Rigid gender roles ‘stoke the violence’, says Amanda Rishworth

Social Services Minister Amanda Rishworth says entrenched, old-fashioned views on gender are drivers of gendered violence.

Social Services Minister Amanda Rishworth. Picture: Ben Searcy

Social Services Minister Amanda Rishworth says entrenched, old-fashioned views on gender – such as “men shouldn’t cry” and women should be “ladylike” – are drivers of gendered violence.

And the country needs to better understand why perpetrators commit domestic violence through a “national research project”, rather than focus only on the experiences of victims.

Following the release last month of the 10-year national plan to end violence against women and children within a generation, Ms Rishworth said she had been inundated with one question: “Why women?”

While acknowledging men could also be victims, Ms Rishworth stressed women faced disproportionate rates of domestic and sexual violence, with one in four having experienced intimate partner violence since the age of 15 compared to one in 13 men.

“The plan is not trying to be everything to everyone – nor can it be,” she said in a draft of a speech to be delivered at the National Press Club on Thursday.

“What it sets out is a plan to break the cycle of gendered violence. It’s for this reason that the plan specifically acknowledges that gendered violence is violence perpetrated as a result of entrenched gender roles, gender inequality and rigid masculinity – which could be as simple as ‘men should not cry’ or women should be more ‘ladylike’.”

Her comments follow findings in the 2017 National Community Attitudes Towards Violence against Women Survey which shows two in five people believed women exaggerated how unequally they were treated.

And one in seven believed women were not as capable as men in politics or the workplace.

As the mother of two boys herself, Ms Rishworth said she was very focused on the role men could play in challenging views that condone gender inequality.

“Success will be fewer people holding harmful attitudes about the use of gender-based violence,” she said.

“Success will be fewer people – overwhelmingly men – choosing to use violence against women and children.”

On average, one woman a week is murdered by her current or former partner, with high-­profile cases like the killing of Hannah Clarke and her children prompting states to beef-up legislation in areas such as coercive control – which refers to a form of emotional and psychological abuse that includes a perpetrator cutting a victim off from friends and family, controlling their movements and their finances.

To achieve the ambitious goal of ending gendered violence in a matter of decades, Ms Rishworth said there needed to be a “national research project” on perpetrator behaviour.

“Too often, the evidence collection focuses on victim-survivors, not on those who choose to use violence – which is the problem we must address,” she said.

She said Australia needed to improve perpetrator accountability and aim to rehabilitate those who had committed violence rather than just punishing them.

“Our response cannot be to just ‘lock them up, throw away the key’ – we need more nuanced approaches, including through prevention and early intervention,” she said.

Ms Rishworth said there needed to be a “total societal attitude shift” that ensured victim-­survivors were never held responsible for calling out the violence they faced.

“It’s ending the rhetoric of ‘Why didn’t she just leave?’ and shifting it to ‘Why is he choosing to act in this way?’” she said.