Our research projects
Following the publication of the groundbreaking report The Choice: Violence or Poverty in 2022, the next stage of our research focuses on two key projects:
- A data-based investigation of the impact of domestic violence on women’s employment, focusing initially on why the labour force participation rate of women exposed to such violence is so much lower than for Australian women generally. The study will also seek to explore the extent to which employment may reduce or even prevent women’s exposure to domestic violence.
- The development of a new longitudinal study that will seek to obtain key data on relevant social issues related to domestic violence, to measure the extent of violence in all its forms and which will focus in particular on the characteristics of the perpetrators of such violence. It is intended to present to government a fully-designed longitudinal study ready to be adopted and implemented, thus setting in train the collection of an invaluable and unprecedented set of long-term data to inform policy-making to reduce and eventually eliminate such violence from our society.
Our research lead
The trailblazing Australian author and journalist Dr Anne Summers AO joined UTS Business School in June 2022 to continue her research dedicated to ending domestic and family violence.
Anne’s appointment as Professor will see her continue her research, which she worked on while serving as an inaugural Paul Ramsay Foundation Fellow (2021–22), also based at UTS.
Anne is a best-selling author and journalist, with a long and highly accomplished career in the fields of politics, the media, business and the non-government sector in Australia, Europe and the United States.
We are very excited to have Anne join us at the Business School, where her work will include expanding the role and responsibility of business in addressing this urgent problem and assessing and mitigating the broader economic implications and inequalities that result from domestic violence.
Anne is a deeply respected community leader and her longstanding commitment to addressing inequality and social injustice has contributed to significant improvements in the lives of women, and society more broadly.
Professor Carl Rhodes, Dean, UTS Business School
Anne has been a leader in the women’s movement since the early 1970s, when she was involved in helping start Elsie, Australia’s first women’s refuge and Refractory Girl, a women’s studies journal. She is the author of nine books, including her most recent, a memoir Unfettered and Alive (2018) and the classic Damned Whores and God’s Police, first published in 1975.
A Walkley Award-winning journalist, Anne worked at The National Times, and in 1979 was appointed Canberra bureau chief for The Australian Financial Review and then the paper’s North American editor. She headed the federal Office of the Status of Women (now Office for Women) from 1983 to 1986 when Bob Hawke was Prime Minister and was an advisor on issues including women and the arts to Prime Minister Paul Keating for a year prior to the 1993 federal election.
In 1987 in New York, Anne was appointed editor-in-chief of Ms. — America’s landmark feminist magazine — and the following year, with business partner Sandra Yates, raised $20 million on Wall Street to buy Ms. and Sassy magazines in the second-only women-led management buyout in US corporate history.
She has also been editor of the Good Weekend magazine, publisher of the online magazine Anne Summers Reports focused on politics, social issues, art, architecture and other subjects, and produced the 'Anne Summers Conversations' event series, which launched with a sold-out interview with Julia Gillard at the Sydney Opera House in what was her first public appearance after being deposed as Prime Minister.
Anne has also been chair of the board of Greenpeace International (2000–2006) and Deputy President of Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum (1999–2008).
In 1989 she was made an Officer in the Order of Australia for her services to journalism and to women. In 2011, along with three other women, Anne was honoured as an Australian Legend with her image placed on a postage stamp. In 2017 she was inducted into the Australian Media Hall of Fame.
Anne has a BA (Hons) from the University of Adelaide and a PhD from the University of Sydney. She has also received honorary doctorates from Flinders University (1994), University of New South Wales (2000), University of South Australia (2014), University of Adelaide (2015) and University of Sydney (2017).
Find more about Professor Summers on UTS Experts