Violence Against Women: A Men's Issue

Violence Against Women:
A Men"s Issue

Commemoration of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women

(White Ribbon Day)

Pru Goward,
Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Canberra Museum and Art Gallery,
Civic Square,
Canberra,
Friday 25 November 2005

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Thank you for the invitation to speak today. How wonderful it is to see so many men here to support something that has for too long been placed in the "women"s issues" basket, as if violence against women is our problem.

It is not always easy for people to acknowledge let alone take steps to address violence against women. And perhaps it is harder for the majority of men who do not use violence, who while not condoning violence do not know what role they can or should take to condemn it. Other men fear that all men are branded by campaigns to stop violence against women, which in a sense is even more of a reason why men must be part of the leadership of this campaign.

To make it clear that violence does not come on the Y gene and that men object to violence as much as women.

I think it"s also true that violence against women and particularly domestic and family violence is not always easy to talk about and it is so connected to deeply held traditions and superstitions that many would rather not discuss it, let alone support the need for national awareness, so congratulations to all of you who have made today"s event and the wider campaign possible.

Thankfully we have come a long way in the past three decades.

In the 1970s I remember friends of mine maintaining court vigils for women who had the courage to charge their husbands with physical or sexual assault and take him to court. Some women lawyers like Jocelyn Newman, who went on to be a federal minister, gave free legal advice to victims.

In the early days, judges declared the matters off limits - it was a private matter between a husband and wife, she must have deserved it - "domestics" as they were called had nothing to do with the State and in particular the criminal justice system. Women kept up a barrage of criticism until the judgements began to change.

You would have to say that historically at least, our treatment of domestic violence has been one measure of the inequality between men and women.

It"s simple. If a man bashed a woman walking down the street there would be hell to pay and the justice system would have no trouble in putting him away.

The same treatment should apply when the woman is not a stranger, but the woman he says he loves, the woman who has often borne his children and kept his house.

Sadly, the criminal justice system still fails women today.

As we know, when it comes to intimate relations between men and women, nothing is allowed to be simple.

As Sex Discrimination Commissioner I am often asked what is the greatest challenge for women"s human rights in Australia - the answer has to be violence against women. If women cannot expect to be safe in their own homes and communities, how can they expect equality in society?

Most of us here are familiar with the figures. The 1996 Women's Safety Survey reported that 23% of women who have ever been married or in a de facto relationship experienced violence by their partner at some time in the relationship.

While we do not yet have directly comparable figures for the situation today, the recent International Violence Against Women Survey shows that 34% of Australian women who have a current or former intimate partner reported experiencing at least one form of violence during their lifetime.

But on balance it is true today that while the incidence of violence may not have altered, violence against women is much less acceptable, and much more likely to be treated seriously than thirty years ago. This is a part of the greater international recognition of women"s rights.

However we still have a long way to go, and it sometimes seems that as a society we are forever taking tentative steps forward only to then take a few more steps back.

For all the signs of progress, whether they be greater public awareness, changes within the criminal justice system and policing or preventative measures, we can find so many examples where little has changed, where the system has failed to protect women and where justice has not been served.

The Ramage case in Victoria comes to mind - where a man who bashed and strangled his wife then dumped her body in the bush was found guilty of manslaughter rather than murder because she "provoked" him - as does the recent case of the rape of a 14 year old year girl in the Northern Territory. In that case the excuse was customary law and "she knew what was expected of her".

We cannot go further in addressing violence against women without the support of men. Which is why White Ribbon Day, and in particular this latest campaign by UNIFEM Australia, is such a crucial intervention.

Service providers and the police have worked hard in recent years to change the way police respond to violence against women and provide a coordinated victim-centred response - beginning with treating violence in the home as a crime rather than something it wasn"t their business to interfere in.

Our male leaders are getting involved for the first time - the Prime Minister appeared in the Australia Says NO campaign booklet last year, something we would never have imagined happening a few years ago.

I must say whenever I play the CD of the Prime Minister"s television appeal to groups in China and Hong Kong, the women in the room are incredibly impressed that a national leader has seen fit to be part of such a campaign. Clearly not something that is happening there.

If institutional responses can change and if the leader of the country can condemn violence against women then it is high time the response of all male onlookers change.

Attitudinal research shows that many still say there are situations when men"s violence is acceptable, where she must have deserved it, or provoked it, and many"s the time other women say "if it had been me, I would have walked away".

