Multiple discussions about successful practises and policy for the upcoming National Plan to End Violence Against Women and Their Children have been initiated by the Women’s Safety Summit.
Any policy mistakes made during the first National Plan’s tenure that decreased women’s economic security and compromised their safety must be undone under the second National Plan.

The Women’s Safety Summit was hosted by the Australian government in September 2021. The next National Plan to End Violence Against Women and Their Children will benefit from this event’s insights.

The first National Plan, created by Gillard when she was prime minister, has been in effect for almost 12 years. Although attitudes and responses to violence against women have significantly improved as a result, we have not achieved as much progress as we could have. Gender-based violence continues to be reported in horrifying ways in both our personal and political homes.
The fact that violence against women has not decreased more over the past 12 years is rather predictable. The first National Plan had to deal with a number of political choices that have increased women’s financial dependence on men, even abusive ones, and made them more economically insecure.

Economic instability makes it more difficult to flee and encourages violence.

Gendered violence is mostly driven by economic and gender inequity. The Statement from the Women’s Safety Summit, a coordinated list of urgent tasks from State and Territory expert delegates, makes this apparent.

Because it restricts women’s options or eliminates the possibility of leading an independent life, economic insecurity increases the likelihood that violence will be committed and maintained during a relationship. Every year, about 8,000 women in Australia are compelled to live with abusive partners again because they cannot find an affordable place to reside.

Young women who are experiencing financial trouble are twice as likely to have been abused by a spouse than those who are not (25.3% vs. 12.9%), and the violence was more likely to be severe. Financial hardship is another effect of partner violence; for women who have experienced partner abuse, the probability of moving into hardship is substantially higher (14.9% vs. 5.6% for women who had not).

At its most basic level, this entails making sure women have enough money to support themselves and their children while also having a safe place to live. Women battled for the same rights in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in order to free more women from the control of abusive men. It’s amazing that we still have to fight for these same rights in 2021, but this is the result of gender-blind policy decisions that were made in isolation from a strategy to reduce violence.

Cutting down women while attempting to lift them

Over the past 12 years, three significant policies—the deterioration of the social security system, the rise in employment precarity, and the rising cost of housing—have worked against the reduction of violence.

The safety of women has suffered as a result of the degradation of our social security system. Women increasingly rely on the pitiful JobSeeker payment, the lowest unemployment benefit in the OECD, which prevents them from leaving and remaining apart from violent spouses.

More women are now receiving this extremely low payment as a result of significant, bipartisan changes to social security policy that started in the late 2000s. This includes single mothers whose youngest child is older than 8 and women with disabilities, who are more vulnerable to all types of violence.

Along with the introduction of the first National Plan, conditional welfare programmes like ParentsNext were implemented, severely compromising the safety of women. Most ParentsNext participants are probably survivors of family violence. Even if women are unable to comply because of the persistent effects of family violence, social security benefits are lowered or suspended for mothers of infants and young children owing to programme realities. The outcome? For money, women must get in touch with violent ex-partners.

Employment is becoming more unstable.

The promotion of precarious labour under the guise of “flexibility” and persistent gender differences in working patterns constitute the second main policy paradox. This increases a woman’s dependence on her partner’s income, especially if she has children.

A percentage that has risen over the previous ten years shows that women are more likely than men to work in casual occupations without the right to paid leave (26% of employed women versus 23% of employed males). Men make up 62% of full-time employees, compared to women who make up 68% of part-time employees. Surprisingly, during the past 40 years, there hasn’t been much of a change in the percentage of women who work full-time.

Housing is not a human right but rather an investment

The financialization of housing, which sees dwellings utilised as locations to park money and build wealth rather than as places to live, is the third policy that has worked against efforts to reduce violence. Of fact, this has been going on for a while, but under the first National Plan’s tenure, it got worse. Even for women with middle-class incomes, housing has become less affordable due to the complete decoupling of rents and home prices from wages. Women with the lowest salaries struggle with a crisis of highly expensive private rentals and a persistent lack of social housing.

More than 9,000 women lose their homes each year due to familial violence, leaving them homeless. One of the main challenges for Good Shepherd practitioners working with family violence victim-survivors is the absence of affordable, permanent housing. While it is ideal for women and children to stay in their own homes, sometimes doing so might be risky or expensive.

The path to ending violence

Eliminating family violence first and foremost necessitates combating misogyny, sexism, racism, and other attitudes that encourage violence against women.
All of these laws are preventative measures against domestic violence that increase women’s economic security and enable them to be free from abusive males.