A new report quantifies for the first time the employment and educational impacts of domestic violence on Australian women.
Professor Anne Summers AO’s new report, The Cost of domestic violence to women’s employment and education, quantifies the financial impact on women for the first time. This report builds on her groundbreaking previous report, The Choice: Violence or Poverty.
Professor Summers presented the grim findings that show the experience of domestic violence is responsible for women’s lower labour force participation rate, and for students dropping out of university without completing their degrees. Both have significant implications for women’s longer-term financial well-being.
In this session, Professor Summers and Jess Hill discussed the implications of these findings for women’s progress towards full equality, and what they mean for our continuing struggle to reduce domestic violence.
colleagues welcome to um welcome to UTS and uh thanks for joining us today whether you're online or here I think we've got about 200 people online as well so this is a uh a terrific function uh to really Mark uh the release of some very very important work um my name is Andrew pford and I'm the vice Chancellor here at UTS um and I I think Professor an Summers doesn't actually need any introduction but I will give it in a moment um the extent to which her work is having a very very significant impact in policy and elsewhere um and uh and supporting women in particularly uh troubling and challenging circumstances is so so important but I would like to begin by acknowledging uh that we're on gadigal land uh this University is on gador land um it all the land has always been gador land um pay respects to Elders past and present and um we were to have had an acknowledgement here from our eldering resident Auntie glender but she's such a busy person I think she's busily giving the acknowledgement of country at a range of um functions around here but I would like to um to call out Auntie gendra for the incredible work she does across the University Building Community uh ensuring that uh uh that we engage um with uh uh with the right issues and in fact UTS has a a long tradition uh of working with and for First Nations people to shape the future of Australia that's reconciled that we want to see that uh provides uh uh benefits for all Australians um and especially for our indigenous um colleagues and friends we know that women's economic participation is vital to our society next week uh on the 4th of March um the 2025 gender pay Gap data will be released uh for nearly 10,000 employers across Australia and I mention that because last year the Gap averaged 21.8% and it means that for every dollar earned by a man a woman earned just 78 cents so over a single year that difference amounts to $28,000 and a gap that compounds significantly over time and this is a sobering Baseline to consider but what about women who are missing from the workplace all together Economic Security is critical for women employment provides both Financial Independence crucial factor for those leaving violent relationships and safeguards against domestic violence we know that Australian University graduates are securing higher salaries and full-time employment at record levels but the report released today reveals new data on how domestic violence prevents women from accessing a university education shutting them out of the lifelong benefits and to quote from an's report this report sets out in detail how large numbers of women have not joined the labor force have reduced their working hours or quit their jobs altogether all because of domestic violence the same is true in higher education the report says we reveal new evidence that just as there is an employment gap as the employment rate for women who've survived domestic violence is lower than for women who have never experienced such violence there's also an education Gap referring to the percentage of women who fail to graduate and obtain a University degree because of domestic violence Ann will speak shortly to share her in-depth insights into these findings and I want to thank an and fellow researchers here at UTS and Elsewhere for their work highlighting these critical issues gendered violence including physical violence sexual violence emotional abuse and harassment affects every facet of a person's life as a university that proudly welcomes staff and students from all walks of life will'll examine the reports and findings closely as well as the recommendations for the University sector UTS has a track record through Education and Research and training student and staff support and our connections with industry community and the government of supporting efforts to achieve the national goal of ending violence against women and children within a generation it's an honor to have Trailblazers like like Anne leading this crucial work here and so it's my pleasure now to introduce uh Professor Anne Summers to present her findings an sumers AO is Professor of domestic and Family Violence at the UTS business school she's been awarded substantial funding and we're very grateful for it by the Paul Ramsey foundation and funding from UTS to continue her Innovative databased Research into domestic violence in Australia her 2022 report the choice violence or poverty used previously published ABS data to reveal the shocking prevalence of single mothers who left relationships due to domestic violence and the insufficient supports that me that me many chose to stay with abusive Partners rather than become a single mother in poverty and showing the impact that research can have the report influenced the federal government to make changes in the 2023 federal budget to the payment system for single mothers ANS long being a champion for women with a history of advocacy is a journalist activist political advisor and researcher her work has an enormous impact and so we're very pleased to welcome her today to talk about the findings of her latest
