What can be done to end gendered violence?

The Big Question

Edited by Hayley Lees and Michael Jones

Content warning: readers are advised that the following article contains references to intimate partner violence and domestic assault.

Recent high-profile incidents of gender-based violence have once again raised calls for the issue to be treated as a national crisis.

The sharp rise in the number of women allegedly killed by men so far this year is almost double when compared to the same period last year, yet the Australian government has so far declined a royal commission into domestic violence.

A dedicated meeting of National Cabinet on 1 May pledged $925 million to tackle the problem, including permanently funding the Leaving Violence program, which provides up to $5,000 in crisis support for women leaving violent relationships, as well as risk assessments and access to support services.

The program, outlined in the 2024 federal budget, will put $6.5 million aside for an online age verification trial to stop young people viewing inappropriate and violent content and also address gender-based violence issues in higher education.

A further $1 billion, under the $11.3 billion housing package, will fund urgent crisis and transitional housing for those fleeing domestic violence.

Many – including Prime Minister Anthony Albanese – believe gender-based violence is a cultural issue formed from ingrained attitudes over generations that will take time to fix. But protesters wonder how many more women will die while Australia waits for intergenerational, societal change.

So, as tens of thousands of Australians rallied in cities and towns across the country, Contact asked UQ experts what can actually be done to end gendered violence?

Key points:

• Collective action – led by men, informed by cultural context, and adaptable to media dynamics – will drive meaningful change.
• While increased investment in shelters, services, support payments and protective orders is needed, the only real solution is for men to stop inflicting violence on women.
• Gender-stereotyping and a lack of positive role-modelling needs to be addressed in order to stop the exploitation and oppression of women at home and in the workplace.
• Governments must focus more on the gendered and racialised factors that impede effective implementation of state reforms.
• Recognising and addressing common factors with other types of homicide is a crucial component of any efforts to reduce intimate partner homicide.

Dr Faiza El-Higzi
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
School of Psychology

Gendered violence has finally gained the recognition it deserves as a national emergency. But mere acknowledgment isn’t enough; we must act decisively to combat this pervasive issue. Each contributor plays a crucial role in effecting change.

Here are some key strategies:

Men’s responsibility and attitude shift

Men must confront the uncomfortable truth: gender-based violence is predominantly perpetrated by men against women and other men. Until men collectively reject harmful attitudes and behaviours, our efforts will remain diluted. Let’s challenge jokes that degrade women and actively respond to them.

Empowering boys and redefining masculinity

Parents face the delicate task of teaching their sons confidence without perpetuating violence. The entertainment industry often normalises gendered violence, especially in crime series where women are disproportionately portrayed as victims. We need to redefine masculinity, emphasising non-violent conflict resolution.

Leadership and awareness campaigns

Effective campaigns require strong leadership. In the fight against domestic violence, we need influential male figures to champion the cause. However, this shift must reach all levels of society, from grassroots initiatives to policy-making bodies.

Tailoring messages to cultural contexts

Our multicultural society demands tailored approaches. A one-size-fits-all campaign won’t suffice. Specific messages must resonate with diverse cultural and familial contexts. For instance, in some groups, domestic violence is perpetrated by in-laws rather than intimate partners.

Navigating media fragmentation

Media consumption patterns vary across age, gender and interests. Advocacy groups struggle to pinpoint where different demographics gather information. Sustainable funding is essential for government agencies and non-profits working towards gender equality and supporting victims of violence.

In summary, collective action – led by men, informed by cultural context, and adaptable to media dynamics – will drive meaningful change.

Dr Ella Kuskoff
Research Fellow
School of Social Science

Professor Cameron Parsell
ARC Mid-Career Industry Fellow
School of Social Science

Women will only ever be free of and safe from gendered violence when men stop inflicting violence on them. This is the only solution to gendered violence. Now this may seem so abundantly self-evident were it not for the constellation of things that societies currently do to respond to gendered violence, yet that do not address the fundamental problem of men’s violent behaviour.

