Today uniquely marks the close of 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence and the observance of Human Rights Day globally. The themes of these international days are respectively: UNiTE to End Digital Violence against All Women and Girls and Human Rights, Our Everyday Essentials.
The bridge between these themes is gender (in)equality and the reality that essential rights of women and gender diverse people to safety online and at home continue to be threatened. Today is a reminder to grapple with the global pervasiveness of gender-based violence, including here in Australia, and a reminder that our rights to safety online, at home and everywhere are essential. These rights to safety are attainable but require sustained, collective commitment from communities, governments and institutions.
Gender inequality and gender-based violence is not a “women’s issue.” It is a whole of society responsibility, and YWCA Australia is calling for shared, systemic action.
At YWCA Australia, our vision is for a future where gender equality is a reality. Our roadmap to this future is reflected in our advocacy agenda. Australia needs a renewed commitment to action so that women and gender-diverse people have a safe place to call home and the supports to live a life free from violence, whether the harm occurs in the home or online.
Our advocacy is grounded in our work as a national community housing provider, a provider of domestic and family violence and homelessness services, and a champion of young women and gender-diverse leadership in the design of systems change. This includes our two-core national groups of young women and gender-diverse leaders, our Young Women’s Council and our Digital Activist Community, who drive this work forward every day.
The leadership of young women and gender-diverse people in driving systems change is critical because they are the ones who have inherited the sharpest edge of both a housing crisis and a crisis of gender-based violence in Australia.
Latest Census data reflects escalating homelessness rates across Australian younger years from birth to 34 years old. This trend is increasingly gendered. Young people 12 to 24 years old are a national priority for homelessness responses, yet it is young women’s homelessness rates that are rising while young men’s rates decline. This trend has no relief with younger women in the next age group of 25 to 34 years old being the largest overall cohort of homeless women in Australia. Underpinning these trends is the reality that gender-based violence is the number one driver of homelessness for women and children in Australia.
When it comes to gender-based violence, the veil between the real world and the digital world is transparent and the patterns of abuse mirror one another.
eSafety confirms that women are more likely than men to be the target of sexual and gendered abuse that happens online or uses digital technology. The abuse is often more frequent, longer lasting and more severe in nature. The abuse has psychological impacts, leaving women more than twice as likely to fear for their safety compared to men. eSafety’s research also shows that members of the LGBTIQ+ community are more vulnerable to digital abuse, with the community experiencing online hate at more than double the national average.
The issue of gender-based violence in the digital world compounds for young women and gender-diverse people whose worlds are increasingly online, with escalating trends of technology-facilitated abuse, including image-based abuse, AI-facilitated abuse and deep fakes.
The intersection between the essential rights to safety at home and online are stark when we look at the situation of victim-survivors escaping domestic and family abuse. As a nation, we continue to fail victim-survivors in this situation. Victim-survivors face the confronting and real risk of escalating violence from their abuser when trying to separate and leave the home, as well as the uncertain future of housing precarity and homelessness. This dilemma is compounded again when children are involved.
The digital reach of an abuser can undermine safety no matter where a victim-survivor sleeps that night. As Professor Anastasia Powell explains, “Control has always been a feature of domestic and family violence. The meshing of technology into everyday life has simply brought a new and expanded set of tactics for perpetrators to enact this control.”
Powell’s research with residents in a family violence refuge shows how recurrent digital abuse has become a feature of domestic and family abuse, “Nearly every resident, who were all there because they were fleeing high-risk physical violence, had also experienced tech-abuse – monitoring communications, stalking their location, or controlling their email, banking or accounts.” This is not a fringe issue. It is the new normal in intimate partner violence. For women already facing intersecting barriers – women with insecure visas, migrant and refugee women, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women, young women, and women with disabilities – the burden is heaviest. Digital abuse compounds existing inequities and magnifies every vulnerability.
This makes housing and wrap-around support more critical than ever. As Powell notes, “It is an unfair burden to leave victim survivors to manage their digital safety, while fleeing to protect their physical safety, alone and without support. That is why family violence caseworkers and the option of supported refuge accommodation can be so important.” Safe housing, with properly resourced domestic and family violence and homelessness services, is an essential line of defence.
Digital abuse is often framed as a technology problem, but at its core it is a modern expression of gender inequality. YWCA Australia’s advocacy emphasises four interconnected areas: housing, economic security, safety, and leadership – each piece is a fabric that weaves together towards a strong and equal society. Housing policy and economic policy are safety policies. Those policies need to be informed by the young women and gender-diverse people who have inherited these crises to stop the trend before it continues to be passed on to the next generations.
We need coordinated responses that recognise how the digital and physical worlds intersect in the lives of women and gender-diverse people. This includes increasing investment across the housing pipeline for victim-survivors of domestic and family violence from crisis accommodation to long-term social and affordable housing with wrap-around domestic and family violence and homelessness support services. Moreover, expanding the funding envelope to support frontline services in their delivery of homelessness, domestic and family violence and youth services to respond to digital abuse as a form of coercive control. Of course, the voices of young women and gender-diverse people and victim-survivors of domestic, family and sexual abuse must be centred in this change-making and policy design.
As Powell reminds us, “The 16 Days of Activism can be more than awareness-raising. This is an opportunity to share knowledge, skills and actions to be part of the change.” For women and gender-diverse people to have our rights to safety at home and online secured, we need collective and structural commitment.
In the words of YWCA Australia’s Young Women’s Council member, Lena: “We all have a role to play in building a world free from violence. It starts with recognising that gender-based violence is not a private issue, it’s a collective one that demands both cultural and structural change.”