work thank you Andrew and uh hello everybody it's a great uh turnout today it's so thrilling to see so many of you turn up today had to put out extra chairs which is good um I'd also like to um acknowledge uh that we are meeting on the lands of the gadal people lands that were never seated and which are and always will be Aboriginal land I pay my respects to the elders past present and emerging and acknowledge all Aboriginal and torist state Islander people here with us today thank you Andrew for that generous uh welcome and introduction i' just like to take this opportunity to thank you for the support that you have shown our work most especially the way you threw your weight behind the LC conference uh last year um your underwriting of that conference ensured that it went ahead and was an outstanding success thank you very much this report which we have called the cost and which we are here to present today would not have happened without the generous funding of the poor Ramsey Foundation Foundation as Andrew has just acknowledged which has given us sufficient money to under undertake this report and a second even more consequential project which we hope we'll be able to present to you later this year we also want to thank the federal office for women whose oneoff Grant enabled us to commission a customized study from the Australian Bureau of Statistics that provided the key the figures that make up one of the key findings of our report and none of this would have happened without the brilliant work of my co-authors and collaborators and as I would ask you to stand as I mention your names Thomas Shortridge Thomas where are you
Thomas Stay Stay standing Stay Stay standing I haven't finished Thomas who did amazing Research In addition to taking responsibility for the production of a report that turned out to entail some very complex work Christian sobeck Christian stand up
Kristen who was oncc Conant to us from the tax and transfer Institute at theu for a year and whose genius with ecometrics opened our eyes to a truly shocking situation with University students ameritus Professor Bruce Chapman where are you Bruce do you want to stand
up okay he's in theory standing up professor professor Bruce Chapman of the umu and his colleague Professor Lorraine dean of the City University of London who together were able to extract key findings on domestic violence and women's employment from Hilda a feat no one else has managed in the 20 years that survey has existed there are so many others who should be thanked but if I did that I wouldn't have time to present the results so I ask that you read the acknowledgement section of the report a piece of work like this has has many creators and enablers every one of them necessary to the final product and finally thanks to you the audience we have been literally blown away over the past few weeks as the registrations rolled in literally hundreds of them from all over the country from unions and churches and corporations and local governments and government departments and groups we'd never heard of as well as many of our many friends in the domestic violence sector today we have 200 in this room and an amazing 478 streaming this event I think that number might have gone up actually while I since I wrote that I thank each and every one of you but I want to send out a special mention to someone who's listening from her Farm just outside M Melbourne the indefatigable Rosie baddy no one has done more to put the issue of domestic violence onto the political agenda and to Rally people to talk about it and do something than Rosie let's give her a big cheer for her
dedication and I look forward to hearing Rosie and Jess Hill and several others speaking next week at the Sydney Opera House on this subject we have a lot of figures in this report and they are important and most have never been published before they give us Grim insights about the continuing growth of domestic violence in all of its forms and its consequences but the bigger picture is also important numbers matter but so does context and the context here is that the great achievements in women's economic progress in recent decades in employment in education and in Financial Security as well as individual agency and autonomy are being eroded by domestic violence this potentially has catastrophic consequences this report has two key overarching findings one on education one on employment both of course have huge impacts on Financial Security and individual agency and autonomy let's begin with employment in 1966 only about 37% of women were in the labor force compared to 84% of men by 2024 that 37% had climbed to 63% with almost 7 million women employed 57% of them in full-time jobs an amazing increase given giving women the choices and Independence they had previously lacked but our research has revealed what we are calling an employment gap you've all heard of the gender gap of course the vice Chancellor referred to the gender pay Gap the defining element of the gender gap be it in politics or in pay is that it measures the differences in outcomes between men and women the Gap we have identified the employment gap is a gap in the outcomes Between Women it is a difference in the employment rate between women who have experienced domestic violence and those who have not in 2021 that Gap was F 5.3% this is the difference between the 76.1% employment rate for women who have experienced partner violence or abuse in any form the 76.1% women percent of women who have experienced violence and the 81.4% rate for women who have never experienced violence and the Gap is larger for women who have experienced economic abuse for this group reaching 99.4% in 2122 the employment gap varies among subgroups of women for instance for women with disability the gap between those who have recently experienced economic abuse by a partner and those who have never experienced partner violence or abuse is
