SEVENTY-EIGHT. That’s how many women have died violently in Australia so far this year.
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That’s 78, with more than a month of 2015 still to go, according to the Destroy the Joint’s Counting Dead Women campaign. Last year, the figure reached 84.
Thankfully campaigns like Counting Dead Women are shining a light on family violence in all forms, as does the White Ribbon campaign.
Yesterday – November 25 – was White Ribbon Day, another campaign that is gaining traction as more and more men speak out against violence against women.
According to organisers, on the afternoon of December 6, 1989, a man walked into the École Polytechnique University in Montreal and massacred 14 of his female classmates.
“His actions traumatised a nation and brought the issue of violence against women to the forefront of our collective consciousness,” White Ribbon Day’s website says.
Two years later, a small group of men in Toronto decided they had a responsibility to speak out about and work to stop men’s violence against women. As a result, the White Ribbon Campaign in Canada became an annual awareness-raising event, held between November 25 and December 6.
In 1999, the United Nations General Assembly declared November 25 as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, with a white ribbon as its iconic symbol. The campaign began in Australia in 2003.
We often hear about a domestic violence epidemic in Australia. Here are some statistics from a 2012 survey by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, which show that since the age of 15:
- * 1 in 5 Australian women had experienced sexual violence
- * 1 in 6 Australian women had experienced physical or sexual violence from a current or former partner
- * 1 in 4 Australian women had experienced emotional abuse by a current or former partner
- * 1 in 3 Australian women had experienced physical violence
- * 1 in 22 Australian men had experienced sexual violence
- * 1 in 19 Australian men had experienced physical or sexual violence from a current or former partner
- * 1 in 7 Australian men had experienced emotional abuse by a current or ex partner
- * 1 in 2 Australian men had experienced physical violence
According to the figures, it is more likely for a person to experience violence from a male rather than a female perpetrator. More than three times as many people experienced violence from a male than a female.
It seems to me that while the community generally is increasingly recognising the incidence of domestic violence, the weak point remains the judicial system.
The first part of a special report called Hitting Home on the ABC’s Four Corners program detailed the lengths some women have had to go to in a bid to stay safe and away from a violent partner.
The program showed one woman whose home has been fitted with security cameras and other safety features in a bid to protect her from a man whose punishment from the courts did not include a jail sentence.
The person who appeared to be living in a prison was the victim of domestic violence and her children.
There’s no two ways about it, society is getting better at fighting domestic violence. But we’re not there yet and the next area in need of reform is surely sentencing.
