentary Union, has revealed a pervasive culture of violence experienced by women parliamentarians, or MPs, and women parliamentary staff across Africa.

• The Center for American Progress has written a report on guns and violence against women, noting challenges and solutions.

Media

• Chanel Contos in The Guardian wrote Australia has been forced to face the truth about the gender-based violence behind its ‘safe and happy’ facade.

• The New Humanitarian has identified the shadow pandemic of gender-based violence as a key issue for 2022.

• Indian magazine Frontline has written about victims of domestic violence having a particularly tough time during the pandemic when lockdown restrictions have made it difficult to access help.

• The Wall Street Journal has highlighted Elder Abuse Spreads, Stoked by the Pandemic.

• SBS reports that a stronger push to improve women's safety around Australia has driven an anti-violence choir to re-form, six years after it first performed.

• Daisy Turnbull in The Brisbane Times discusses The talk every parent should have with their teen: what is love bombing?

• Women’s Agenda writes an obituary Vale bell hooks: A revolutionary author, activist and feminist.

• Ms Magazine highlights the importance of international law in A Workplace Void of Violence and Harassment: Creating Safer Working Environments with ILO’s Convention 190.

Surveys

• 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.

• 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 Victorian Department of Health recently published new program guidelines and a reporting template for the Victorian Specialist Family Violence Advisor (SFVA) Capacity Building Program in Mental Health and Alcohol and Drugs Service, developed in collaboration with Family Safety Victoria and No to Violence. 

• Ourselves at Work: Creating positive menstrual culture in your workplace, developed by the Victorian Women’s Trust (VWT), is a comprehensive guide for how to dismantle the menstrual taboo in workplaces, and replace it with a culture that embraces menstrual wellbeing.

• In another VWT project, Kitchen Table Conversations: A guide for sustaining our democratic culture is the essential guide for hosting your own kitchen table conversations, with step-by-step instructions and templates.

• The Asian Development Bank has issued a manual and guidelines on Gender-Inclusive Legislative Framework and Laws to Strengthen Women’s Resilience to Climate Change and Disasters.

• The Journalism Initiative on Gender-Based Violence (JiG) of the Center for Women's Global Leadership has published a handbook, Silence and Omissions: A Media Guide for Covering Gender-Based Violence.

Calls for Submissions and EOIs

• 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 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.  

• 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.

• 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

• 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.

*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.