13.4% for culturally and linguistically diverse women the employment gap was 3.7% for First Nations women we use the 2018 National Aboriginal torist Strait Islander Health survey to try to calculate employment gaps they certainly existed but unfortunately because of the small sample size the results were not statistically significant we as a sector and indeed as a country must urgently address this damning deficit further research is urgently needed I will come to the education Gap our second major finding in a moment but first I want to provide some more context for employment we know that of the women who uh who recently or currently are experiencing domestic violence around 60% of them are in employment we are talking about 74,000 women according to the 2122 personal safety survey which as of course as you all know is the survey run every four years on women's safety um by the ABS is Bureau statistics and which I'll be referring to quite a lot from now on and which I will just simply refer to as the PSS there are two lessons we need to draw from this firstly all of us will know wittingly or not someone you work with who is currently experiencing domestic violence it could be the person you sit beside or someone you supervise or your boss or the lady who serves you in the canteen or gives you your dry cleaning I remember being devastated to discover that a young woman who was woman who was my secretary a long while back was being attacked by her husband for the entire three years she worked for me I never knew your work colleagues most likely won't talk about it either and now that the rates of physical violence the kind that leaves a bruise have declined so markedly she is far less likely to turn up to work with a black eye that does not mean she is not suffering in other ways we know there are multiple forms that violence takes Financial psychological emotional that don't leave a physical Mark and there is the tension and fear and anxiety about the abuse itself and from her efforts to hide that so as not to jeopardize her job this means she can't be constantly late or appear anxious or lack concentration or have to take unexplained leave suddenly the 2122 PSS reported that 41,000 women 41,000 women that's almost half a million women have had a previous partner who tried to control them and prevent them from working or earning money more than 30,000 women have experienced similar conduct from their current partner so the second lesson we need to learn is that many men are using forceful tactics to try deliberately sabotage their partner's employment they use such cruel and cunning tactics as hiding her car keys or letting down the car tires or hiding her transport card damaging her work clothes refusing to M the children so she is stranded even getting into her phone's calendar to change her appointments trying to make her appear unpunctual and unreliable to her as an employee this is another employment consequence of domestic violence and one that we need to be able to measure more precisely we need to know what kind of jobs women are leaving how long for and how much income they're losing as a result of course women try valiantly to resist this sabotage so they can hang on to their jobs we know that employment offers at least a degree of protection against violence and having a workplace to go to can be a source of comfort advice and even assistance espe given the newly legislated 10 days of paid domestic violence leave and of course it provides an income there is not only an employment gap but a large Financial Chasm between women who experience violence and those who don't loss of income is one of the greatest consequences of Lo of losing of sorry of leaving a job our report shows that 43.9% of women who have experienced physical or sexual violence in the past 5 years have EXP experienced cash flow issues in the most recent year 43.9% only 7.2% of women who did not experience violence had any such household issues but many women eventually succumb to this pressure and leave their employment they are unlikely to broadcast their reasons for doing so and we as a society need to be aware of the often erroneous assumptions and even prejudices we bring to the issue of why women are not working there are of course many valid reasons why women choose not to join the labor market especially when their children are young and especially if they cannot access affordable child care but the current popularity of the Trad wife and in the past the Yummy Mummy seeks to glorify women as housebound and pre preferring to be unemployed some cultures are blamed for confining women to the home yet how often have we considered that in fact many of these women might be staying at home under duress having been forced to abandon their jobs now onto education our other key finding in this report is of even greater concern for the long-term employment prospects of women the existence of an education Gap among young women at University in 1982 a mere 8% of women aged 25 to 34 held a bachelor degree or higher 8% by 2023 this had skyrocketed to 51.6% of women of this age range holding at least a bachelor degree amounting to 990,000 women the education Gap is a new and truly shocking finding that young women who experience domestic violence fail to complete their University degrees for young women by the time they are 27 there is a nearly 15% Gap in the rates of University degree attainment between victim survivors and other women our analysis of data obtained from the Australian longitudinal study on women's health which surveys the same women same young women each year allowed us to to to track the direct impact of domestic violence this is the work that Kristen did we are able to show that domestic violence causes a 5.2% decline in Young Women's University degree attainment in the year following the first time they report violence and that this Rises to 99.7% 3 years after the violence is reported these findings on the impact of violence on University education in Australia have never been previously reported the lifelong consequences of failing to complete their degrees are significant with individuals holding a bachelor's degree in Australia earning 41% more annually than those with only a year 12 qualification in addition these young women are likely to have accured an index hex debt without the degree that might help them pay it off and that could affect their credit worthiness throughout their lives and their lower earnings of course mean a concomitant decrease in retirement savings these young women's economic Futures are severely compromised and it will be extremely difficult for them to ever recover the lost opportunities nor can we Overlook the fact of and possible connection between the dramatic fall in men's share of University degrees women are now massively outperforming men at University in 2023 a majority 51.6% of women between 25 and 34 had Bachelor degrees that's 51.6% of women had Bachelor degrees in the same year only 38.4% of men the same age had obtained these degrees is this a source of resentment amongst men a further example of the worldwide backlash against feminist goals and achievements that we are witnessing everywhere from the White House which has banned the use of the word gender throughout out the federal government to the cities of Europe where hordes of young men are congregating to brandish their masculinity the 2122 PSS reports that 287,213
