Economic cost of violence against women and their children 

12.1 Introduction

The Plan of Action recognises that women are not a homogenous group, so a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to battling the problem is not effective. The Plan focuses on helping women in a range of circumstances and from a range of backgrounds within Australia to live free from violence and the threat of violence.

Certain groups of women in society are more vulnerable to experiencing violence than others. Often a direct causal link between a woman’s circumstances and the woman experiencing violence is known to exist, but is difficult to establish and quantify owing to limitations in available data and the way in which the data is collected.

Nevertheless, it is important to appreciate the costs of violence as they affect women who are more vulnerable to it, as a means of informing decision-makers on the most appropriate and cost-effective interventions on reducing levels of violence. This section attempts to identify the costs of violence against women and their children for selected vulnerable groups.

12.2 Vulnerable groups

The ways in which women and their children experience violence, the options open to them in dealing with violence, and the extent to which they have access to services that meet their needs are shaped by the intersection of gender with factors such as disability, English language fluency, ethnicity, physical location, sexuality, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander identity, and migration experience⁶⁶. These factors act to increase vulnerability to the risk and effects of violence.

The main vulnerable groups include:

• Young women: in 2005, more than 950,000 Australian women reported they were sexually abused before the age of 15⁶⁷.
• Children of women who experience violence: almost one in four children in Australia have witnessed violence against their mother or stepmother⁶⁸. Where violence occurred between current partners, more than one-quarter of incidents involved children witnessing the violence. In situations of violence between former partners, more than one-third of cases involved the children witnessing the violence⁶⁹.
• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women: Indigenous women report higher levels of physical violence than non-Aboriginal and non-Torres Strait Islander women, and are more likely to experience sexual violence and sustain injury^69a.
• Women with disabilities: women with disabilities are more likely to experience partner or sexual violence, more severely, and over a longer period than women without disabilities⁷⁰.
• Women who live in rural and remote areas: there is evidence of a higher reported incidence of sexual assault and domestic and family violence in rural and remote communities than in urban Australia⁷¹.
• Women identifying as lesbian, bisexual, transgender or intersex: more than one-third of women identifying as lesbian, bisexual, transgender or intersex have been in a relationship where their partner abused them^71a.
• Immigrant and refugee women: women from immigrant and refugee backgrounds are more likely to be murdered as a result of domestic and family violence and are less likely to receive appropriate assistance when they try to leave a violent relationship^71b.
• Women who are pregnant: most women who experience violence from their partner first experience it during pregnancy. This is not to say that there is a direct causal relationship between violence and pregnancy, but rather a complex relationship that increases women’s vulnerability⁷².
• Women who experience economic hardship and poverty: Women are generally at greater risk of poverty than men both because of disadvantages experienced by women in the workforce (Australian women earn 84 cents for every dollar earned by men⁷³), and perpetrators of violence exacerbating financial and economic dependencies through controlling behaviour^73a.
• Women who experience homelessness: One in five women seeking supported accommodation are escaping violence at home⁷⁴. Sexual assault is the primary reason that young women become homeless and the state of homelessness increases their vulnerability to further abuse. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women are more likely to become homeless after a sexual assault; leaving their homes to stay with extended family members contributes to overcrowding and puts them and their children at risk of further victimisation.

In principle, it is possible to calculate the proportion of the costs of violence against women and children that relate to the vulnerable groups above, where the proportion of victims/survivors of violence in each of the groups can be identified from the available prevalence data.

Unfortunately, in most cases the requirements for performing this calculation exceeded the limitations of the data. Nevertheless, where reasonably reliable data could be obtained to inform an assumption as to the proportion of women who experience violence who fall into the vulnerable group categories, a cost has been estimated for the following groups:

• immigrant and refugee women;
• women with disabilities;
• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women;
• children who witness and live with violence.

12.3 The cost of violence on vulnerable groups

The estimated cost of violence (domestic and non-domestic) perpetrated against women from selected vulnerable groups is presented in Table 23.

12.3.1 Immigrant and refugee women

Without intervention, the cost of violence perpetrated against immigrant and refugee women is estimated at $4 billion in 2021-22 across the seven cost categories, representing 26 per cent of the total cost of violence in 2021-22⁷⁵.

12.3.2 Women with disabilities

Without intervention, the cost of violence perpetrated against women with disabilities is estimated at almost $3.9 billion in 2021-22 across the seven cost categories, representing 25 per cent of the total cost of violence in 2021-22⁷⁶.

12.3.3 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women

Without intervention, the cost of violence perpetrated against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women is estimated at $2.2 billion in 2021-22 across the seven cost categories. This is based on the estimate that up to 40 per cent of indigenous women will have experienced domestic violence over the past 12 months, and the unit cost of domestic violence of $20,766⁷⁷.

