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And Inquiry into family, domestic and sexual violence House Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs July 2020 1 Inquiry into family, domestic and sexual violenceSubmission 177 LIFE COURSE CENTRE The Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Children and Families over the Life Course (the Life Course Centre) is a national research centre focused on investigating the drivers of deep and persistent disadvantage.
We are committed to leveraging our evidence-based research to develop new knowledge and practices to better equip Australian children and families to overcome social and economic disadvantage.

The Life Course Centre is administered by the Institute for Social Science Research at the University of Queensland and is a collaboration with the University of Western Australia, the University of Sydney and the University of Melbourne.
We also have a wide range of collaborative links to national and international academic, government, non-government, business and philanthropic partners.

We welcome the opportunity to provide a submission to the House Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs inquiry into family, domestic and sexual violence referred by the Minister for Women, Senator the Hon.

Marise Payne, and the Minister for Family and Social Services, Senator the Hon.

Anne Rushton.
Life Course Centre Director: Professor Janeen Baxter, University of Queensland Life Course Centre Chief Investigators: Professor Deborah Cobb-Clark, University of Sydney Professor Lorraine Mazerolle, University of Queensland Professor Guyonne Kalb, University of Melbourne Professor Cate Taylor, University of Western Australia Professor Karen Thorpe, University of Queensland Professor Matthew Sanders, University of Queensland Professor Mark Western, University of Queensland Professor Stephen Zubrick, University of Western Australia Life Course Centre Institute for Social Science Research, The University of Queensland 80 Meiers Road, Indooroopilly, Queensland 4068 Australia For more information on the Life Course Centre visit: www.lifecoursecentre.org.au 2 Inquiry into family, domestic and sexual violenceSubmission 177 This Life Course Centre submission specifically addresses two on the inquiry’s Terms of Reference in order to highlight the following key points: 1.
Family, domestic and sexual violence is a highly gendered social issue that requires challenging outdated gendered inequalities, attitudes and assumptions in the key institutions of families, labour markets and government policies.

2.

Family, domestic and sexual violence requires building a robust high-quality evidence base that identifies and fills knowledge gaps, and evaluates the effectiveness of policy interventions, responses and implementation.
This submission has been prepared by: Professor Janeen Baxter, Life Course Centre Director, Institute for Social Science Research, University of Queensland Professor Lorraine Mazerolle, Life Course Centre Chief Investigator, School of Social Science, University of Queensland Ella Kuskoff, Life Course Centre PhD student, University of Queensland and also draws on other research from across the Life Course Centre.
3 Inquiry into family, domestic and sexual violenceSubmission 177 Terms of Reference a) Immediate and long-term measures to prevent violence against women and their children, and improve gender equality.

Life Course Centre research follows and observes people over time, investigating critical risks and opportunities across the entire life course - not just at a single point in time.
Our research is focused on identifying and understanding the underlying causes, rather than the symptoms, of enduring social and economic disadvantage in Australian society, and the ways in which it is transmitted within families and across generations.
When examining the issue of family, domestic and sexual violence, we believe it is critical to highlight the need for systemic, institutional change in addressing lingering gender inequalities (cause), rather than only focusing on dealing with perpetrators after an incident (symptom).

Outdated institutions play a pivotal role in facilitating gendered disadvantage and, in turn, heightening the risks of family, domestic and sexual violence.
We have identified the key institutions of families, labour markets and government policies where gendered inequalities, attitudes and assumptions still need to be comprehensively addressed in Australia.

By challenging the outdated gender narratives that persist in these settings, and which exert much influence on entrenched gendered disadvantage, we can transform institutional frameworks to help reduce and prevent incidences of family, domestic and sexual violence in Australia.
Families While family structures are changing and evolving, families are still important social institutions.

Our research has shown that strong family relationships improve well-being outcomes over the life course.

But when it comes to family dynamics, changes to deeply entrenched gender-role attitudes in Australian households continues to be slow.
Several decades of the feminist movement in Australia has led to more women in higher education, employment and politics, but women still carry the bulk of housework, child raising and caring responsibilities in Australian households.