has been the use of surveillance especially stalking of women designed to intimidate and further control the 2021 PSS found 323 800,000 women had reported a male intimate partner had loitered or hung around outside their workplace school or educational facility that's 300 324,000 women only two years ago often such stalking is accompanied by harassment using a phone or other device which has been made easier by the Advent of new apps and other
Technologies the fight for women's economic equality began more than 100 years ago with the suffragettes insisting we must be
able sorry my IAD decided um he wanted to skip a paragraph I won't let it um the fight for women's economic equality began more than a 100 years ago with the suffrage Jets insisting that we must be able to vote to influence how we are governed since then generations of women including my own so-called second wave have fought to end discrimination in employment and education to enable women to have any job they want and to be paid fairly for it we fought for women to be financially and in intellectually independent to be able to make their own choices about marriage and children and everything else these victories were hard fought and now we see a huge wave of resistance often called backlash attempting to turn back the clock and take these gains away from us the methods being used are despicable violence as a means of destroying women's Independence we cannot and will not tolerate this reversing the tide of History the data we have provided in this report is ample evidence of what is being attempted and the cost entailed if they win we hope you will use this data to join the fight to make sure they do not succeed thank you
[Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] I'd now like to ask Jess Hill to join me on stage Jess as you know Jess Hill is a walkar winning Walkley award-winning journalist Advocate and public speaker who specializes in coercive control and gendered violence in 2019 she published her first book see what you made me do about the phenomenon of domestic abuse in Australia it was awarded the 2020 Stellar prize and shortlisted for several others and has been adapted into a television series for SPS recently Jess has produced an audio documentary series called the Trap two quarterly essays the Reckoning and losing it which comes out next month has I got a different name yeah I changed it okay so it's not called losing it no it is called losing it now it is called losing it no okay all right uh but anyway it's coming out next month on March 17th as well as a series on consent uh on SPS which was called asking for it please welcome Jess she and I are now [Music] going thank you an and thanks so much to everybody um so many friendly known faces in the crowd and um yeah it's just an amazing opportunity to be here with you celebrating the launch of this report um I too pay my respects to Elders past and present and acknowledge Auntie glender STS who has joined us thank you so much [Applause] so it really it really is a privilege to be here with all of you today launching another landmark report from Dr Anne Summers and I can still remember you calling me and telling me about the headline findings of the choice when that was about to come out um that 60% of single mothers were survivors of domestic violence and 50% of them were living in poverty with their children and honestly it felt like it was it was an electrifying moment and it re-energized a campaign to restore the single parenting payment that had been budding up against brick walls for over a decade um I was very um eager to call Theresa Edwards um very soon after you told me about this who heads up the Single mother's family Council um Anne has a unique mind a laser likee ability to find the big headline and to communicate it with such conviction that old paradigms really have no choice but to change um like her iPad trying to hide the paragraph it knows better um and now we have the cost which gives new data to so many people who are trying to improve the lives of victim survivors in work and in study so listening to you and there were a couple of questions I was like oh no Ann's already covered that um but for me personally I'm really interested in hearing more about the findings concerning University students and particularly what you're talking about um universities needing to do to respond um because I think if our governments are determined to end violence within a single generation you see these young women at the start of their adult lives they need to be empowered so they don't become more vulnerable to victimization as they grow up so given that we are in the University setting right now what do you think now they've got the the the code around sexual violence there's been movement after a long amount of campaigning what should be done around this well I think it's a um a very timely question um Jess and the publication of the report is quite timely for that very reason that the long hard campaign to get um action on sexual abuse and sexual harassment and protection um of students on campus and the appointment of an ombudsman has all just finally happened in the last little while but it's taken years to to occur I think what was so startling about Christian's findings I mean she went looking for employment and found this um it was quite startling to us all and it took a bit of digesting um what we discovered from the data was that this this this phenomenon was happening that these women were dropping out uh a year after first having EXP experienced violence and then it continuing to drop out at greater numbers the longer it went on um we then sort of realized that there is I mean I think I think many of us wrongly did not think of students as being subjected to domestic violence we think of something of with older women and that's I don't know why we think that but but I certainly thought that and and of course there's no basis for thinking that students cohabit with with other with with men they they're in partner relationships and therefore they are um liable to violence if if if if it's a violent relationship and under the