Violence against women can be painful to talk and hear about, but victim-survivors and their families don’t get to switch off from that pain. In fact, they’re often the ones working tirelessly to fight this epidemic, organising rallies like Sarah Williams of What Were You Wearing? Australia, or voluntarily documenting women’s deaths like Sherele Moody of Australian Femicide Watch. (Australian Femicide Watch documents every unlawful death of Australian women, and of the 49 women killed this year, 47 were allegedly by men, one was overseas, and one remains under investigation – after a woman’s body was found in a bin last week. Counting Dead Women Australia, run by the researchers at Destroy The Joint, uses different parameters and has registered 40 deaths due to violence against women in 2024. Last week the Australian government launched its own intimate partner homicide counter with a stringent set of measures, which will be updated quarterly.)

If this stream of stats and stories sounds a bit like Groundhog Day, it’s probably because it is. Over the last 50 years, government-funded reports and action plans have set out to eradicate gendered violence, while in the last decade in particular, awareness campaigns have sought to shift social norms and stop the behaviour before it starts. And yet the numbers continue to rise, with nearly two Australian women killed every week in 2024, up from the one-per-week average of recent years. Does the issue slide down the agenda because we’re fighting an unsolvable fight?

This is a stance (or cop-out) that Jess Hill, leading gendered violence reporter and coercive control educator, refutes. “We are a nation famed worldwide for our effective responses to other public health issues – from thwarting the tobacco industry to reducing road deaths and preventing HIV,” Hill wrote in a paper with Professor Michael Salter (read it in full here). “These monumental achievements did not come easy; they required courage and innovation. A decade ago, framing violence against women as primarily a problem of gender inequality was also innovative. Much good work has been done in this area, and should continue, but it’s our opinion that our central prevention strategy has become too ideological, exclusive, and sometimes contrary to evidence. If we are to even reduce the rates of violence against women and children in a single generation – let alone end gendered violence altogether – we need to fundamentally rethink our approach to primary prevention.”

If you or anyone you know has experienced gendered violence and needs support, please call 1800RESPECT (1800 737 732). You can also contact Lifeline (13 11 14).

Right now, I’m feeling angry and exhausted, but passionate. We have these huge issues of domestic, family and sexual violence, and we need people to be fighting against them. But so often it’s not safe for the people fighting. We’ve seen so much stuff happen to Grace Tame and Brittany Higgins. I remember watching anytime there was hate towards them and thinking it was really sad. But you don’t realise the depth of how messed up it is until you’re in it yourself. That’s what I experienced when I organised the No More rallies in April. It gave me a whole other perspective: not only do we have these crimes and a national emergency, but it’s also dangerous to advocate in this space. It’s really scary because when you go through something, you want to be a part of the change and use your stories to help make society better. And we need that. But it can be pretty brutal.

I'm very big on victim-survivors being at the forefront of everything. They need to be at all panels, all the meetings, through all the consultations. But it’s very rarely the case. We also need to include voices from First Nations people and those living with disabilities. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are really disproportionately affected by domestic, family and sexual violence in Australia, so not seeing more included is pretty disappointing. They need to be there, but they need to be supported. When you share your lived experience you have to relive it, the majority of the time for free. And as an advocate at the forefront, you deal with racism, homophobia and ableism.

When the rallies happened in April, I received a million messages from politicians from all over the country saying, “Hey, I'd love to speak with you. Tag us in stuff.” And I was like, I've never heard of you in my life. It's been interesting to watch which politicians have continued to talk about the issue, and which ones have stopped because it’s no longer a ‘hot topic’.

We have another round of rallies planned for the end of July. We had 17 locations last time; this time there’ll be close to 30, so it will be even bigger. There are a few state and local elections coming up this year and a lot of politicians will attend the rallies. We need to show them that we really care about this issue, and that they need to do more. Some people will think, oh, what comes from attending a rally? But they can make noise and change, especially when they’re on a national scale. Because of the last rallies, Albanese finally called this a national crisis.

— SARAH WILLIAMS, proud Awabakal woman, founder and CEO of What Were You Wearing? Australia and survivor-victim

I wrote the poem Tidal at the end of COVID, around the time that Brittany Higgins was first bringing her own experience to light and the media was responding appallingly, which now just seems so ridiculous given what we understand in hindsight. Tidal draws correlation between gendered violence and climate violence and the reality that these two are intertwined, and calls for collective action in both areas. It is a matter of urgency; it’s heartbreaking witnessing the atrocities that are happening against women in our nation, and women and children around the world. Systemic gendered violence is one of the most damaging things we’re coming up against and I ache for change for our mob, and for all women.

Tidal

Oscillating between channels –
we watch them
victim-blame La Niña
and her trade winds
which surge east
drawing cool water
from the D E E P to surface Earth’s heat.

On screen, pollies are indiscreet with euphemism, casting Climate
Change as hot flush,
Assault as allegation.
We change the station
understanding denial and
gendered violence are
everywhere –

here, they gaslight the sky –
silence the cries and rain
that flow heavy
over our Mother
while another mum
wades waters
to rescue
her own.

soon the torrent will subside

but nothing could hide the line of a tide
from the moontime memory
of a Woman.

On the news they justify worth with relation,
mistaking
that for protection
a female needs
a title.

Ngurra responds with -T-I-D-A-L
overflow of her own she takes up [space],
evacuates h0mes,
raises dam walls,
and closes the coast.

Ngurra shows that she could never be too much
encouraging trust in the s\w\e\l\l or rage
that arrives in us
as charges pressed
our en-masse march,
allies by survivors,
and 100-year flood.

When Ngurra says enough is enough
the world stops to listen

and like her, our vision
for justice
will not
go unheard –

they cannot disregard
the waves of change
we make
when we rise like
Water
Mother
Woman
One.

*Ngurra – meaning home, camp and Country in many First Nations languages and dialects across the continent.

— KIRLI SAUNDERS, proud Gunai woman, artist and writer

There’s so much to be angry about. The horror of it all. The rising statistics. The appalling journalism. The ineffective policy. The meaningless platitudes. I’ve been sitting in that anger for so long, and it’s only recently that it’s graduated to something more. Something hopeful. There are solutions. There are people working tirelessly to come up with those solutions. And they’re giving us the map and telling us how to read it.

We have Jess Hill and Mike Salter – two experts who are telling us we need to rethink the very foundations of how we approach men’s violence against women and start again. They’re handing us the toolkit, we just need to take it. We have Tarang Chawla telling us, through the voice of his experience, how the media can do better to protect those impacted by violence against women. He’s handing us the toolkit, we just need to take it. We have Chanel Contos doing the work to better equip our schools for conversations like these. She’s handing us the toolkit, we just need to take it.

This toolkit has empowerment, it has hope and most importantly, it has a future. The women of Australia need us to take it.

— ZARA SEIDLER, The Daily Aus co-founder