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Message from the Chair
Dear Members and Colleagues,
The beginning of August makes it easy to count how many days have passed since start of 2018. The answer is 211. I have just done this mundane arithmetic exercise for a sombre reason. In that time, 38 women have been murdered in this country – one woman every 5.5 days. Jenna Price, Fairfax columnist and University of Technology lecturer began a grim ritual of Counting Dead Women on a facebook page called Destroy the Joint in 2012. I thank Jenna for bringing this count constantly to our attention. Otherwise the deaths of these women would pass too easily into oblivion.
If we fail to acknowledge the toll that this violence takes on our resilience, we might lose our resolve to continue to fund and support the raft of actions which address gender inequality, promote respect, and most importantly, focus on our children to give them the tools to deal with conflict and anger without confrontation and violence.
At the moment the national Office for Women has begun conducting consultations around the country to develop the fourth Action Plan (2019-2022) for the National Plan to Reduce Violence Against Women and their Children. WWDACT attended the first national consultation on Tuesday 24 July.
We continue to advocate for specific funding to address the high incidence and different characteristics of violence against women with disabilities. In addition we want consideration of women with disabilities to be included in all of the mainstream measures that will be part of the 4th Action Plan.
Regards,
Sue Salthouse
Chair, WWDACT