PSS definitions of what constitutes violence so it it it makes sense but it hadn't been pointed out to us before and the key thing that I then discovered is that while universities offer their staff protection including domestic violence leave and other support they don't offer anything to students in the same way that all this work that's been done on sexual abuse of students has not looked at domestic violence so everybody's been being sort of guilty if you like of the same myopia of thinking oh it doesn't happen to students it only happens to grown-ups um but in fact it does happen to students the numbers are pretty horrendous and the consequences both for the individual women but for for us as a society are terrible yeah and so what do you think so do you think universities need to look at would would they expand the code that's been introduced or would it be something quite separate or do you is there anything that you've come to in the report well we we didn't look at the solutions so much but I mean obviously there has to be action taken and I think the university I mean the Senior Management at this University once they heard about my findings we on to it right away and they have in fact briefed the sector on it um so they're being very responsible thanks very much um um about it and I would expect that they would seek to apply or either to include domestic violence in the overall response to um harm being delivered to students or to uh equalize what what's happening with staff and students um I don't know I mean I it's up to to to experts to come up with the best solution but I mean clearly we have to recognize it that it's a phomen that exists secondly we have to offer assistance that's at least equal to what is available to staff and thirdly uh one thing we put in our recommendations is that we have to consider whether or not uh it might be possible to make available temporary accommodation for students who need to get away uh we all know that refugees are full and can't comate can't cope with the the existing demand um if universities can manage the housing side of this issue that would be very helpful I mean I just um in the quarterly that's coming out there was a an unaccompanied young victim Survivor who was experiencing Family Violence from her mother and she actually says the accommodation she got at Uni saved her because it meant she could move out um so probably also there's thinking around young victim survivors who are experiencing Family Violence and have to leave the home and and you know it's no longer fit for them to be home um the other thing so the shadow data in this report which you do note um the actual statistics on is all the women who are actually forced to work by freeloading perpetrators but who don't see a scent of that money or are permitted only an allowance and who are essentially having their wages stolen and I think you you note in the report that that stat that 41,000 women have had a previous partner who has controlled or tried to control them from working or earning money while 5384 women had a previous partner who controlled or tried to control their income or assets can you ground that data in how that's likely to play out for these women um I mean we I can't I mean we don't have any any more data than than we've published I mean one of the things about this report which is quite frustrating um I mean it's very satisfying in the sense that we've been able to document things that we sort of knew about or suspected and we've now got actual data but every single piece of data we produce produces about 10 questions yes like this one yeah um I mean there are so many things we don't know um one of the things that we need to know and is not available and that is with women who leave their jobs uh either voluntarily or having been really forced out we don't know what jobs they work we don't know how long they've been employed we don't know what they were earning so we're not able to sort of calculate the the the individual loss or the loss to society as we should be able to and so this is why you know our next project is is developing a longitudinal study the impact of domestic violence um so that we can measure these things at the moment there's no way we've got data on employment we've got data on wages but we they don't link they don't talk to each other so there's there's no way of knowing that so I can't really say in any detail um more than we've got with with those broad numbers so I guess something that I found really surprising in the report and um I don't know about you and all of the people today in the audience but so often we don't we don't have much of a political history of domestic violence policy because often journalists sort of Don't Go Near it it's like too complex or maybe for for whatever reason we don't really have that many Think Tank any think tanks actually who see it as a serious enough area of policy to um apply themselves to so whenever I see anything about a political history especially of the last National plan and what things moved around that perhaps we could rethink it's always exciting um so and one of the things I found really surprising is the political history of linking industrial relations to domestic violence policy and particularly that of getting these workplace leave entitlements roduced by the federal government and now you you WR about how this idea got a huge boost under Gillard but I must say I was really surprised that the turble government who really put gender violence back on the political agenda after the Abbott Dark Ages and brought us respect at work that they removed the workforce Focus From the national plan and abolished the safe at work safe at home project at unw along with the Clearing House for domestic and family violence research and by this stage as you say countries like the Philippines and Spain had already had 10 paid days of domestic violence leave since 2006 and so something I wanted to ask you is that you've been inside and outside government for decades does Australia's resistance to reform frustrate
