How can we prevent gender-based violence?

You may have heard a lot of talk about Australia’s problem with gender-based violence in the media lately. In this post, we’re going to explore the extent of the problem and its drivers, as well as how we’re working to prevent it.

This is the second post in a two part series on gender-based violence. If you haven’t already, we recommend checking out part 1 first, where we explore what constitutes gender-based violence.

How big of a problem is gender-based violence in Australia?

To put it simply, it’s a very big problem. Here are just a few of the statistics, which paint a concerning picture of the gender-based violence landscape in Australia:

1 woman is killed every 11 days by an intimate partner (AIHW, 2024)
An estimated 1 in 5 Australians has experience physical and/or sexual family and domestic violence since the age of 15 (ABS, 2022)
1 in 4 women has experienced violence by an intimate partner since the age of 15, compared to 1 in 13 men (OurWatch, 2021)
Young women (aged 16-24) experience 2.5 times the rate of sexual abuse of young men (Mathews et. al, 2023)
49% (nearly 1 in 2) LGBTQ+ people reported having experienced sexual assault in their lifetime (Hill et. al., 2021)

gender-based violence prevention key stats to be aware of

Source: OurWatch

Who uses gender-based violence?

Anyone can use gender-based violence, not just members of the dominant group (which in Australia’s case, is men). Statistically however, because they are the dominant group in our society, men are far more likely to use gender-based violence.

Looking at sexual assault rates in particular, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (2020) reports that 97% of sexual assault offenders recorded by police in 2018 were male and males aged 15–19 had the highest offender rates (102.9 per 100,000) of any age group.

Of course, a statistic like this doesn’t paint the full picture. It doesn’t take into account individuals may be far less likely to report sexual assault at the hands of a female perpetrator due to societal stigma and misconceptions.

And this is a huge part of the problem at hand. It’s these preconceived notions of how ‘men’ and ‘women’ should look and behave, these ideas around who can and can’t commit or experience violence and assault, that play into the prevalence of gender-based violence in the first place, and which is why it’s so important that we break them down.

Damaging misconceptions that Drive gender-based violence

Here are just a few other examples of damaging preconceived notions often held in our society. These all pave the way for gender-based violence:

a belief that men should be strong and dominant, and women should be demure and submissive
a misconception that women would lie about being sexually assaulted
thinking that men have an uncontrollable sex drive
feeding into the notion that someone may have “led someone on”, which implies that sex was owed to someone else
not believing that men can be raped
outdated stereotypes such as “boys will be boys”
any notions that contribute to victim blaming (eg: what did she expect, getting so drunk?)

What causes gender-based violence? A closer look at the key drivers

At the heart of it, gender-based violence is underpinned by gender inequality. OurWatch, the national leader in primary prevention of violence against women and their children in Australia, outlines four key drivers of gender-based violence, which can be seen in the graphic below:

graphic explaining the four drivers of gender-based violence.

Source: OurWatch

While the focus is on men and women, it doesn’t mean that these don’t hold relevance in explaining much of the gender-based violence experienced by LGBTIQA+ people, including those who are trans and gender diverse.

Here’s an example to illustrate what we mean:

Sal is a feminine presenting non-binary person. They like to wear heels and dresses, but every time they go out to a club dressed up like that, men grab their ass, or make aggressive, sexual comments that make Sal feel threatened and uncomfortable.

In this scenario, we see that even though Sal doesn’t identify as a woman, they are affected by the way in which violence against women is condoned. Specifically, clubs are often spaces in which sexual harassment and assault are normalised. In particular, grabbing or touching and unwanted sexual comments like Sal experiences are something that is so common it's almost expected by feminine presenting people entering those spaces, and sadly very little is done by anybody to stop it. The way men in a club use sexual violence like this is the result of cultures of masculinity that emphasise dominance and aggression like this. We also see the way Sal is affected by rigid gender stereotyping - it’s when Sal is dressed in that stereotypically feminine way that men use sexual violence against her.

Drew, an asexual man, was 15 when the other boys in his friendship group began to notice his lack of interest in girls. They were all starting to explore their sexuality, some had girlfriends, and many would kiss girls at parties on weekends. They offered to help ‘hook Drew up’, but he said he wasn’t interested, which prompted one of the boys to ask if he was gay. They all giggled about this, saying things like “It’s okay if you are mate”, and “I don’t care if you’re a faggot”, but Drew could tell from their tone and language that they were teasing him. He was upset by their comments, and when they noticed he was about to cry, this gave them even more ammunition. They teased him about being sensitive and one of them labelled him a “cry-gaybe”. One weekend, at a party, the group decided to put Drew’s sexuality to the test. They enlisted the help of one of the girls, who took her top off and sat in his lap. She was laughing at him, asking him if he thought she was sexy. Drew was deeply uncomfortable. He felt violated. He didn’t want to be there, but the boys kept pushing him back into the chair when he tried to get up, and blocking the exit to the room.