Stubborn gender inequality in the home is often referred to as the ‘stalled revolution’ of feminism – and is being further exacerbated by the gendered social and economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Traditional gender role attitudes still prevail in Australian households, where housework and family work remains predominantly defined as ‘women’s work’.
Our research shows that these traditional gender role attitudes become even more entrenched in heterosexual 4 Inquiry into family, domestic and sexual violenceSubmission 177 couples following the birth of children – that is, the entry to parenthood is more likely to support arrangements where fathers are the main income earners and mothers the main carers1.
Research by Professor Baxter has also shown that trends toward more egalitarian views about gender roles have slowed and possibly stalled in Australia with indications that men and women are increasingly more traditional about gender roles2.

New Life Course Centre research has also identified the influence of intergenerational family influences on gender role attitudes.
This study3 adds important new knowledge to our understanding of how attitudes about the roles of men and women in society are transmitted within families, and how they can contribute to the reproduction of gender inequalities across generations.

It found substantial correlations in gender role attitudes between parents and their children (14 and 15-year-old adolescents from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children).
While fathers’ attitudes influence the attitudes of their sons and daughters equally, mothers’ attitudes influence their daughters more than their sons – highlighting the important role of mothers in the gender socialisation of their daughters.
While this research demonstrates that family influences continue to play a role in the maintenance of the status quo regarding gender role attitudes in Australia, it also provides a glimpse of hope that egalitarian gender attitudes are ‘intergenerationally stickier’ than traditional gender attitudes.
The study found that when one parent holds egalitarian gender role attitudes, regardless of that parent’s gender, the influence of the other parent’s attitudes on the child is diminished – that is, egalitarianism trumps traditionalism when there is parental disagreement on gender roles.
These findings suggest we can expect steady, though perhaps slow, movement towards more egalitarian gender role attitudes in Australian households, and also demonstrate that strategic interventions targeting parents will have significant flow-on effects for the next generation.

1 Baxter, J., Buchler, S., Perales, F., & Western, M. (2014).

A life-changing event: First births and men's and women's attitudes to mothering and gender divisions of labor.

Social Forces, 93(3), 989- 1014.


2 Van Egmond, M., Baxter, J., Buchler, S., & Western, M. (2010).

A stalled revolution?

Gender role attitudes in Australia, 1986-2005.

Journal of Population Research, 27, 147–168.

3 Perales, F., Hoffmann, H., King, T., Vidal, S., & Baxter, J.

(2020).

Mothers, fathers and the intergenerational transmission of gender-role attitudes.

Life Course Centre Working Paper: 2020-05.


5 Inquiry into family, domestic and sexual violenceSubmission 177 Labour Markets and Government Policies It is crucial for employers and governments to demonstrate leadership in terms of policies that address gender inequalities.
While there has been legislative progress in Australia in areas such as sexual discrimination and paid parental leave, there is still much work that needs to be done, including narrowing the gender pay gap, facilitating the elevation of more women to leadership roles in both the private and public sectors, improving the accessibility of affordable childcare, providing flexible workplace arrangements for both men and women, and empowering mothers to maintain attachment to labour markets.
The high-profile global #MeToo movement has highlighted the sexual inequalities and injustices that many women still face in the workplace.

We need to recognize that gender inequality is not just a failure of women to behave more like men.

We need to directly challenge the institutional frameworks that define some jobs as women’s jobs, that pays women differently, and ignores unpaid care work and labour.
The repercussions of this structural gendered disadvantage are significant and long-lasting, manifesting in poorer outcomes for women across a wide range of financial, social and health and well-being outcomes over the life course, especially for mothers.
In particular, assisting women at the transition to motherhood, and helping them to retain employment, can help to reduce household joblessness, financial insecurity, and the risk of family, domestic and sexual violence, as well as the transmission of disadvantage to the next generation.

The immediate government responses to COVID-19 have demonstrated that it is possible for well-established institutional frameworks in Australia to be upended virtually overnight.
For example, welfare, childcare and labour (working from home) systems.

Although it is worth noting that while COVID-19 was hailed as an opportunity to revolutionise household gender roles, early research4 has shown mothers have been placed under more pressure, not less, with their employment and income shrinking and family care responsibilities rising, compared to fathers.
However, the ongoing social and economic fallout from COVID-19 still presents opportunities for further re-thinking and transforming of outdated institutional rules and constraints that deeply and persistently disadvantage women.

