Jenna Clarke: Time to act on gender equality, racism, sexual discrimination and domestic violence as a whole

I have a friend who has a “running away from home fund”. It’s a joke about her small savings account which she uses to buy herself the odd treat and spoils the kids on the odd occasion while not having to remortgage the house. But for many women and men, who are not in stable, safe, functional relationships, it’s anything but funny or available. Fists to the face, sexual assault and verbal and emotional tirades are common aspects of family and domestic violence. It can also be so pervasive that it also affects people’s bank accounts, too. Financial abuse is another way in which users of domestic violence can wield power against their partner and family in vindictive and subtle ways. “It’s a pattern of coercive control that creates dependence,” is the more apt description, according to RUAH Community Services general manager of domestic violence Tanya Elson. There are alarming statistics regarding financial abuse in WA, too. On the eve of this year’s 16 Days in WA campaign against family and domestic violence, Bankwest decided to dig into some alarming news bank tellers and other frontline workers were witnessing and hearing in its branches. The results of the YouGov survey showed almost one in three of us is, or has been, a victim of financial abuse. While everyone’s experiences with it are different. The study found 59 per cent of abusers used all of their partner’s wages for household expenses and spent their own money only on themselves. On the other side of the coin, 58 per cent of those who abuse their loved one financially damage, destroy or steal from their partner and refuse to contribute to the running of the household. There are similarly depressing statistics out of The most recent National Community Attitudes Towards Violence Against Women survey found two in five Australians have no idea where to get help when they need it. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, last year 48 per cent of murder, attempted murder and manslaughter offences in WA were related to family and domestic violence. Of the 28 victims, 19 of them were women. The latest findings from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare reports show migrant and Aboriginal women and kids experience family violence at disproportionately high rates. Aboriginal women are 32 times more likely than non-Aboriginal women to be hospitalised from family violence, while 40 per cent of refugees who had experienced some form of family and domestic violence did not share their experience with anyone. Despite numerous “awareness” campaigns, helpline numbers seemingly plastered all over the place and multiple “Days” and “Weeks” we mark every year, like International Women’s Day, International Day of the Girl Child and on the list goes, clearly something is not working. There is a massive disconnection between those of us who exist in information vacuums and those who live in the real world where Facebook is a place to connect to loved ones, not a platform littered with news stories. For five years, WA’s first Minster for the Prevention of Domestic Violence, Simone McGurk, has spearheaded the 16 Days in WA campaign. Each year we’re alarmed by the stats and still shocked when she tells us that “two-thirds of assaults dealt with by WA Police are related to domestic and family violence and children are present in more than half of those cases”. But this year, something feels different. Optimism, hope, a willingness to take these issues seriously and start focusing on them at a preventive level. This year the mining and resources industry faced its day of reckoning during the parliamentary inquiry into the treatment of women and issues of sexual violence and harassment within its ranks. The difference was the leaders of companies like BHP and Rio Tinto were open to listening to these issues and want to change. On Tuesday they all came together to discuss what changes are being implemented in workshops, in the C-suites and at crib box meetings around the country. It wasn’t just McGurk representing the Government at the breakfast. There was the biggest cohort of Cabinet ministers I’ve witnessed at an event that didn’t involve rubbing shoulders with millionaires after 5pm. Attorney-General John Quigley, Police Minister Paul Papalia, Housing Minister John Carey and Minister for Youth Dave Kelly — people who have the ability to enact policy changes — all sat and took in victim’s accounts of DV and learnt how corporate WA is fighting the epidemic. Bankwest now grants DV leave and Rio recently had its workforce of 16,000 stop work for 30 minutes to confront the realities of inequality and chat it out. What happened was unexpected. “We stopped the entire iron ore business of Rio for a couple of hours to enable at least a 30 minutes conversation in every single team, right across the board. Thirty minutes, became 45, became 60, became longer and the importance of that was instead of hearing from leaders or other people about the impact of disrespectful behaviour in the workplace and at home, our team members got to hear from each other. An Aboriginal man found his voice and stood and said ‘We’re not born racist, we just learn that’,” Rio’s rail operations GM Brendon Brodie-Hall said. “A gay man talked about his sexuality for the first time and the impact over the years that disrespectful behaviours had on him and then to hear it played back to me from 60-year-old white train drivers about the impact that had on them from hearing that and lots of women realising what they’ve normalised should not be normalised that was very effective as a one off but we’ll continue to make sure we give opportunities for those conversations to carry on by getting our leadership right, and having leaders in the front line equipped with the skills needed to address these issue.” This is the thing. We are so used to talking about issues like gender equality, racism, sexual discrimination and domestic violence individually we forget they do not exist in silos. The time for talk is over, let’s put every issue on the table and thrash them out in safe spaces and avenues. Rio has hardly been a role model for being a good corporate citizen of late, but this exercise in which it allowed employees instead of HR to run was truly admirable. 1800 RESPECT Sexual Assault Resource Centre (SARC) – 6458 1828