In Drew’s situation, we see how rigid gender stereotyping leads to assumptions being made about his sexuality simply because of his lack of interest in girls. The way this group of boys treats Drew is a clear example of male peer relations and cultures of masculinity that emphasise dominance, aggression and control. And while Drew may not be a woman, we see that the condoning of sexual violence often extends to anyone deemed less powerful - there’s a bunch of people in the room at that party who are not just standing back and watching Drew be indecently assaulted, they’re actively egging it on.

So how do we prevent these kinds of behaviours? How do we stop people of all genders and sexualities from experiencing this kind of harm?

Taking action against gender-based violence: A public health approach

The World Health Organization, or WHO (2024), affirms that the principles of public health provide a useful framework for preventing violence from occurring through primary prevention programmes, policy interventions and advocacy.

This approach involves:

systematic data collection to define the problem of GBV (including its scope, magnitude and impact)
establishing the causes of the problem
developing and evaluating interventions
scaling up effective programs

Already, we’ve seen our government begin to do this through the establishment of organisations such as OurWatch and Safe and Equal, and the funding of their research. We’re seeing public education campaigns be rolled out, some good, like the Make No Doubt campaign in NSW, and some terrible (remember those federal government milkshake ads?).

primary prevention of gender-based violence

Image credit: NSW Government

In Victoria, the government has now mandated the teaching of consent in all schools, and is updating their Resilience, Rights and Respectful Relationships Program, whilst evaluations of the first iteration have yielded some promising results - if enacted well.

However, if we want to tackle this problem we can’t wait around for or rely solely on government programs that, much like our National Broadband Network, will likely be inadequate and outdated by the time they are rolled out.

Too Many Young People Experience Gender-Based Violence

Far too many young people are victim/survivors of gender-based violence. For many, when they think of young people suffering sexual violence, they might assume that this is at the hands of adults. Their mind might jump to grooming, or child sexual assault. And while these are certainly big problems in our society, they’re not the only examples of gender-based violence young people face.

Recent research has found that one in five young people aged 16 to 24 has been sexually assaulted by another teen (Mathews et.al., 2023). Having worked as high school teachers ourselves, this is a sad yet unsurprising finding.

Another study found young LGBTIQ+ people at secondary school, 60% felt unsafe or uncomfortable due to their gender or sexuality in the last 12 months, and nearly 40% reported missing one or more days of school because of it (Hill et.al ., 2021).

During our time in the classroom, we both heard stories of young people being sexually harassed by their peers, using image-based abuse against one another, experiencing non-consensual sex at parties, and other forms of sexual violence.

We overheard homophobic and transphobic comments, and saw young people being harassed due to their gender identity and/or sexuality. And while we would do our best to support those students, we knew that our efforts could only go so far - systemic change was, and is, necessary.

This is a big part of what prompted us to step away from classroom teaching and design our own interventions.

Shifting Social Norms with Consent, Respectful Relationships and Sexuality Education

At Let’s Talk About X, we’ve set out to prevent gender-based violence through the provision of practical and effective training and resources. Our student workshops teach young people the skills to form respectful, consensual relationships, while our teacher training helps staff foster a consent culture and ensure students of all genders feel safe and supported.

How we are preventing gender-based violence: Our theory of change

At Let’s Talk About X, our theory of change is expressed in the statement below:

Through providing Relationships and Sexuality Education training and resources, we will reduce the prevalence of gender-based violence, by ensuring young people can practise affirmative consent and challenge damaging gender norms.

As teachers, we know the difference that education can make for young people, which is why from the outset we created programs for schools.

The research affirms that schools have enormous potential as sites for primary prevention of gender-based violence. Placing interventions in schools allows us to target young people whose attitudes and behaviours are just starting to become ingrained, making it easy to reach young populations with programs that can be incorporated into existing curricula (Flood, 2009).

Additionally, young people want Relationships and Sexuality Education. While this was brought to light in Australia with the TeachUsConsent petition, it is also well documented in earlier international research (Ellis, 2008).

And it’s not just that students want to learn, we also know that RSE is powerful when done right. Comprehensive Relationships and Sexuality Education (RSE) approaches have been shown to:

improve recognition of gender equity, rights, and social justice
decrease sexual violence
improve knowledge and attitudes about healthy relationships
improve social and emotional learning

(Ketting & Ivovana, 2017)

In developing our training, we used our extensive classroom experience to identify what was missing from the RSE programs we’d seen. This informed our practical focus. Foundational to all of our training and resources is:

Equality for all genders
Acceptance of diversity
The right to self determination
Building behavioural skills

These are recognised in international literature as core principles of effective comprehensive RSE (Goldfarb & Lieberman, 2021), that we have recognised as gaps in existing secondary school RSE programs throughout Victoria and across Australia.

