Abstract:

In 2015, the Australian federal government proclaimed that violence against women had become a national crisis. Despite social and economic advances in the status of women since the 1970s, the prevalence of gender violence remains alarming. Australian Bureau of Statistic data indicates that a third of all women have been assaulted physically and a fifth of all women have been assaulted sexually. Other statistics show that one woman is murdered an intimate partner each week, and family violence is a leading factor in a third of all cases of homelessness. The resulting strain on government services and lost productivity is estimated to cost the Australian economy around $13.6 billion a year. Gender Violence in Australia: Historical Perspectives indicates exactly where these violent behaviours come from and how they have been rationalised over time, offering an important resource for addressing what amounts to a widespread, persistent, and urgent social problem.

Biography:

Dr Ana Stevenson is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the International Studies Group at the University of the Free State, South Africa. A historian of feminism, her research examines women and social movements in Australia, South Africa, and the United States. Her book, The Woman as Slave in Nineteenth-Century American Social Movements (Palgrave Macmillan), is forthcoming. In 2019, she was awarded the W. Turrentine Jackson (Article) Prize by the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association and the Covert Award in Mass Communication History by the History Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.