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	Rallies against gender-based violence across Australia by AAP, Australian Femicide Watch, agencies   27 Apr. 2024 (AAP, agencies)   Tens of thousands of Australians have taken to the nation’s streets demanding greater Government action to end to violence against women, which advocates warn has reached crisis levels.   Demonstrators gathered on Friday evening in the regional city of Ballarat where locals have been rocked by the deaths of three residents – Samantha Murphy, Rebecca Young and Hannah McGuire, allegedly at the hands of men.   Jade Young, 47, Ashlee Good, 38, Dawn Singleton, 25, Pikria Darchia, 55, and Yixuan Cheng, 27, were all killed at a Bondi shopping centre in Sydney when Queensland man Joel Cauchi went on a stabbing rampage.   Earlier this week Molly Ticehurst, 28, was found dead at her home in Forbes in NSW and Emma Bates, 49, was discovered dead at a property in Cobram in Victoria.   Melbourne rally organiser Martina Ferrara said seeing reports of a woman being killed every four days in 2024 is scary and impacts how they live their lives.   “It drives a fear on little girls, on young mothers and women as a whole – it is terrifying to think that you could simply go out on a run and get murdered or you could be doing anything and still not be safe,” she told AAP.   “Right around the country our communities are reeling from an increase in family and domestic violence,” independent senator David Pocock said from the nations' capital Canberra. “Find your nearest rally and get out there to show that enough is enough.”   At least 15 rallies are being held across the nation over the weekend.   Chants of “when our right to safety is under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back” erupted from the crowd in Sydney.   Sexual abuse survivor Harrison James told the crowd the end of violence against women begins when men are no longer silent and hold each other accountable.   “We have a total lack of introspection, which gives us men an excuse to turn away from discussions about violence, despite being central to the issue,” he said.   Katherine Berney from the National Women's Safety Alliance says urgent action is required to stop these deaths from happening. "Our frontline services who I represent are at max capacity. We are in a crisis, and we need solutions quickly, not in another six months."   Karen Webb, Police Commissioner from the state of New South Wales described the reality of the crisis: "60 per cent of police time is spent responding to domestic violence-related incidents".   Apr. 2024   Advocacy groups are demanding the Australian government declare violence against women a national emergency after three women were allegedly killed by men known to them this week.   On Friday, West Australian police said they believed a 30-year-old woman, whose body was found in the bedroom of home after a fire, may have been murdered. Earlier this week, two other women, 49-year-old Emma Bates in regional Victoria and 28-year-old Molly Ticehurst in regional New South Wales, were both allegedly killed by men police believe were known to them.   The ever increasing numbers of women who have died due to gender-based violence have fuelled anger across the nation. Rallies against gender-based violence took place in Hobart, Sydney and Adelaide, and on Sunday there will be rallies in Melbourne, Bendigo, Geelong, Coffs Harbour, Perth, Brisbane, Canberra and the Sunshine Coast.   Sarah Williams, from advocacy group What Were You Wearing Australia, is one of the organisers. She said more action was urgently needed.   "Australia is definitely in a time of a national emergency with men's violence," she said. "Simply not being enough done and it's really devastating that 3 years on from rallies by 100,00 people across Australia calling for action from Government we're probably in a worse situation than we were in 2021.   “I didn’t expect when I started organising the rallies that so many people from everywhere over Australia would be not only angry but wanting to stand together in solidarity to really see an end to this,” Williams told ABC News.   Sarah Williams said the group is calling for much greater funding for overwhelmed domestic, family and sexual violence support services over the next 5 years, as well as for the Australian Government to declare the violence a national emergency.   In Sydney, the issue of gender-based violence was close to home for some protesters.   "My younger sister was close friends with Lilie James, who was murdered last year, and a work colleague of hers was murdered at Bondi Junction recently," attendee Julia Robinson said. "That's two women personally that were in our lives and we've crossed paths with in our close circle.".. "It's heartbreaking, frustrating, and it's unacceptable."   In Hobart, Tasmania people gathered at Parliament to rally. Victim survivor, Luisa Mejia, addressed attendees, speaking about the importance of education.   "By education, I don't mean telling someone do not kill women, do not be violent," she said. "By education, I mean education itself about the power dynamics of abusive relationships, about the intersectionality of this issue, how someone's race, someone's religion, someone's background, socio-economic status, how that affects them and makes them vulnerable. All women should be free and safe."   In Adelaide, South Australian Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young, called for the federal Government to designate violence against women “a national emergency”.   “This is an epidemic and it’s time we started talking about it not in terms of just ‘violence against women’,” Hanson-Young told Guardian Australia. “This is the murder of women. This is the terrorising of women in their homes and on the street. Women don’t feel safe.”   Hanson-Young said that there should be an “all-shoulders-to-the-wheel” approach, starting with better funding of support services and a “root-and-branch review of the justice system”, including apprehended violence orders and how well they protect women.   "This is an epidemic that requires the full resources of government at all levels across all departments," Senator Hanson-Young said. "We need everything we can get to stop this epidemic."   Violence against women has long plagued Australia. There is no official counter for women’s deaths, but the number of women who die in gendered violence is collated by Counting Dead Women and Femicide Watch’s Red Heart Campaign. According to their figures, this year one woman is murdered every four days in Australia.   Ann O'Neil's two small children were killed by her estranged husband in 1994, she has dedicated her life to trauma counselling and advocacy ever since. She is calling for violence against women and children to become a standard agenda item at every National Cabinet meeting. She says the homicide figures are only the "very, very tip of the iceberg", because for every death of a woman in Australia, "at least 20 more are hospitalised and 200 are assaulted".   She underlines the need for police to be well-supported "by health and community services with responsive, boots-on-the-ground service provision around the clock", and "safe places and spaces" — for housing victims.   Leading violence against women expert, Prof Kate Fitz-Gibbon, said: “the justice system is failing victims of all forms of gender based violence”.   Prof Fitz-Gibbon said bail and intervention order shortfalls were part of the problem, but the entire system was failing to keep victims safe and hold perpetrators to account.”   “These deaths are preventable and we need to ensure we have the data-led insights at hand to prevent them,” the Monash University professor said.   “There is a need to ensure domestic and family violence risk assessment and safety planning processes for victim-survivors are as effective as possible, and that we have a robust suite of perpetrator interventions.”   Prof Fitz-Gibbon called for national leadership to boost co-ordination between states, including the sharing of vital family violence data, as well as greater investment in early intervention and prevention.   She said the federal government’s funding commitment to the National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children “stretches far too thin”.   “All states and territory governments committed to the National Plan and it is essential that their commitment is evident in the state budgets,” she said.   Apr. 2024   There needs to be an emergency response to the epidemic of male violence. (ABC News)   Patricia Karvelas: "In recent days I have felt heartsick. I have had a visceral reaction to the body count, the staggering number of women killed allegedly by men, current and former ex-partners among them. It feels like a tsunami of misery.   It's time we accept that there needs to be an emergency response to the epidemic of male violence. We are knowingly putting our girls and women at risk if we don't consider immediate and radical changes to our prevention and response systems.   We can't keep tinkering, review after review, state by state, individual crisis after crisis. We can't wait for attitudinal change to do the bulk of the work with miracle results.   Gendered violence is entrenched, so embodied in our culture it will take an effort bigger than motherhood statements about zero tolerance and lofty goals to end it. It will need dramatically more resourcing and top prioritisation, not just another agenda item on a long list of national issues.   We've had a national emergency before. It was called COVID and it involved daily press conferences, constant national cabinet meetings and prime ministerial coordination. It wasn't perfect but it was intensive and deliberate. It involved expert advice and big investments.   It may seem an odd comparison but gendered violence can't be tackled in silos anymore. We can't have sporadic work, a flurry of activity after an explosion of anger and then, quietly, business as usual returning".   One in four women has suffered intimate partner violence since the age of 15, while three in five Indigenous women have experienced physical or sexual violence perpetrated by a male intimate partner.   Late last year, for the first time, governments set targets for ending violence, including a 25 per cent annual reduction in female victims of intimate partner homicide.   The Albanese government has marginally increased it's funding commitment to address women's safety. But experts say the investment promised is not nearly enough to deal with the scale of the crisis of domestic, family and sexual violence in Australia. Frontline service providers are overwhelmed by demand and lack sufficient resources to cope with the scale of the crisis.   Co-founder of advocacy group Fair Agenda, Renee Carr, says frontline services are "desperate" for more funding. "Too many services aren't able to assist the women already reaching out to them," Ms Carr says. "Domestic and family violence service specialists, sexual assault services, legal assistance services, they're all calling out for funding to meet demand, and the government's need to provide it."   