you is is there can I give a yes no answer no that would be like a public servant you have to well it's Jess you and I were on the um rapid review um committee or what whatever it was group uh we both served for three months on a on a group that was meant to develop some responses to prevention following the Declaration of the Prime Minister that we had a National Emergency because large of than usual number of women have been killed in a particular period and we worked very hard on that and came up with some pretty interesting Solutions we thought um don't really know what's happened to them hasn't been much publicly anyway let's hope things are happening behind the scenes but I do I do think um one of the things I'm looking forward to in your quarterly essay is reading the history of the national plan that I I just quickly glanced at it the other day and see that you covered that um because it does appear that we're incredibly good at setting up committees and um asking questions about um what should happen but we don't we're not very good at doing anything or following through I guess to theend through I mean it's just I mean one of the things that struck me the other day when when I read about the you know the the 75 sh new shelters that were going to be built in New South Wales on the new core and cluster model and how these these were going to be um I think it was introduced by previous liberal government 75 houses and um they said that then that was bought down to 49 houses and uh of that eight have been delivered this is over 3 years I mean why why does this happen there was a firm commitment to build 75 houses they desperately needed what happens and why aren't we up in arms about it you know I just find that so frustrating and uh the same with with the the the paid leave I think is a you know it's a very problematic policy I mean one of it's it's better than nothing and those people who have taken advantage of it say it has been helpful but we know from from our when we report this in the cost that the 34% of women take leave because of domestic violence most years and the ma average amount of time correct me if I'm wrong come get you Christian the average amount of time they spend off is 30 odd days a month mon they basically take a month off now how they this is these are figures from before the legislation was introduced so they weren't taking that leave but obviously 10 days is not enough so that's the first basic flaw in that legislation secondly it's administratively you know absolute nightmare because you know you're not allowed to mention it on on your pay slip so there's no way to record it so no one knows how who's taken it or it's just needs a lot of work put it that way um but the fact that women who experience a lot of violence can take as much as 3 months off so presumably they're taking unpaid leave having it used up all their sick leave and all their po you know everything else uh they're taking three months out of work how they hang on to their jobs I don't know but obviously some of them are able to do so but that's the amount of time they apparently need so we've got to reconcile that reality with with government leave policies and we don't at the moment and uh and I hope that there was a review done of the um required by the legislation that it be R reviewed within a year of its coming into operation so the review was done um last year um but it was too soon I mean most most employer a huge number of employers don't even know about the leave even though they're legally responsible for implementing it and providing it they never know it exists most employees don't know it exists um it's not offered I know drop down leave menu at UTS doesn't offer it I mean I'm sure it exists but you have to know how to find it so it's very hard to get first of all to get the right policy I mean I I still don't think we have the right policies in very many areas but it's getting the right policy is is one thing but implementing a policy is proved in this country has proved to be extraordinarily difficult um like back in the early days I'll say that back in the 70s when we thought we'd solved all the world's problems unfortunately most of its unraveled sense but for example rape in marriage getting rape in marriage abolished was actually pretty easy you know South Australia did it 1975 and then New South Wales said oh we better do that and somebody Victoria said oh God we better do it and the whole of the country did it within a relatively short period of time and it was n't a hard thing to do and it was actually implemented how much it was enforced I can't tell you but you know the Pol policy was straightforward and it was t a taken up but when it comes to something more complicated like you know how we do what's our plan for ending violence I mean we're going to end it in a generation which is um totally unrealistic in my opinion um but what's our plan for doing it well I guess it's you know I I always felt uncomfortable about that commitment but then I sort of thought well if you're looking for leverage with government that's that's a leverage point right so it's like well if you've committed to end violence within a single generation like we need something on the scale of nation building for that to occur and also given that no other country in the world has cracked the problem of violence against women and in fact new data from the World Health Organization is showing that violence against women is getting worse for younger Generations despite everything that's happened um so you know but that this is a whole another um a whole another area um I guess what I'm interested in because you you mentioned this in your address is that we are in a period of pretty heightened backlash and it's not just an organic backlash of guys that just got fed up with all the women complaining about sexual violence um although that's part of it we're really looking at a backlash that is being globally coordinated by state and non-state actors and you know for years Russia has been leading that at the multilateral level then you've had anti-rights organizations from everyone from Russian oligarchs to far-right Christian groups who are outspending progressives to an eye-watering degree so we've got this and then this sort of filters down into this the UN that won't have another world conference right is it 30 years since the last one so we've got this really feal environment um of back that we're now stepping into the government is being warned that yes your problem was angry well actually your asset um was angry women last time round now your problem is grumpy men um and so um and that does not include any grumpy men