The dynamics of violence between people who say they love each other are complex but this does not mean we sit by and do nothing when we witness violence taking place. Perpetrators of violence need to know they will not be indulged, that they will be held accountable.

Which is where men come in.

It is men who are in a strong position to call other men to account for their actions.

It is men who currently control most of the resources required to effect change and they are integrally involved in the relationships that produce gender inequality.¹

This was acknowledged at the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women meeting last year, with a discussion about the role of men and boys in gender equality.

It is men who can play a key role in social change, who have the power to not only act as gatekeepers of their privilege, as Bob Connell reminds us, but to be "willing gatekeepers" ²who open the door to gender equality. Women cannot achieve gender equality without men to let us into the structures of power, whether we are talking about public institutions or private life, in equitable relationships where couples share the responsibilities for paid and unpaid work. Women cannot achieve gender equality if men are silent about violence towards women.

Achieving equality in unpaid work on the home front is one of the ways forward for gender equality in other areas of life - this is one of the major aims of my current Striking the Balance project.

Restrictive gender roles that keep women from participating in the labour market on the same footing as men cannot be changed without change in the roles that restrict men.

For a start the homicide figures demonstrate that a woman is least likely to be murdered by her male partner if she has a job and he doesn"t. If he has a job and she doesn"t, there is more chance of murder although sadly, the chances are highest when neither of them has a job.

But it is also true that traditional gender roles that define men as breadwinners rather than carers are the counterpart to those that define men as naturally aggressive, predatory or unable to contain their sexual desires.



These tired ideas about what it is to be masculine underlie acceptance of violent behaviour and they are well overdue for an overhaul.

This makeover cannot be done by women but must come from men themselves, and there are many men out there already who are choosing to re-defining their lives and who are supporting greater possibilities for women"s lives in the process.

Involving men in anti-violence work can be difficult however, because some men believe that women beat men as often as men beat women. They argue domestic violence campaigns are the work of men-hating feminists. This is despite official homicide figures which demonstrate that 77% of murders in Australia between intimate partners involve a man killing a woman; 21% involve a woman killing a man. One government survey found that 50.5% of women victims reported being physically hurt compared with 1.5% of men.

While it is clear that claims of "equal" amounts and types of violence are at best mistaken and at worst malevolent, anyone involving themselves in this campaign should anticipate this response and be ready to stand their ground.

Of course domestic violence with women as perpetrators, slapping, hitting, even stabbing, must be acknowledged. The verbal bullying frequently associated with women, the cold treatment, the stories of men being physically harassed by women, are all on the continuum of domestic violence. But they are not murder.

The point to make is this: being anti-violence against women does not mean you are pro-violence towards men, or that you do not support the prevention of violence against men or support for male victims. One does not preclude the other, but we must always acknowledge the evidence, which shows it is overwhelmingly the case that women are more likely to be victims, and men more likely to be perpetrators.

Men have a stake in their effort to tackle violence against women because - as UNIFEM points out - some men"s violence against women gives all men a bad name.

By doing nothing, men give their tacit approval of violence against women, and in doing so they diminish the status of men as well as the status of women.

In concluding, empowering women in public and private life is the way to move forward because empowerment and living free from violence go hand in hand.

Empowering women through greater economic participation is a protective strategy against violence. International research on family homicides suggests that as women"s social status improves the incidence of family homicide declines. To repeat, in Australia a greater proportion of family homicides involve people who were not employed at the time of the incident.

But we cannot empower women without the support of men, men who will let women into positions of influence and men who refuse to be silent about violence against women.

We need men who will take ownership of this issue. We need men who will stand up on behalf of all men who abhor violence and speak out, whether this is stepping in to prevent an attack on a woman or helping to create a culture where violence is unacceptable.

Men in all organisations and in every workplace can play a part by getting behind the campaign.

The President of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, John von Doussa, and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner and Acting Race Discrimination Commissioner Tom Calma are both White Ribbon Day Ambassadors.

We have held an event for staff at the Commission and each of us has mentioned White Ribbon Day in the course of our public duties this week.

This kind of commitment from men in leadership positions is essential but it is not something which is limited to senior figures. Any man in any organisation can order a box of white ribbons and send an email to his colleagues to enlist their support.

In helping to get this message out I congratulate Saatchi and Saatchi for producing such powerful campaign imagery. While it is confronting and shocking, the real shock lies in the reality behind the representation.

It is this reality which both women and men must confront if we are to stop violence against women and move towards gender equality.

Thank you.

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Last
updated 9 December 2005