Our training and resources focus on:

Promoting autonomy for people of all genders in their personal, professional and intimate relationships
Building new social norms that foster personal identities not constrained by rigid gender stereotypes
Supporting young people of all genders to develop healthy understandings of masculinity and positive, supportive, communicative peer relationships
Challenging the condoning of homophobic, sexist, and transphobic attitudes and behaviours

All of these foci directly break down the drivers of gender-based violence and align with critical actions (OurWatch, 2021) for preventing gender-based violence.

We target our programs at teachers, who can make a difference in the lives of the young people they work with every day, as well as secondary students of all genders and sexualities. Whilst this is a gendered problem, we don’t believe in the heteronormative, binary-gendered approach that is taken by many other organisations.

Everybody needs to understand how to form healthy relationships. Everybody needs the communication skills to practice consent. Everybody needs to understand their social context and look critically at the power structures they’re surrounded and affected by. Every body - regardless of sex, sexuality or gender identity.

We’ve also taken an intersectional approach to the development of our programs from the outset. For us, this acknowledges the limitations of our own lived experience and the lens we view the world through, by seeking out and consulting with a broad range of voices, particularly those with lived experiences vastly different from our own.

Our social enterprise model: Reaching those who need it most

Effective primary prevention is all about providing maximum benefit to the largest number of people (WHO, 2024). But not all schools have the funding to afford our training, or are in a location that we are able to get out to. In fact, often those who need it most are the ones that aren’t able to access it.

That’s why we’ve employed a social enterprise model. Bookings for our paid training enable us to provide free resources for schools and young people, helping to ensure access to quality, evidence-based RSE for those who would otherwise miss out.

Head to our website now to find out more.

Eleonora Bertsa-Fuchs [she/they] and Mel Brush [he/they] are experts in fostering a culture of consent and LGBTIQA+ inclusion. For every booking for their training and keynote speeches they create free educational resources to help prevent gender based violence.

References:

Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, (2020) Sexual assault in Australia, https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/family-domestic-and-sexual-violence/sexual-assault-in-australia/contents/summary

Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) (2024). Family, Domestic and Sexual Violence, https://www.aihw.gov.au/family-domestic-and-sexual-violence/responses-and-outcomes/domestic-homicide#data-tell-us

Deloitte Access Economics (2022) The cost of financial abuse in Australia, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, accessed on 7 March 2023.

Ellis, J. (2008). Primary Prevention of Domestic Abuse Through Education. In C. Humphreys, C. Houghton, and J. Ellis (eds). Literature Review: Better Outcomes for Children and Young People affected by Domestic Abuse – Directions for Good Practice. Edinburgh: Scottish Government.

Flood, Michael, Fergus, Lara, & Heenan, Melanie (2009) Respectful relationships education: Violence prevention and respectful relationships education in Victorian secondary schools. Communications Division, State of Victoria (Department of Education and Early Childhood Development), Australia.

Goldfarb ES, Lieberman LD. Three Decades of Research: The Case for Comprehensive Sex Education. J Adolesc Health. 2021 Jan;68(1):13-27. doi: 10.1016/j.jadohealth.2020.07.036. Epub 2020 Oct 12. PMID: 33059958.

Hill AO, Lyons A, Jones J, McGowan I, Carman M, Parsons M, Power J, Bourne A (2021) Writing Themselves In 4: The health and wellbeing of LGBTQA+ young people in Australia. National report, monograph series number 124. Melbourne: Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society, La Trobe University.

Ketting E and Ivanova O (2017). ‘Sexuality education: Lessons learned and future developments in the WHO European region.’ Conference Report, Berlin, 15-16 May 2017 at 32.

KPMG, The cost of violence against women and their children in Australia – Final Report, KPMG, 2016.

Krug EG, Dahlberg LL, Mercy JA, Zwi AB, Lozano R ed. World Report on Violence and Health. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2002.

Mathews B, Pacella RE, Scott JG, Finkelhor D, Meinck F, Higgins DJ, Erskine HE, Thomas HJ, Lawrence D, Haslam DM, Malacova E, Dunne MP. The prevalence of child maltreatment in Australia: findings from a national survey. Med J Aust 2023; 218 (6 Suppl): S13-S18.

OurWatch (2021). Change the Story (2nd ed).

Types of violence against women and girls - UN women australia. (No date) Available at: https://unwomen.org.au/types-of-violence-against-women-and-girls/ (Accessed: 20 August 2024).

What is gender-based violence? (no date) European Commission. Available at: https://commission.europa.eu/strategy-and-policy/policies/justice-and-fundamental-rights/gender-equality/gender-based-violence/what-gender-based-violence (Accessed: 20 August 2024).