Although shelters, services, support payments, and protective orders have been experienced positively by women and undoubtedly have meant that some women haven’t been killed, in and of themselves they are fundamentally limited in contributing towards a just society where women experience ongoing safety. So, while we strongly advocate for increased investment in and improvement of these responses, we have 2 concerns:

1. If the perpetrator continues to use violence, it does not matter how well resourced our support systems are. The capacity of these ameliorative responses is constrained because they do not address the fundamental problem of men’s use of violence.
2. The dominant narrative within the media and public discourse continuously attributes the violence experienced by women to institutional failure and resource limitations. This means we aren’t talking about how it’s the perpetrators that killed the women, not the courts, failed protective orders, or lack of shelters. We think all these responses should be better, but if we only focus on institutional responses, we are letting perpetrators off the hook and are never going to be able to do what’s required to create the safety that women have a right to.

The great challenge for society is how to move forward by balancing the necessity to do whatever we can to improve societal systems immediately in a way that will protect women, while simultaneously attending to the profoundly urgent priority of stopping men from being violent.

Dr Deborah Walsh
Lecturer and social work practitioner in domestic and family violence
School of Nursing, Midwifery and Social Work

I'm not so sure that gendered violence is being treated as a national emergency. Over the course of my career, every few years there has been a focus on violence against women when money gets thrown at women’s crisis services and that’s it. Data is released about the prevalence of the issue, the media runs with it, the community is shocked, but we still don’t deal with the problem.

I worked for a number of years co-facilitating a behavioural change program for violent men. This program was under-funded, under-staffed, had a huge waiting list and had no money for evaluation, so we didn’t know if the program worked for the participants in the long term. This is still the case for many of these programs now and I am afraid this will continue until we, as a country, actually start dealing with the problem and stop just throwing money at women’s crisis services. I know they are a needed service but we are just putting a bandage on the problem.

The majority of women victims/survivors of intimate-partner violence don’t want to leave their partner – they just want the violence and abuse to stop and we are not doing enough to deal with this at the source. The elephant in the room is the fact that there are a lot of men who treat women dreadfully and this just has to stop.

If we draw an analogy to a bank robbery, it is like we completely ignore the actual bank robber and put a lot of resources into helping the bank staff. It’s crazy! We need to deal with men’s attitudes towards women, and treatment of women. Once we do that, women will be a lot safer than they are now.

Emeritus Professor Carole Ferrier
Professor of Literature and Women's Studies
School of Communication and Arts

In Brisbane on 28 April, a huge rally and march of 3,500 people (80% women) expressed the 'health crisis' in relation to (often lethal) male violence towards their partners.

In early May, the National Cabinet discussed how counter-violence strategies could be implemented in the family home, and why some said that it was one of the most dangerous places for women and girls to be.

Socialist feminist theory developed an explanation of why this might be the case. Despite many reforms, the situation of women at work and at home often remains dire. Gender-stereotyping and a lack of positive role-modelling is pervasive in the home, within which much exploitation and oppression occurs. In the 1960s, psychiatrist and theorist David Cooper wrote that "the death of the family" was necessary for people to live good lives that were satisfying and fulfilling. Much more communal arrangements would facilitate this.

Women still do not have equal pay, and they still do the majority of the housework and looking after the young and aged. The caring, traditionally seen as women's roles and responsibilities, meant that women felt exploited within the home, and often became depressed and even desperate. Still culturally influenced to meet men's needs and 'look after' them – in the home and the workplace – they experience patriarchal attitudes and the patriarchal dividend: many women feel they are responsible for the family's contentment and the quality of their lives.

So, how can we achieve the respectful relationships increasingly advocated for by women's movements? After decades of agitation, only just now have sex workers in Brisbane finally had safer working conditions legislated, treating their work as a job, not a crime. Other systems in place in our society, such as damaging industries including porn, gambling, alcohol and drugs, and some media outlets as well, exacerbate (usually masculine) coercive control that denies or dismisses women's analyses of why their relationships are marked by bullying and violence, or the reiterated, "you made me do it!" accusation.

It might be useful for the Australian government to fast track some measures and initiatives to which they've allocated large sums of funding. These include help for people – especially men – seeking to control addictions or wanting to control their anger, impatience or frustration; and help, particularly for women, trying to flee from violent partners, and more widespread and substantial services to help them manage and set up new lives.

