The World Health Organization states that violence against women ‘is not an intractable social problem or an inevitable part of the human condition’, but rather ‘the product of complex, yet modifiable social and environmental factors’.5
We can choose a future where women live free from violence. We can eliminate violence against women and children. But to do so requires a conscious and critical conversation about gender relationships, power, and what builds and changes culture. This is ‘primary prevention’: stopping violence before it starts.
While every victim or survivor has a right to support—and every perpetrator must be held accountable—primary prevention has a different focus. It aims to get us to a point where there are no more victims or perpetrators, because there is no more violence. Primary prevention happens in all the spaces in which people live, study, work and spend their leisure hours, and the ‘job’ of primary prevention is not the responsibility of a small number of highly qualified counsellors or law enforcement agencies: it’s everybody’s responsibility.
Australia has been a world leader in other areas that use the primary prevention approach, such as smoking, sun protection and road safety. Violence against women has been around a lot longer than, say, unsafe driving. It is more entrenched in our attitudes, cultures and practices, and will—in all likelihood—take longer to shift. But we know population-wide change is possible.
It needs a long-term and coordinated effort. A single advertisement on television didn’t stop people speeding, but when combined with changes to law and policing, driver education and other initiatives, we started to see a difference. It is the same thing with preventing violence against women. For example, whole-of-school ‘respectful relationships’ education initiatives can be very effective at changing students’ attitudes and behaviours. However, if those young people get a different message from the media, or the coach at their sporting club, or at home, then we cannot expect such change to ‘stick’. If work in schools is reinforced by programs for young people in sporting clubs and through social media, then the impact is magnified. Similarly, adults need to be engaged in workplaces, in the media and in communities.
To support such coordinated action, we need cross-party policy and legislative support, and long-term investment, both of which can be precarious and subject to government and electoral whims.
Although there is no single cause of violence against women, research shows that the main drivers of higher levels of such violence are attitudes and behaviours that condone violence against women, limit women’s independence, adhere to rigid gender roles, and disrespect women.6
While this violence is linked to gender inequality, gender inequality is not the same thing for all women. Racism, colonisation, ableism, homophobia, transphobia and other forms of discrimination and disadvantage ‘intersect’ with gender inequality to affect the nature of violence against different women and the women’s experience of the violence. We are only starting to comprehend the prevalence of violence against women with a disability and those from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds. Sydney lawyer Pallavi Sinha says that violence experienced by CALD women ‘tends to be unique’ due to fear of ‘possible exclusion or persecution by their community’ and the notion that ‘A woman’s place is in the home’.7 Women with disabilities face the same kinds of violence experienced by other women, but also disability-related violence, such as perpetrators controlling access to medication, mobility aids and communication support.
Factors that many of us may think of as linked to violence—such as childhood experience of violence, or harmful use of alcohol—do play a role, but research shows that they only come into play in the context of these gendered power dynamics.8 They do not operate in isolation. For example, men who see women as their equal, who don’t believe that to ‘be a man’ they need to be dominant and in control, and who treat their partners with respect don’t suddenly become violent when they drink. But if you combine alcohol abuse with, for example, the belief that men have a need or right to exercise power and control over their partner, then alcohol can make violence against women worse—more frequent, more severe.
The Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education has attempted to quantify alcohol’s impact on women, children and families, and its research has shown that a 10 per cent increase in liquor stores in an area can amount to a 3.3 per cent increase in family violence rates in that area. Anne Summers recalls the words of a lawyer who handles thousands of domestic violence cases each year: ‘It’s not as if drunk men are assaulting their bosses or their co-workers. They are making choices about who to attack.’ These men attack their partner or former partner. It is a choice. As Summers wrote, ‘No one denies that alcohol can exacerbate violence but it uncovers rather than causes already existing attitudes.’9
The belief that women are not equal is what prevention work challenges. That belief doesn’t come out of nowhere. Little boys aren’t born thinking they need to exercise power and control over others to be a ‘real man’: our society teaches them that—through the countless messages about gender, power, masculinity and femininity delivered every day. And I mean every day.
Lawyer and TV personality Andrew O’Keefe, the founding chair of male behavioural change organisation White Ribbon Australia, tells a story about how he realised he had to check his own behaviour when greeting children at family gatherings. He said he would run up to his nephew and say, ‘Hi mate, how’s the footy?’ and greet the girls by saying, ‘Don’t you look pretty—isn’t that a lovely outfit?’
Some of these tendencies to stereotype are hard to abandon. Popular culture, marketing and long-held assumptions about the place of men, women, boys and girls in society create stereotypes that limit our children. Outdated gender stereotypes are subtly reinforced to children from very early in their development—and we all do it. Few of us would give a pink card on the birth of a boy, for example. When I do my Christmas shopping, invariably I am guided into ‘boys’ and ‘girls’ sections, even though the toys are totally mutually compatible. Yet the boys are offered slime and trucks and Star Wars figures instead of make-up, diaries, kitchen items and bath treats. My son, Conrad, raised his eyebrows at a Woolworths Christmas catalogue that specified ‘Toys for Boys’ and ‘Toys for Girls’. He thought it odd that his sister, ‘the little lady’, should have bath products or cooking utensils and not Lego or toy cars. The latter were intended for male ‘mini superheroes’ and ‘budding builders’.