in the audience today obviously you can be grumpy for your own reasons um lots of us are um but so I just wonder you know we think about things like um increasing the the the the leave entitlements for example from the 10 days that have been secured already I wonder how that plays in a backlash environment when you know we see through various surveys like gender Compass showing actually a good number of Australians think gender equality has either already been achieved or is close to being achieved and see the the movement for women's rights to actually be discriminatory towards men oh yeah or it's um not necessary not necessary yeah yeah yeah well either either and unfair as a result either it's unnecessary either because we already have it uh or because it's not needed because it's what there's no problem and things are fine the way they are um I sorry what's the question I guess I guess what I'm wondering is like you know when you're talking about um particular policies that are are to benefit women in particular like perhaps expanding domestic violence leave how do you do that in this environment how do you convince a government that it's in there interests to do that I mean it was remarkable I think that the government did do it and they did it very quickly very early on in their in their term and Tony Burke the minister he I think he said something like no what no woman should have to choose between you know her safety and her job and um you know they they they acted well they acted I think they acted with um Integrity it but it was a flawed plan I mean when you read the history of the of the legislation or the history of the policy which we do set out in some detail and we see that it really originated part lud mcferon you know of course well known in the women's movement was the person who first had the idea that the paid leave would help women save their jobs and save their houses um and then she got together with the actu when Jed Carney was the president and they sort of developed it into a really big campaign but the campaign was was leave was only a part of it you there was actually a whole package of of assistance that went along with it because they recognized that leave by itself is not enough and you and I think you know in trying to sell a policy like that today we have to it has to be a lot more integrated and and to show the dimensions of the problem and the problem is firstly the violence secondly how you escape from it thirdly um how you rebuild your life and all that's entailed all the various steps that are entailed in that um keeping the sympathy of people who are skeptical about that is is very very difficult but you know and I find the media's not as interested anymore it's uh it's it's a very a very tough one yeah yeah unfortunately the media's interest often hinges on a consequential homicide which is a horrible thing for when you're working in in this area and trying to get reform um I guess lastly you know this report for me really brings to life that phrase that gender inequality is both a cause and a consequence of men's violence against women and you have your own recommendations from the data in this report but if we think of this report as a platform to build on what would you like to find out next well I think we need to know a lot more about the um more about the data about women's experience in the workplace um we don't that link to violence I mean we know a lot about women's Workforce experience from from um say from the Hilda survey but we don't that is not linked to domestic violence so you know we don't know um there 407,000 women who currently experience violence I mean what what's the turnover in that number you know how many women uh are putting up with it year after year after year or are some of them leaving and others coming in I mean it's we just don't have any kind of breakdown of what that number is composed of and I think we need that yeah we need to know is it a younger group I mean I know if you look at the Australian longitudinal study on women's health which is an excellent resource on on all of this I mean you talk to the there's four cohorts in that group and the oldest ones are now aged in their 80s and 990s and they when you ask them if they've experienced domestic violence they tend to say no or not very much or something whereas the younger women who are now in their 30s are very open about it and not only that they've experienced it but they're willing to talk about it and this the the feeling is the older women not that they didn't experience it but they either didn't recognize it as that just just as when we started ELC I mean no one talked about domestic violence then it was a private thing and women just put up with it so we don't know the extent to which these older women it didn't have really didn't happen or it was just something that all women went went through and put up with and so you didn't complain about it um so we just we need to know a lot more about the the the composition if you like of of the population of women who are abused and you know we have a lot of anecdotal and Survey material but we don't have data mhm M we don't have numbers and I think that would be um important to have and I think you know the questions for the workplace and how you manage your workplace knowing that you have people in your workplace who are currently in distress um but you know you can't really publicize that I mean I think that's a quite a difficult conundrum that for employers sure for unions um for all of us you know we we all work work with people and um sometimes we discover things and I mean I can't tell you in the two years that I've been on C on campus few years before that I was working remotely but in the two years I've been on campus I can't tell you the number of people who've approached me and they've mostly been men and have thanked me for the work I do and they've always mentioned a sister or a mother or an auntie they've all mentioned somebody in their life who's experiencing violence and it never occurred to me until I started doing this work that probably a lot of them were referring to another student didn't occur to me they were talking about students but you know it's it's something that's that's there and it's invisible and when it's invisible how do you deal with it and I mean that's a genuine conundrum and what as I say what this report does it's very frustrating in the sense that it asks more questions than it answers but I hope that it's has has get has got a new conversation going uh because we've actually been able to identify the fact that this violence exists um and real people are affected by it and we have huge numbers just absolutely huge numbers of women affected and that's got to prompt us to do something well thank you for all of the long hours that you and Thomas and Chris put in it's a very stressful thing putting together a report with that much data in it gives me hives just reading it um so you know really huge gratitude to all of you for all of that work um and thank you so much for sharing with it today everybody thanks an Thomas