The government might also look at legislation to do with bullying and harassment, and also online abuse and editing and manipulation of deepfake images. As well as stalking and surveillance using new and advanced technologies.

Associate Professor Nicole George
Director of Research
School of Political Science and International Studies

The current media focus on gender violence has put state law and policy makers in the spotlight as calls mount, once again, for more targeted support from policing agencies and improved state protections and support for those exposed to violence.

Scrutiny of past programs of reform show that there is no straightforward relationship between targeted policing of gender violence and improved security for women. The hoped-for security remains elusive because we pay insufficient attention to the gendered and racialised factors that impede effective implementation of state reforms.

Consider the problem of victim misidentification, a stubborn feature of policing interventions in domestic and family violence situations. This can occur when police are called to a domestic violence situation and are confronted with women in evident distress but collude with the male on the scene that the woman’s emotion is evidence of their irrationality, instability and capacity for violence. These feminised tropes are regularly mobilised in ways that see women victims criminalised as violent perpetrators, while male partners justify their own violence as acts of self-defence.  In 12 of the 27 domestic violence homicides that were investigated by Queensland’s Domestic and Family Violence Advisory Board in 2017, these dynamics were in play; that is to say, the murdered female victim had previously been identified by police as a perpetrator of violence.

Intersecting racialised and gendered norms operating within regulatory institutions can also compound insecurities for particular groups of women by impeding effective policing responses. A recent study found that 3-quarters of the 68 Aboriginal women killed by intimate partners between 2006 and 2016 in Australia approached state police for protection. The domestic violence laws, or protection orders, that should have been applied to their cases were not acted on by investigating authorities.

This evidence demonstrates how longstanding gendered and racialised institutional practices can easily undermine the promise of state efforts to police gender violence more effectively. Policing agencies must openly tackle the discriminatory institutional cultures that compound, rather than alleviate, the insecurities faced by women and develop well-resourced implementation strategies that will build institutional change. 

For reforms on gender violence to have real impact, and to prevent more statistics of the sort discussed above, state policing agencies will need to look inwards at their own practices as well as outwards at the needs of the community.

Dr Samara McPhedran
Honorary Associate Professor
TC Beirne School of Law

The call for domestic violence to be declared a national emergency was prompted by the release of the latest National Homicide Monitoring Program Report. This showed that in 2022-23 there were 38 intimate partner homicide incidents, with almost 9 out of 10 (34 deaths) involving a female victim. The year before, there were 26 female victim intimate partner homicide incidents. On the surface, this looks like an alarming increase.

However, when we look at more years of data, we see something quite different. The number of incidents in 2022–23 is lower than the average number of incidents recorded in the previous 10 years and the equal third lowest number of female victim intimate partner homicide incidents recorded since 1989–90.

In other words, intimate partner homicide has been declining for many years. The numbers are low, and they fluctuate from year to year – so what we see in the latest numbers is not necessarily unusual. The same is true for homicides overall. There has been a long, slow decline since the early 1980s. Nobody knows quite why this has happened, and it is something that most Western nations have experienced.

In 2022–23, intimate partner homicides accounted for around 16 per cent of all homicide incidents. Homicide between acquaintances accounted for about 28 per cent of incidents. Homicides involving strangers made up about 15 per cent of the total – roughly the same proportion as intimate partner homicides.

It is true that intimate partner homicide is gendered. Most victims are female, and most perpetrators are male. But homicide overall is gendered, too: most victims are male.

Intimate partner homicide is frequently viewed as different to other homicide, but it actually shares many common factors with other types of homicide. These include things like offenders often having low education, unemployment, substance abuse, and previous contact with the criminal justice system.

Ultimately, legal and policy responses to homicide need to be informed by multiple different perspectives and understandings of offending. Recognising and addressing these factors is a crucial component of any efforts to reduce intimate partner homicide.

While the gendered perspective has a part to play, it is clear this approach cannot offer all of the answers.

Family and domestic violence support services

1800 Respect National Helpline: 1800 737 732
Women's Crisis Line: 1800 811 811
Men's Referral Service: 1300 766 491
Lifeline: 131 114

If you need help immediately call emergency services on triple-0.