As a volunteer at a women’s legal service, I would scour the Australian newspapers to discover if yet another woman had been killed by her male partner. I knew the statistic: in Australia one woman is killed every week by a current or former partner. But a statistic is never as powerful as a picture of a murdered woman. I met such women week after week and it was impossibly draining.
Why haven’t we figured this out yet? Why can’t just one of the newspaper articles substitute the word tragedy for the phrase gender-based violence? Or, better yet, national crisis?
The World section of the newspapers was always worse. In Papua New Guinea, a country which Northern Queenslanders can reach after 15 minutes in a tinny, they burn “witches”. Of course, sorcery based gender violence is far from the norm in PNG. As editor of the national daily Post Courier explained, both urban and rural Papua New Guineans “recoil in fear and disgust” at such violence.
What is more common is Lowy Institute’s Jo Chandler’s story about Papua New Guinean Helen. Helen was gang raped and locked in a sango-palm hut, which was then set alight. Helen received only basic hospital treatment before her attackers came looking for her. A policewoman from the local sexual offences squad was called, but she was unable to come due to lack of transport.
This is happening in the Asia-Pacific region. Our region. A region for which Foreign Minister Julie Bishop stated that ending violence against women and girls is a “foreign policy priority.”
Taking PNG as a case study, Australia has far to go before achieving this aim. Precise data on the incidence of gender-based violence in PNG is scarce. ChildFund estimates that an overwhelming two-thirds of families in PNG experience domestic violence. Medicins Sans Frontiers likened the situation to a ‘war zone’.
And in our own country, the well-known but no less harrowing statistic – one in three women has experienced physical violence since the age of 15 and one in five women has experienced sexual violence since the age of 15.
Not only is this morally distressing it has a grave impact on economic development. The World Bank has noted that costs incurred through gender-based violence generally amount to around 1.5% of a country’s GDP. This is due to spending on relevant services, decreased productivity levels for women and the negative impacts of human capital formation.
The World Bank has conducted extensive research into how best to tackle this issue. The Bank places significant emphasis on the fact that gender-based violence is a multifaceted issue and that interventions should address the problem across many sectors.
For example, women in Papua New Guinea felt that increased mining activity heightened the risk of gender-based violence in the community. The Bank suggests that all development projects should be screened for potential impact on the safety of women and girls.
The World Bank also notes the importance of having governmental support for gender-based violence initiatives. Given that gender-based violence is a politically sensitive issue in many countries, such support can be difficult to earn. This is no doubt true of PNG where it took nearly 15 years for family protection legislation to be passed.
Even in Australia, where a National Action Plan to Reduce Violence Against Women and their Children, gender-based violence is not given sufficient priority. The Second Action Plan was recently enacted and with it came an announcement that domestic and family violence protection orders will be recognised across state borders. This was announced three years earlier, at the time of the initial action plan. The Bank recommends identifying and cultivating champions in the government who will nurture gender-based violence programs.
But isn’t pressure more powerful when it comes from the voters? Particularly from voters who are most affected by gender-based violence; The victims of gender-based violence and their families. And the service providers, who not only possess expert awareness of specific aspects of the problem, but through their interaction with victims, anecdotal awareness also. These people and organisations have distinctive social knowledge and experiences when it comes to gender-based violence.
These voters would be powerful agitators for change if they joined together and formed a community organisation. Community organising is a method of intervention whereby individuals and organisations engage in planned action to influence social problems. As George Brager explains in Community Organising, they do this by planning (identifying problem areas, diagnosing causes and formulating solutions) and organising (developing the constituencies and devising the strategies necessary to effect action).
If those most affected by gender-based violence organised and identified reform priorities collectively, it is highly likely that these will be the reforms that will bring about the most positive outcomes for victims of gender-based violence. This group would undoubtedly represent a wide range of community sectors, and thus be able to propose multi-sectoral responses. Most importantly, such a community organisation would have a powerful collective identity, capable of making demands on the government.
Representative of a large voter base, they are not easily ignored.