The standard you walk past is the standard you accept.³⁹

Lieutenant General David Morrison

Building safe communities for women and girls and achieving true gender equality lies in the collective efforts of a ‘whole of society’ approach. We all have to be bold in speaking out against sexism, gender inequality and violence. Only then will we create the cultural change needed to prevent violence against women and their children.

Increasingly, Australians ‘get’ that gendered violence and inequality are problems in this country. The wave of violence and deaths has prompted many people to wonder what they can do. What role can they play in preventing violence against women? I see this in letters to the editor in newspapers, and hear it on talkback radio and when people come up to me at the supermarket. People want to make a difference. They want to learn. They want to see an end to the savagery in their suburbs.

My advice is to do something. We all have a role in creating an Australia where women are not only safe but respected and treated as equals in private and public life. From an individual perspective, it can be as simple as calling out sexist or derogatory comments at work, at home or in social situations.

It is still commonplace for women and girls to be treated unfairly and without respect. Every day, small comments or actions, symbols and messages make clear the different treatment of men and women, boys and girls. Most of the time we ignore or even condone these sentiments. One in five of us believes there’s no harm in men making sexist jokes when they’re among their male friends,⁴⁰ and one in five thinks ‘women are becoming too outspoken these days’.⁴¹ These statistics show how prevalent and normalised these attitudes still are in our communities.

Intellectually, we know ‘women’s rights are human rights’, but the approach by many continues to be that violence against women is a personal matter: that what happens in the privacy of our home is sacrosanct and the authority of men is unquestionable.

When you are not in fear for your safety, being a good bystander in the face of sexist comments or jokes not only tells the offender that their behaviour is unacceptable, but also assures the victim that they are supported.

From a workplace perspective, we can have a significant influence on colleagues’ and employees’ attitudes, beliefs and behaviours. We can influence communities beyond the service or product we offer. Workplaces are a key setting for the prevention of violence against women, not only because violence can occur within the workplace, but because workplaces significantly influence our attitudes, beliefs and behaviours in both our personal and professional lives.

The #MeToo movement has already seen workplaces seeking urgent advice as to how to alter their culture. Obviously, some are panicked about liability, which is understandable given the evidence in a 2018 Australian Human Rights Commission survey that workplace sexual harassment affects around one in three people aged fifteen years and older, and four out of five harassers are men.

To reduce violence, workplace cultures need to reject sexism and discriminatory attitudes, confront organisational practices that devalue, exclude or marginalise women, and support increasing the number of female leaders. Boards, CEOs and senior leadership should be leading this charge in order to achieve whole-of-organisation change. Workplaces seeking affirmation through a White Ribbon tick of approval is a good first step, but ensuring culture and attitudes are changed as well as behaviour is important.

Women’s experiences of violence, even if occurring in the home, impact on the workplace. By implementing programs and policies to prevent violence against women, workplaces stand to benefit through increased productivity, reduced absenteeism, decreases in staff turnover, and improvements in staff health and wellbeing. There’s a financial benefit too, given employers lose $1.3 billion annually as a result of violence against women.⁴²

Staff can be trained to understand the extent and nature of intimate partner violence and how to support colleagues who may be experiencing violence. Codes of conduct and values statements can commit to intolerance of sexism, discrimination and violence against women, and policies such as domestic violence leave can be adopted, among other initiatives.

As Michael Flood says, ‘Gender inequality is both personal and structural and it is built into the fabric of men and women’s everyday lives: but beyond that it’s also built into our systems and culture. We will need culture change to shift the norms. And we will need to change the structural ways in which workplaces are organized, and in which governments make policy.’⁴³

We can’t separate gender inequality from other forms of oppression and inequality. The drivers, perpetration and experience of violence can vary significantly for different groups of women, so policy and campaigns need to encompass the many intersecting issues that, when addressed, will ensure every woman in Australia can live free from violence.

I implore our elected representatives to play a leading role in addressing this scourge, not only with policies and laws that eradicate this violence and with the necessary resources, but by setting an example and modelling respectful and ethical behaviour themselves. Make preventing violence against women a priority election issue.

In Year 10, I wrote an article entitled ‘My Heroines’ for Wrap feminist magazine in which I proclaimed my heroes were the women who worked in women’s shelters. I used to accompany my journalist mother, Shirley, on her visits to shelters in Adelaide, where she met with the brave women who worked to keep other women and their children safe, often at great risk to themselves and with little or no support. Shirley—no stranger to family violence herself—helped bring prominence to the issue of domestic violence with her articles in our hometown paper.

A lot has changed since I wrote that piece, but I did not think that more than thirty years later we’d still be dealing with some of the same issues and discrimination. Primary prevention work is not immediate. It may take generations, and it requires a multi-layered approach to education in all the settings where we work, learn, live and play. It will take many years before we see tangible change in attitudes, behaviours and practices that result in fewer incidences of violence at a population level. These are truly Pantene moments.

When I first stepped inside the federal parliament in 1995, my footwear received disproportionate attention. Those Doc Martens became part of a YWCA exhibition in 2005 called ‘Seventy7 Pairs of Shoes’. The footwear on display represented the number of women killed violently that year, and to see the shoes laid out like that was chilling.

The violence I have observed all over the world continues to haunt me, but the possibility of positive change drives me. It is time to say ‘No more violence’, ‘No more death’. Not on Our Watch.