4 Ruppanner, L., Collins, C., & Scarborough.

W. (2020).

COVID-19 is a disaster for mothers’ employment.

And no, working from home is not the solution.

The Conversation, 21, July 2020.


6 Inquiry into family, domestic and sexual violenceSubmission 177 Our research has also shown that good policy intentions alone are not enough to pave the way for gender equality.

In order to improve alignment between policy aims and actions in family, domestic and sexual violence, it is important that government policies consciously question and challenge underlying gender attitudes, assumptions and narratives.
Our analysis of ‘progressive’ family and domestic violence policies, which seek to change gendered attitudes and behaviours, showed they can still be underpinned by assumptions that reinforce existing unequal social structures5.

This research has specifically examined the extent to which the Queensland Government’s family and domestic violence strategy contained barriers that may limit the potential benefits by reinforcing the gender inequalities that facilitate domestic, family and sexual violence.
This work6 has highlighted how the implementation of the Queensland Government’s family and domestic violence strategy can inadvertently undermine its guiding principle to change attitudes and behaviours in a number of ways, including: disproportionately focusing on bystanders over perpetrators; exploiting the gender hierarchy and reinforcing women’s subordinate position in society; and overlooking the importance of researching, implementing, and evaluating programs and systems that support perpetrators to change.
It also provides an evidence-based analysis of why these barriers are problematic and offers potential reparative actions.

These findings have important implications for future domestic, family and sexual violence policy development by Australian governments.
Terms of Reference f) The adequacy of the qualitative and quantitative evidence base around the prevalence of domestic and family violence and how to overcome limitations in the collection of nationally consistent and timely qualitative and quantitative data including, but not limited to, court, police, hospitalisation and housing.

Building the evidence base to inform and influence institutional change is critical to addressing family, domestic and sexual violence in Australia.
It is also imperative for researchers, policymakers and governments to continuously evaluate family, domestic and sexual violence policies and implementation, and refine approaches in line with emerging evidence and feedback.

This will help to ensure that government resources are used 5 Kuskoff, E., & Parsell, C. (2020).

Striving for Gender Equality: Representations of Gender in “Progressive” Domestic Violence Policy.

Violence Against Women, 1077801220909892.

6 Kuskoff, E. (2019).


From intentions to implementation: Improving alignment between domestic and family violence policy aims and actions.

Life Course Centre Working Paper: 2019-25.

7 Inquiry into family, domestic and sexual violenceSubmission 177 effectively and efficiently to keep victims safe, hold perpetrators to account, and move towards the long-term reduction and prevention of family, domestic and sexual violence.
In 2018, the Queensland Domestic Violence Death Review Board funded the Life Course Centre Social Interventions group to conduct a systematic review to examine the breadth and depth of intervention evidence for addressing domestic and family violence through the criminal justice system.

Systematic reviews provide a robust method for synthesising impact evaluations.
They provide concise yet comprehensive summaries of high-quality research evidence, making them valuable tools for policymakers to identify interventions that are most effective for particular problems and populations.

Our 2018 systematic review7 located 193 studies (41 systematic reviews, 30 randomised controlled trials, and 122 quasi-experiments) which included 26 police-focused, 36 courts- focused, 58 corrections-focused, and 69 multiagency responses to domestic and family violence.
Our representation of the studies demonstrated three key findings:  there is a dearth of high-quality Australian impact evaluations for addressing domestic and family violence, particularly within minority groups  most of the impact evaluations have used official recidivism as the primary outcome measure - there are even fewer studies with outcome measures such as self-reported recidivism, official victimization, perpetrator psycho-social indicators and practitioner outcomes  multi-agency interventions that focus on a range of risk factors surrounding domestic and family violence show promise for perpetrators and families.
7 Mazerolle, L., Eggins, E., Sydes, M., Hine, L., McEwan, J., Norrie, G., & Somerville, A.

(2018).

Criminal Justice Responses to Domestic and Family Violence: A rapid review of the evaluation literature.

Brisbane, Australia: The University of Queensland.

8 Inquiry into family, domestic and sexual violenceSubmission 177