Ms Carr says women's legal services have to turn away 52,000 women every year because they're not funded to meet demand. She adds that family violence legal services who do "really vital work" in First Nations communities have been calling for an urgent and immediate boost to their capacity to support families.   Independent MPs are pushing for funding to accelerate too. Independent MP for Goldstein, Zoe Daniel, says the prime minister must declare violence against women a national emergency.   "We need to treat gendered violence with the same level of urgency we show to terrorism, because it is a form of terrorism, and certainly at a rate of a woman every four days, it's killing more Australians".   "We are desensitised to this. Whether we label it terrorism or not, the fact is that women and children are being terrorised across our nation. We cannot let this be yet another moment of hand-wringing that leads nowhere."   Daniel says we need to see (1) a set of immediate actions — things like how Apprehended Domestic Violence Orders (AVOs) and bail are failing women, things like how gaps in data are leading to red flags being missed, (2) how to address violent online porn, toxic misogynistic influencers online, other drivers like alcohol abuse, mental health issues, gambling and financial pressure, and all the while (3) we have a long-run education, prevention, cultural-change approach to elevate respect for women and girls and to provoke men and boys to be more than bystanders.   Crucially, she says federal and state governments have to work together. "The national plan is a good set of aims but it is underfunded." She says family violence organisations live hand to mouth, constantly worrying about whether their funding will be renewed.   Wentworth MP Allegra Spender says there must be action on violence against women.   "We know that violence against women happens in all communities and is linked to gender power imbalances. It starts with attitudes and social norms and thrives with a lack of consequences and a justice system that doesn't deliver justice or adequately protect women.   She agrees with Daniel that the existing national plan and targets to reduce violence need the funding to deliver that, and we need to hold ourselves accountable at each step on the way.   "Key areas for immediate investment should be education, housing and grassroots services for women experiencing violence, and justice reform," she says. "I have local services that are struggling for funding with the significant need. In my area up to 50 per cent of police time is spent on Domestic Violence."   And she says social media has a role in this too. "I believe the government should look at models where youth can opt out of the algorithm serving them content that they don't already follow or are searching for."   One of the toxic influences on some young men has been Andrew Tate, who has attracted millions of online followers drawn to his hyper-masculine and over-the-top lifestyle. For some young men and boys, Tate's view of the world is one to emulate.   A new study of women teachers has recently found Tate's ideology is spreading in Australian classrooms in the form of sexism and sexual harassment. The messages some boys are getting in our disrupted world are dangerous, and we still haven't worked out how to combat it.   Former Australian of the Year Rosie Batty has for years been a strong voice on family violence prevention, 10 years ago she argued the alleged perpetrators of these offences should be labelled "intimate partner terrorists".   "I think there is an unconscious minimisation of violence when we put domestic or family in front of it, and I think that … language matters," she says. "And I think it really is a very accurate description of the terror and the terrorisation that occurs in … this dynamic and it makes you … consider something more sharply when we hear the word terrorism." And terrorism, she adds, is "exactly what too many women and children are experiencing".   Batty says women will only truly be safe if perpetrators decide not to be abusive and violent. "And I'm really sorry, but tightening of the bail laws or adjusting that justice response alone doesn't necessarily mean you're safe."   Batty says she meets women across Australia who have had to change their names and move interstate to be safe. They live "anonymously in fear and always looking over their shoulder because they know he will never rest until he tracks them down", she says. "And that is the brutal reality." Stalking, she adds, is an "extremely high-risk factor" that is still not well enough understood.   Angela Lynch, a sexual and family violence prevention advocate, says sexual violence and stalking, are "well-established" high-risk behaviours.   "They really go to a person's level of control, possessiveness and entitlement over that victim, and really point to high levels of danger. So we need to ask: what evidence is going before the court? How are they making these assessments of dangerousness?"   It's not uncommon for the legal system to continually give the accused the "benefit of the doubt", Lynch says, and when that occurs, it "pushes issues of safety back on to the individual woman".   "We need Government to engage on an urgent basis with gender violence experts — to listen to what's happening … on the front line — and we need a new way of responding to extreme risk, and obviously, all the other levels as well," she says. "The women in Australia, the community more broadly, are calling for urgent action on this."   * Australian Institute for Health & Welfare: In 2022, there were 129,876 victims of police-reported family violence and 117,093 victims of intimate partner violence aged 12 years and older. The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) 2021–22 Personal Safety Survey (PSS) reports that: 1 in 2 women who had experienced physical and/or sexual violence from a current partner did not seek advice or support about the violence. 2 in 5 women (574,000) who had experienced physical and/or sexual violence from a previous partner did not seek advice or support about the violence (ABS 2023a). Frontline service providers say only 1 in 5 women report intimate partner violence to police.   Australian Bureau of Statistics data on personal safety (2021-22) reported more than 1 million women said they did not use public transport alone after dark because they felt unsafe. Another 2.2 million women said they did not walk in their local area alone after dark because they felt unsafe doing so.   http://australianfemicidewatch.org/database/ http://zoedaniel.com.au/2024/04/10/enough-this-violence-has-to-end-now/ http://www.sbs.com.au/news/tag/subject/violence-against-women http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/26/we-wont-stop-violence-against-women-with-conversations-about-respect-this-is-not-working-we-need-to-get-real-ntwnfb http://www.vwt.org.au/thetrap/ http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/apr/27/as-regional-australia-reels-from-several-womens-deaths-advocates-seek-both-policing-and-prevention http://www.uts.edu.au/partners-and-community/initiatives/social-justice-uts/social-impact/case-studies/counting-dead-women-hard-truth-about-australias-domestic-violence-victims   http://www.paulramsayfoundation.org.au/news-resources/10-shocking-facts-about-domestic-violence-in-australia-launch-of-the-choice-violence-or-poverty-report-by-anne-summers-ao http://www.aihw.gov.au/family-domestic-and-sexual-violence/resources/fdsv-summary http://www.anrows.org.au/publication/australian-domestic-and-family-violence-death-review-network-data-report-intimate-partner-violence-homicides-2010-2018/ http://ncas.au http://nationalfvpls.org/learn-about-family-violence/ http://www.anrows.org.au/media-releases/barriers-preventing-aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander-women-from-reporting-family-violence/ http://www.ourwatch.org.au/resource/changing-the-picture/ http://tinyurl.com/2sw84uar http://fullstop.org.au/news/national-crisis-as-abs-crime-data-shows-a-13-increase-in-sexual-assaults Visit the related web page
	Equal pay for work of equal value by ILO, ITUC, UN Women   International Equal Pay Day, celebrated on 18 September, represents the longstanding efforts towards the achievement of equal pay for work of equal value. It further builds on the United Nations' commitment to human rights and against all forms of discrimination, including discrimination against women and girls.   Across all regions, women are paid less than men, with the gender pay gap estimated at around 20 per cent globally. Gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls continue to be held back owing to the persistence of historical and structural unequal power relations between women and men, poverty and inequalities and disadvantages in access to resources and opportunities that limit women’s and girls’ capabilities.   Progress on narrowing that gap has been slow. While equal pay for men and women has been widely endorsed, applying it in practice has been difficult.   In order to ensure that no one is left behind, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) address the need to achieve gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls. Furthermore, the SDGs promote decent work and economic growth by seeking full and productive employment and decent work for all women and men, including for young people and persons with disabilities, and equal pay for work of equal value. Mainstreaming of a gender perspective is crucial in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.   Achieving equal pay is an important milestone for human rights and gender equality. It takes the effort of the entire world community and more work remains to be done.   The United Nations, including UN Women and the International Labour Organization (ILO) invites Members states and civil society, women’s and community-based organizations and feminist groups, as well as businesses and workers’ and employers’ organizations, to promote equal pay for work of equal value and the economic empowerment of women and girls.   http://www.un.org/en/observances/equal-pay-day http://ilostat.ilo.org/equal-pay-for-work-of-equal-value-where-do-we-stand-in-2023/ http://www.ituc-csi.org/international-equal-pay-day-2023 http://www.ituc-csi.org/Trade-union-action-to-promote-equal-pay-for-work-of-equal-value http://www.ituc-csi.org/ituc-report-on-care-2022-en http://policy-practice.oxfam.org/resources/time-to-care-unpaid-and-underpaid-care-work-and-the-global-inequality-crisis-620928/ http://www.developmentpathways.co.uk/blog/time-to-care/ http://www.wiego.org/publications/engendering-informality-statistics-ilo-working-paper-84 http://www.care.org/news-and-stories/resources/growth-is-not-enough/ Visit the related web page
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