Join the Walk Against Family Violence on Friday 22 November and create Victorian communities where everyone is safe, equal and respected.
In Victoria, this event marks the beginning of the 16 Days of Activism against Gender-Based Violence a global campaign for the prevention and elimination of violence against women and girls.
By joining the Walk you can take action to prevent family violence and violence against women and stand in solidarity with victim survivors.
The event will commence at 11:00am at Birrarung Marr (Upper Terrace) with a Welcome to Country and opening remarks. We will walk together to Treasury Gardens (approximately 700 metres), where we will hear from a lineup of powerful speakers.
You are invited to stay in the Gardens after the formalities finish to enjoy a picnic lunch. There will be food trucks, entertainment, market stalls and a positive atmosphere!
People of all genders are welcome. Bring your workmates, friends, family, chosen family – and even your dogs! Wear orange if you can, bring a water bottle, and don’t forget colourful signs and banners.
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Join Our Watch’s new sport professionals community of practice, designed to support people working on gender equality and prevention of violence in national sporting organisations and professional sporting clubs or teams. Sport professionals can share knowledge, ideas, and challenges to enhance their understanding and practices related to preventing violence against women and promoting gender equality in sports.
Expressions of interest close Friday 18 October 2024.
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Safe and Equal have recently announced their latest report, Foundations for Action: Understanding the Primary Prevention Workforce in Victoria.
This report examines the landscape of the primary prevention workforce in Victoria, offering comprehensive insights into the diverse range of organisations, practitioners and activities involved.
Created in collaboration with key stakeholders, the report offers valuable insights into workforce needs and presents strategic considerations to strengthen and grow this workforce into the future.
On 23 August 2024, the Australian Government received the final report from the expert panel appointed to undertake a rapid review of evidence-based approaches to prevent gender-based violence. The report provides specific and practical advice to strengthen prevention approaches, and builds on considerable work currently underway in the National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children 2022-2032. The report makes 21 recommendations across 6 key areas for action by federal, state and territory governments. The recommendations will be taken forward as a priority for discussion by National Cabinet.
A new Victorian Government resource is helping clubs become champions when it comes to creating respectful and safe sporting environments where gender equality is actively promoted, and gender stereotypes are challenged. Sport plays a valuable role in preventing gender-based violence. It is an important setting for championing equality and challenging gender inequality. While this Guide is primarily focused on community sport, many of the principles, resources and key learnings can apply to active recreation settings.
The Guide is a tool for organisations to work more effectively with a range of community sporting organisations including governing bodies, associations, clubs and volunteers to drive cultural change in community sport.
Framing the Future the second three-year rolling action plan under Building from strength: 10-Year Industry Plan for Family Violence Prevention and Response is now available online.
Framing the Future will continue to develop the specialisation of the family violence, primary prevention and sexual assault workforces through providing clearer education and training pathways, improving support for early career workers, creating more varied specialisation pathways as workers progress in their careers and improving options for experienced practitioners to move between service types.
The plan reflects strong collaboration with family violence and sexual assault peak bodies and employers as well as opportunities to connect shared workforce development opportunities and challenges across community services – this includes children and families, disability and housing and homelessness.
It addresses critical vacancies and building better career pathways, with a focus on retaining the workforce.
“Ultimately, [workplace] sexual harassment is about power, isn’t it?”
The report will be launched by the Sex Discrimination Commissioner, Dr Anna Cody, with lead researcher, Professor Marie Segrave (University of Melbourne) and human rights advocate Nyadol Nyuon OAM (Harmony Alliance) speaking to the report’s findings and their implications.
This study, unique both nationally and internationally, explores the experiences of workplace sexual harassment for migrant and refugee women. It holds stories from a diverse group of migrant and refugee women: from temporary visa holders to citizens; from women in well-resourced, high-earning industries and positions to women working in low-paid or precarious labour; and women from a diverse range of cultural backgrounds.
Drawn from interviews, focus groups, and a national survey, the findings on workplace sexual harassment speak to the broader context of what it means to be “safe” at work, and the intersections with other workplace harms, such as racial discrimination – including cultural myths and stereotypes – and exploitative work conditions. Findings around reporting and workplace responses to disclosures will inform work to better account for these intersections between different forms of workplace harms.
Our Watch’s previous report, Tracking Progress in Prevention: A national monitoring report on progress towards the primary prevention of violence against women and their children 2020, tracked national progress towards reducing violence against women over 2009 to 2019.
A new report card from Our Watch provides an update with data from 2020 to 2023 and shows that there has been slow but significant improvements across many of the key measures of progress in the prevention of violence against women.
A Deakin University honours research project is seeking social worker participants for a study on knowledge and practice responses when working with women over 50 experiencing intimate family violence.
The study aims to explore social workers’ knowledge of intimate partner violence and women over 50, the services available to women over 50, and what this looks like in practice.
Interested participants are invited to participate in a one-on-one interview to gather data on their knowledge of and practice responses for working with women over 50 who have recovered and rebuilt their lives after IPV.
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For gender equality and violence prevention activities to be effective, they need to engage everyone, including men and boys from multicultural and faith-based communities. By addressing barriers to engagement, highlighting the benefits of prevention activities, and consulting with communities to build trust and capacity, prevention practitioners can support men from multicultural and faith-based communities to meaningfully participate in primary prevention.
Developed by the Multicultural Centre for Women’s Health and Safe and Equal, this resource draws on the existing evidence base, as well as practice examples from members of the Connecting Communities network to outline their learnings, tools, insights and strategies for working with multicultural and faith-based men.