[Applause]
thanks an and Jess that's a really insightful discussion but an insightful discussion of some fairly shocking findings um as well um but I think also very much a call to Arms very much a demand for justice emerging from this as well as a attestation to the ongoing need for for feminist politics and for feminist activism my name is Professor kyl rhods I'm the dean of UTS business school um the place where an has conducted uh This research um an's work has really been instrumental in shaping the national conversation in domestic violence uh for quite some years and also how that domestic violence relates to Economic Security and this report continues that very important Legacy and um I must say um we at UTS business school are very proud that n decided to come and work with us a few years ago um the business school here at UTS is committed to doing business differently and in a sense doing business school differently as well particularly in terms of championing research that can positiv positively impact societies and communities um leading to economic Justice sustainability and shared Prosperity now an's report presented today reminds us that domestic violence is not just a personal health or social issue it is also an economic issue and an employment issue businesses employers and universities all have the responsibility to address its impacts the data in the report makes that clear having the right policies the right support structures the right workplace cultures to support women who suffer domestic violence is not just about the right thing to do it's essential for strong and productive Workforce and for a fair and just Society the report also forces us to reckon with the impact of domestic violence on education and the high rates of violence amongst young women mean that universities like ours have victim survivors not only amongst our colleagues but among amongst of students we educate and as Ann suggested this is not something that we've necessarily really considered before we need to be doing more to support these students to complete their degrees and access the life-changing benefits of Education the fundamental principles that we support to access the full report and the data um there are QR codes around the room so scan those um you can visit an Summers research.com and also published a great article in uh the conversation yesterday um which serves as an excellent uh summary as well um but I really would encourage all of you to um get hold of the report read it share about it think about it talk about it um the real change also comes from change that we can all make um in whatever capacity we have especially the capacity as Citizens uh to create the debate and to make it real and to and to to rise that from from the ground up but thank you all for being here today and enging in this uh conversation and I wish you a good afternoon thank you
[Applause] [Music]
This event was hosted by the UTS Business School and Centre for Social Justice & Inclusion. If you are interested in hearing about future events, please contact events.socialjustice@uts.edu.au.
There is not only an employment gap but a large financial chasm between women who experience violence and those who don't. Our report shows 43.9% of women who have experienced physical or sexual violence in the past 5 years have experienced cash flow issues in the most recent year.
Anne Summers
One of the things I found really surprising is the political history of linking industrial relations to domestic violence policy and particularly that of getting these workplace leave entitlements reduced by the Federal Government.
Jess Hill
Speakers
Anne Summers AO is currently Professor of Domestic and Family Violence at the University of Technology of Sydney Business School. She has been awarded substantial funding by the Paul Ramsay Foundation and UTS to continue her innovative data-based research into domestic violence in Australia. Her report, The Choice: Violence or Poverty (2022), used previously unpublished ABS data to reveal the far greater prevalence of domestic violence than was previously known, and especially the shockingly high incidence among women who have become single mothers as a result. The report influenced the federal government to make changes in the 2023 federal budget to the payment system for single mothers, enabling these mothers to remain on the Parenting Payment until their youngest child reaches the age of 14.
Previously, Anne has advised Prime Ministers Bob Hawke and Paul Keating, run the Office of the Status of Women, been Canberra Bureau Chief for the Australian Financial Review newspaper, been editor-in-chief of America’s leading feminist magazine Ms., editor of Good Weekend, chair of the Board of Greenpeace International and a Trustee of the Powerhouse Museum. She was appointed an officer of the Order of Australia for her services to journalism and to women in 1989; had her image on a postage stamp as an Australian Legend in 2011 and in 2017 was inducted into the Australian Media Hall of Fame.
Jess Hill has become one of Australia's most recognised and respected thinkers on gendered violence. In addition to her broadcast work - two highly acclaimed docuseries on SBS, a Quarterly Essay titled The Reckoning, and a podcast series on coercive control titled The Trap - she has spoken at almost 400 events to diverse audiences across the country. Her work has received multiple awards, including two Walkley Awards, an Amnesty International Award and the Stella Prize in 2020. In 2023, she was named the marie claire Changemaker of the Year and in 2024, she was awarded the NSW Premier’s Woman of Excellence.