Violence against women: Conversations must continue
The senseless killing of Ashling Murphy led to a collective outpouring of grief and anger across the island of Ireland and beyond, writes Orla O’Connor, Director of the National Women’s Council of Ireland (NWCI).
The National Women’s Council expresses its full sympathies and solidarity with Ashling’s family and all who knew and loved her, and our thoughts are with them as they face the most difficult weeks and months ahead.
It is critical that the current conversations we are having around men’s violence against women continue, and that they become a watershed moment to end gender-based violence. As vigils took place in almost every town and village across Ireland to mourn Ashling and to remember the 244 women who have died violently in Ireland since Women’s Aid records began in 1996, women across Ireland have been sharing their stories of abuse and harassment, and how they curtail their lives so that they feel safer. Ultimately, we know there is no behaviour change women can make that will keep them safe from men’s violence. So, we need to talk about what we can do.
At the highest level, we have already witnessed an important change, with An Taoiseach announcing this week that we will have one government department with responsibility for ending gender-based violence. NWC warmly welcomes the decision to have one lead department for tackling gender-based violence and we look forward to working with Minister for Justice Helen McEntee TD to end men’s violence against women. Our current fragmented system and disjointed supports create a real barrier for women experiencing violence and abuse to report and seek help. This integrated approach to tackle men’s violence against women will see one government department having overall responsibility and will provide greater accountability for tackling gender-based violence and delivering the supports women desperately need.
The Government is preparing its new National Strategy for Domestic Sexual and Gender-based Violence to be launched in 2022. This is the moment for ambition and leadership to tackle gender-based violence seriously. It is absolutely crucial that we provide greater resources for women who experience gender-based violence and for our frontline services. Alongside this, we need to make it easier for women to report domestic and sexual violence. In practice, that means a system of wrap-around supports from the moment women come forward to seek support and disclose abuse. We know from the numbers of women who contact the frontline services that both domestic and sexual violence is happening to a much greater degree than what is in any official records. If we are serious about tackling violence against women, then we need reliable and accurate data on gender-based violence to fully understand its nature, prevalence, and extent.
Ultimately, it is important that we focus our conversations on prevention, on creating a zero-tolerance culture towards misogyny and sexism that permeates our society and creates the context in which gender-based violence occurs. This means, for example, changing our curriculum to include compulsory programmes at primary and secondary level that all schools must teach, it means bringing these programmes into our sporting institutions and youth services and transforming our third-level institutions to adopt a zero-tolerance approach. It means policy change in our education system to ensure the casual sexism that girls and women experience is unacceptable. It means stronger legislation towards street harassment, and stronger enforcement toward harassment in the workplace.
Right now, from government, we need ambition, and we need leadership, and long-term thinking. We need to ensure women are safe in our homes and in our communities and that we no longer have to limit our lives for fear of male violence. Now is the moment we must create a society where violence against women is unacceptable and abhorrent to all of us.
