End it now: why violence against women is everyone’s problem

I feel like every time I’ve tuned into the news lately, I’ve heard a story about a woman dying from intimate partner or domestic violence (DV). It is heartbreaking and sickening. 

Growing up, if you’d asked me, I may have told you I didn’t think it could happen in Australia. Or if it did, it only affected certain demographics, like alcoholics or people who made bad life choices. Judgemental, I know—and wrong. As I’ve grown older, I’ve learned that the problem is much bigger and more widespread than I could have imagined.

Gender-based violence (GBV) does not discriminate and can infiltrate every society, culture and class. And the problem is not going away.

According to the What happens next? GBV podcast by Monash University (July 2024), a woman in Australia is killed by her partner or ex-partner every nine days.

In 2023, 58 women were killed in Australia from intimate partner violence. Rates in New Zealand are not much better with Stuff’s Homicide Report showing that half of female homicide victims 18 or older are killed by a partner or ex-partner.

“Domestic, family and sexual violence is the number-one threat to the lives of women and children in Australia,” said Professor Kate Fitz-Gibbon from Monash University’s Faculty of Business and Economics. “Yet we still see national security external threats are considered on a completely different level.”

In 2024, Australia’s national cabinet met to talk about the issue of DV. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said, “Violence against women is not a women’s problem to solve. It is a whole of society problem to solve; and men in particular have to take responsibility.”

As a result, Australia pledged $A925 million over five years to address the problem and supply funding to the Leaving Violence Program.

“We’ve definitely got a better understanding of coercive and controlling behaviours than some other countries around the world. So, by virtue of acknowledging it more clearly and understanding it, we might also look like we have an over-representation. But we know these behaviours occur in every country around the world,” said Professor Fitz-Gibbon.

The problem is global. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime estimates that every 11 minutes around the world, a woman is killed.

Not just violence

DV is not just broken limbs and black eyes. The term can cover a range of problematic behaviours, including physical and sexual abuse, spiritual manipulation, financial abuse, stalking and coercive control.

Survivors often describe the sensation of walking on eggshells, afraid of doing the wrong thing around their partner. They live everyday life in a state of fear.

Increasingly, violence is being perpetuated through technology. Control, verbal abuse and even threats of blackmail and exploitation can be all delivered digitally.

Causes

According to Fiona McCormack, former Victoria victims of crime commissioner, GBV is cultural and structural in Australia, being passed down from Roman days.

She identifies four areas most consistently related to violence in any community:

1. Community attitudes to violence.
2. Rigid gender stereotypes.
3. Men’s control of decision-making and limitations to women’s independence.
4. Hypermasculine attitudes that support disrespectful attitudes to women.

While these attitudes might be more prevalent in certain parts of the community, there are other pressures that are causing violence to spread.

While drug and alcohol abuse have long been linked to intimate partner violence, a new addiction is raising its head: gambling.

Associate professor Charles Livingstone from Monash’s School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine points out the clear link between gambling and GBV and how the financial stress associated with addiction can bring violence into the relationship. And with Australia having the worst gambling problem per capita in the world, this “wicked problem” can cause much harm, according to Livingstone.

“One of the major consequences of gambling addiction is that people end up separating. They end up losing major assets, experiencing considerable grief and anxiety about what they’ve done to their family, and that can be acted out as an episode of violence.”

GBV is increasingly being linked to the normalisation of violent porn and practices, such as bondage in mainstream media like the 50 Shades movies. Australia’s National Plan to End Violence Against Women and Children (2022–2023) acknowledged pornography as a driver of violence against women and young people.

According to social commentator and anti-porn advocate Melinda Tankard Reist, these depictions are creating problems even in school-aged children. She’s had girls in primary school ask if they need to submit to risky behaviours to get boys to like them.

“When unequal power relations and female submission are presented, not only as somehow romantic and desirable but as actually liberating and empowering, you know you’ve got a serious problem,” wrote Tankard Reist for the ABC.

“The global sex industry is very good at getting its tentacles into everything. It knows how to embed and normalise porn-themed practices and ideas,” she continued.

“One repercussion is that women start to think there is something wrong with them if they don’t like this stuff. And teen girls think this is what ‘romance’ looks like. So many young women describe coercion and pressure to accept sex acts they neither desire or enjoy.”

What can be done?

Awareness is a major step. Committing to seeing the end of violence is something you can do in your own home. Educating your children that it is never okay to use physical violence is a start. Many of us were raised in homes where forms of coercive control might have been used against us to make us compliant. If that is your story, you may have to work hard to break the cycle and change the story for your own children.

This August, Dr Paul Bogacs, counselling course convenor at Avondale University and National Heads of Counselling and Psychotherapy Education chair, will be presenting at an online summit of the enditnow campaign, an initiative designed by the Seventh-day Adventist Church to raise awareness for and stamp out violence, especially GBV.

“People who use abusive behaviour are often stuck in a pattern of behaviour that they themselves don’t know how to get out of. They promise their partner and themselves, and actually believe, ‘I’m never going to do it again,’ rather than going, ‘I could do it again and I’m actually going to need accountability and help. I’m going to actually see what the monsters are under the bed that I keep trying to ignore.’ With abusers there’s a whole lot of stuff they haven’t dealt with other than trying to avoid it and deny it,” shares Dr Bogacs.

“If you lash out every now and then, go and talk to somebody. Go talk to a good counsellor, to work through what drives you to need to control another person. [Ask yourself the question] ‘What is it about me that I need to control another person? What fears do I have? Why am I so frightened and terrified that I need to do this to another person?’”

Together, we can make the world a less violent and safer place for our children. But it starts with us acknowledging and addressing the problem.

If you’d like more information on the enditnow campaign and online summit, visit the website.