Pillars
Responses
The Responses Pillar studies the legal and frontline policy and practice responses to violence against women (VAW). It scrutinises existing and proposed VAW responses, and is developing an evidence base needed to determine which responses increase victim-survivor safety and wellbeing and which responses ensure perpetrator accountability.
This pillar consists of three workstreams, Frontline Practice Responses to VAW, Legal Responses to VAW, and Engaging Perpetrators and Bystanders.
The workstreams
Lead
Prof Cathy Humphreys
Chief Investigator
Frontline workers responding to women and children deliver vital services. This workstream examines the effectiveness of crisis and recovery responses for women and their children living with and leaving DFV or other types of VAW. This workstream:
- maps and analyses the nature of the workforce, including the extent to which it is informed by gendered and trauma-informed understandings of the dynamics of VAW
- examines the workforce, focusing on the non-specialist workforce and its responses to VAW
- is building an evidence base leading to better service provision for women and children living with and fleeing violence, and
explore and develop innovative practices and programs for women towards recovery and economic independence
Lead
Prof Heather Douglas
Deputy Director
Every year women seek access to justice from the formal legal system to keep themselves and their children safe. This workstream analyses legal responses to determine which legal responses to violence against women are survivor-centred and deliver justice and safety to women and children living with and leaving violence. This workstream:
- maps and analyses legal responses to violence against women in the Indo-Pacific region
- develops tools that can assess safety and justice in diverse contexts
- understands, analyses and develops legal responses that are survivor-centred and promote justice and safety for women and their children who are living with and leaving violence
Lead
Prof Patrick O'Leary
Chief Investigator
This workstream examines perpetrator and bystander initiatives across sectors and locations to understand how attitudinal change becomes sustained behavioural and community change that improves safety for women. It will take a particular gendered focus on boys and men. This workstream:
- maps and analyses current perpetrator and bystander initiatives in the Indo-Pacific region
- test maps male life course trajectories towards attitudes and behaviours aligned or protective to VAW
- develops intersectional approaches to understand the influence of trauma and culture on boys and men’s propensity to use violence and/or act as key bystanders and advocates in the prevention of VAW
- facilitate, pilot, and test new innovative orthodoxies that utilises technology, community engagement, and intersectional approaches for intervening with perpetrators
- empowering individuals and communities to be active bystanders to facilitate norms that promote safety and nonviolence across diverse contexts in the Indo-Pacific region
“In the legal responses stream we aim to help develop legal responses that are just and safe”
Professor Heather Douglas
Responses Pillar Lead