When Senator Larissa Waters suggested that adults might consider how toys are marketed to children, she was condemned by shock jocks and politicians alike. She was supporting ‘No Gender December’, a campaign founded by Australian parents Thea Hughes and Julie Huberman that promotes more inclusive marketing by toy companies. Waters remarked that ‘outdated stereotypes’ about girls and boys perpetuate gender inequality, ‘which feeds into very serious problems such as domestic violence and the gender pay gap’. The reaction to her comments bordered on hysterical. Former prime minister Tony Abbott was reported as questioning her role in the Senate, saying, ‘You wonder why the Parliament’s difficult, when you’ve got people like that’, while Senator Cory Bernardi warned that if boys got Barbie dolls and girls got monster trucks for Christmas, there would be unhappy children ‘across the country’.10
I realise that for some it may seem a long bow to draw between pink and blue gifts for girls and boys respectively and whether our society functions as a healthy, respectful and equal one. But these seemingly small things tie into gender stereotypes and the status we afford females and males in our society. No one is suggesting that girls can’t play with dolls or that boys can’t love trucks, but these preferences are by no means exclusive to a specific sex, and the fact is that rigid gender stereotypes do little for our modern world. Most parents agree with this: research carried out by Our Watch shows 79 per cent of parents of 0 to 3-year-olds want their children to be able to explore their interests free from limiting gender stereotypes. Our Watch’s recent survey of parents—single parents, same-sex parents, parents from regional and urban environments—confirms they want their children to develop happily and healthily, and almost all agree it is important to treat girls and boys the same in the early years.
Every parent I’ve met wants his or her children to pursue their interests in a way that reflects their personalities. Helping to nip outdated gender stereotypes in the bud when they are small and seemingly inconsequential will help us achieve a more equal and respectful society in the long run.
Challenging these stereotypes can be as simple as sharing the care-giving and housework equally—or, as O’Keefe says, ‘the boring stuff, the hard stuff, the big stuff, the fun stuff, and the tender stuff’11—or exposing our children to a diverse range of role models and championing both female and male leaders in books, television shows, movies, arts and sport. We need to see women in positions of authority and in non-traditional professions, as well as different representations of masculinity that don’t involve ‘toxic’ masculinity.12
I treat Book Week in primary schools as a gauge showing how we are doing when it comes to male and female role models for young people, especially in popular culture. Last year my daughter, Cordelia, went as Hermione from Harry Potter and there were dozens of other Hermiones. Thank goodness for JK Rowling’s inclusion of strong female role models in the Harry Potter series. Actually, I think Cordelia thought she was dressing as Emma Watson, the actor who played Hermione in the Harry Potter movies. Watson is a UN Women Goodwill Ambassador and has been voted the celebrity who inspires teenage girls the most.
Previously, there has been a dearth of female role models in books, on TV and in mainstream animated movies. Say what you will about the Disney movie Frozen and its ever-present soundtrack, it is a high-grossing movie in which no one gets married and the ‘act of true love thawing a frozen heart’ is not the usual boy-meets-girl resolution.
Anything that celebrates strong girls and women is welcome, for both boys and girls. More so if it includes diverse representation of young people and issues, such as Disney’s Moana (which has a South Pacific heroine) and Inside Out (which deals with emotional and mental health issues). Some parents tell me that when they read bedtime stories to their children they swap the gender of the characters, especially when the protagonist is a male and is characterised by bravery and leadership, and the main female character is in need of being saved or the only one capable of sensitivity.
The poor representation of diverse attributes beyond gender is also stark. The lack of visibility of people with disabilities, of different cultural backgrounds and who might look different from the ‘norm’ continues. For example, as a child, I didn’t watch cartoons with my mother, Shirley, as she is deaf and you can’t lip-read cartoons.
Challenging these stereotypes also means not complimenting girls only on their looks, and making an effort to compliment boys on their emotions. As O’Keefe says, ‘My wife and I try to show our kids that men and women can be soft, and women and men can be tough. We try to show them that both men and women can be strong, capable and successful as well as empathetic, nurturing and loving … because that’s true equality, and because it offers them the best chance for real self-fulfilment.’13 When we challenge these pervasive gender stereotypes, we help give our children the message that they can be whoever they want to be: that they need not be restricted by stereotypes and ‘rules’ about ‘what girls can do’ or ‘what boys are like’.
Clementine Ford outlines the negative effects of patriarchy on men in her recent book Boys Will Be Boys. She shows that our world ‘conditions boys into entitlement, privilege and power at the expense not just of girls’ humanity but also of their own’. I find the idea of liberating gender roles for men and boys an exciting thought, but I don’t underestimate how hard it is to do. Every day I see the pressure on my children, especially on my son, to conform to stereotypes, whether it is a former soccer coach calling him a ‘mummy’s boy’, or his teammates accusing each other of ‘kicking like a girl’, or boys being teased for wearing ‘girl’-coloured clothing.
We might even tell our sons that ‘boys don’t cry’ when they express their emotions, or call our daughters ‘bossy’ when they assert themselves. We know these attributes are applied over our entire lives. I cringe at the number of times I was referred to as the ‘ambitious’ deputy leader of my political party, meant in a pejorative way, and how I and other female MPs were regularly described as ‘shrill’ and ‘strident’ when we were being as assertive as our male counterparts.
Negative comments such as ‘run like a girl’ or ‘man up’ are still pervasive. These might seem like small examples, but we know—and child development experts tell us—that how we talk to children matters, that the language we use is significant. These and other subtle expressions of gender stereotypes that children absorb can shape attitudes and expectations into adulthood.
Such stereotypes can reinforce the idea that men ‘naturally’ make better leaders and should hold positions of power because they are more rational and less emotional than women—a view actually supported by 15 per cent of Australians.14 Needless to say, my parliamentary experience does not lead me to that conclusion!
As friends, relatives and authority figures, we can model behaviour that promotes gender equality and not treat our sons and daughters differently based on their sex. Our kids will learn to spot the difference, too. Consider what happened when my husband, Ian, suggested to Conrad—in front of our daughter—that the ‘boys’ go and look at cars together one afternoon. Cordelia piped up, ‘What, Dad, girls don’t like cars?’