Ideology, education will not protect women from violent men

‘Primary prevention’ doesn’t appear to have made a difference amid a shocking year of violence against women, writes Claire Lehmann.

A 28-year-old NSW woman, Molly Ticehurst, was found dead in her home last Monday. Two weeks prior, a man who had been charged with stalking and raping her appeared before court.

The police prosecutor charged him with a series of serious crimes and told the court his behaviour was “indicative of features in domestic violence offenders that we see often come to light after the most disturbing conclusions to their conduct”.

Despite this warning, he was released on bail.

Ticehurst is among 26 women who have been killed in the first 114 days of 2024. If the rate of violence continues, 2024 will be one of the worst years in recent memory for major crimes against women – with one woman murdered every four days. Despite the cries from the community to do more, and despite Anthony Albanese joining weekend rallies, there is a lack of leadership on what must be done. The current strategy isn’t working, and we need to understand why.

For the past decade or so, the focus of Australian governments has been on “primary prevention” – that is, preventing violence before it occurs. Ad campaigns that encourage boys and men not to slam doors or tell sexist jokes, as well as educational efforts in schools on “toxic masculinity”, are meant to have made a difference. But have they? It doesn’t look like it.

A recent essay co-authored by Walkley Award-winning journalist Jess Hill and UNSW criminology professor Michael Salter offers a sustained criticism of the primary prevention approach, arguing that our national strategy “outsources its results to future generations, and thus gives politicians the cover to adopt platitudes and evade accountability”.

Their central argument is a brave one: reducing inequality between men and women does nothing to reduce violence against women. The axiomatic claim that violence will disappear once inequality disappears is not supported by the evidence. They show that governments’ decades-long focus on gender equality has not moved the needle in terms of reducing violence against women. In fact, the opposite may be true.

The Nordic countries provide a warning. Those nations are all ranked higher in gender equality than Australia and other EU countries, yet also record higher rates of domestic violence and physical or sexual violence against women.

Through its National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children 2022-2032, the Albanese government has made the bold claim that it will work to end gendered violence in just one generation through attitude change, which is measured via surveys. But there are several problems with this plan. One of them, according to Hill and Salter, is its blanket focus on all boys and men – instead of identifying those most likely to offend.

Assigning guilt to the entire male sex may be a waste of time: “Situating all little boys as potential perpetrators not only risks diluting much-needed resources and effort, but it also invites confusion and potentially backlash from boys and young men who were never at risk of hurting their partners in the first place,” the authors write.

One reason it may be a waste of time is because the link between attitudes and behaviour is not clear-cut. We all know examples of high-profile figures (think Harvey Weinstein) whose public behaviour does not match how they act behind closed doors. Similarly, there is no good reason to think responses to a pencil-and-paper survey on attitudes will capture the future likelihood of violence.

To explain why this approach is inadequate, Hill and Salter draw attention to an alarming, yet under-reported trend. Young people aged between 16 and 24, are the most likely cohort to reject problematic attitudes regarding violence against women. Yet within this very age group there has been an alarming increase in sexual offending.

In the past, a child who had experienced sexual assault was most likely to have been targeted by an adult. Today, when a child is sexually assaulted, the perpetrator is most likely to be another child (or adolescent). If attitudes correlated directly with behaviour, we would not be seeing this trend.

Another failure of the strategy is to imagine everyone is equally capable of changing their behaviour as a result of changing their beliefs. “In our current prevention model, there does seem to be a default middle-class subject sitting at the centre of our interventions; a tabula rasa upon which we can imprint the right beliefs and attitudes,” write Hill and Salter.

Such an outlook disregards the harsh realities faced by many boys who later resort to violence. Boys who grow up to use violence are often raised in environments where violence, drug and alcohol abuse are commonplace, and where a general lack of impulse control means beliefs and attitudes are of secondary importance.

Much like teaching table manners to a person with no food, teaching proper attitudes to a person who has failed to develop self-control will be an exercise in futility. If we want to get serious about reducing violence against women, ideological attempts to assign collective guilt need to be discarded. Efforts should instead be redirected into identifying high-risk groups, and providing supports for drug, alcohol and trauma recovery. Perpetrators who have already offended, and who are at risk of reoffending, need to be locked up. They shouldn’t be let out on bail.

Believing educational materials alone can stop violence before it happens is naive. It’s unfair to victims who need governments to take real action to prevent future violence against women by perpetrators who have already been violent.

Commenting on the fact that Daniel Billings was released on bail after being charged with sexual intercourse without consent, stalking and intimidation, NSW Police Commissioner Karen Webb said: “I’ll say from the outset that police share the sentiment of the community. This shouldn’t have happened. And sadly, it’s not an isolated case.”

Claire Lehmann is founding editor of online magazine Quillette.