12.3.4 Children who witness violence

Without intervention, the cost attributed to victims/survivors’ children witnessing violence is estimated at $1.6 billion⁷⁸ in 2021-22, representing 10 per cent of the total cost of violence.

For every woman who does not experience intimate partner violence as a result of Plan of Action intervention, $3,518 in costs associated with their children can be avoided. This equates to $155 million in reduced costs if levels of violence could be reduced by just 10 per cent by 2021-22.

12.4 Plan of Action priorities

The Plan of Action identifies the following priorities specific to, or elements that are specific to, vulnerable groups of women:

• Work with local communities to collaboratively plan, develop, design and implement local responses to sexual assault and domestic and family violence.
• Provide funding to support a national network of locally developed healing centres and other emerging initiatives and support services for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities in urban, regional, rural, remote and isolated areas, to address their experiences of trauma and violence.
• Ensure children who are living with, or have lived with, sexual assault and/or domestic and family violence do not have their safety, wellbeing, support and counselling needs compromised, and that all interventions are in accord with the safety and wellbeing of their mothers.
  

66. Stubbs, Violence Against Women: the Challenge of Diversity for Law, Policy and Practice. Second National Outlook Symposium: Violence Crime, Property Crime and Public Policy, Australian Institute of Criminology Canberra, 1997.
67. Quadara, Responding to Young People Disclosing Sexual Assault, Australian Institute of Family Studies, 2008.
68. Crime Research Centre and Donovan Research, Young people and domestic violence: national research on young people’s attitudes to and experiences of domestic violence, Commonwealth Attorney-General’s Department, 2001. Cited in Indermaur, Young Australians and domestic violence, Trends and Issues in Crime and Criminal Justice Number 195, Australian Institute of Criminology, Canberra, 2001.
69. Australian Bureau of Statistics, Personal Safety Survey, ABS Cat. No. 4906.0, Canberra, 2005.
    69a. See for example: Al-Yaman, Van Doeland and Wallis, Family Violence Among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, AIHW cat. no. FHW 17, Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, Canberra, 2006; Wild and Anderson, Ampe Akelyerneman Meke Mekarle: Little Children are Sacred - Report of the Northern Territory Board of Inquiry into the Protection of Aboriginal Children from Sexual Abuse, Northern Territory Government, Darwin, 2007; New South Wales Attorney-General's Department, Breaking the Silence: Creating the Future. Addressing Child Sexual Assault in Aboriginal Communities in New South Wales, Report of the New South Wales Aboriginal Child Sexual Assault Taskforce, New South Wales Government, Sydney, 2006; Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, Ending family violence and abuse in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities: Key Issues, An overview paper of research and findings by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission 2001-2006, Commonwealth of Australia, Sydney, 2006; Mouzos and Makkai, Women's Experiences of Male Violence: Findings from the Australian component of the International Violence Against Women Survey (IVAWS), Australian Institute of Criminology, Research and Public Policy Series No.56., 2004; and Lievore, Non-reporting and Hidden Recording of Sexual Assault: An International Literature Review, Australian Institute of Criminology, Report for the Commonwealth Office for the Status of Women, 2003. viewed November 2008
70. Murray and Powell, Sexual assault and adults with a disability: enabling recognition, disclosure and a just response, ACSSA Issues 9 2008.
71. Women Services Network, Domestic violence in regional Australia: a Literature Review, A Report for the Commonwealth Department of Transport and Regional Services, 2000.
    
    71a. Pitts, Smith, Mitchell and Patel, Private Lives: A report on the health and wellbeing of GLBTI Australians, Gay and Lesbian Health Victoria and the Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society. Monograph Series no. 57, March 2006.
    
    71b. Dimopoulos and Assafiri ‘Pathologising NESB women and the construction of the ‘cultural defence’, Point of contact: Responding to children and domestic violence, Partnerships Against Domestic Violence, Commonwealth of Australia, Canberra, 2004.
72. Taft, Violence against women in pregnancy and after childbirth: Current knowledge and issues in health care responses, Centre for the Study of Mothers’ and Children’s Health, La Trobe University. Issues Paper 6, Australian Domestic and Family Violence Clearinghouse, New South Wales, 2002. Cited in ibid., p. 16.
73. Australian Bureau of Statistics, Average Weekly Earnings, ABS Cat. No. 6302.0, Commonwealth of Australia, Canberra, 2008.
    
    73a. The National Council to Reduce Violence Against Women and their Children, Background Paper to Time for Action: the National Council's Plan for Australia to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children, Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, Commonwealth of Australia, 2009.
74. Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW), Homeless people in SAAP: SAAP National Data Collection Annual Report 2006-07. SAAP NDCA report series 12. cat. no. HOU 185. Canberra, 2008. Cited in ibid., p. 30.
75. Derived from the ABS Personal Safety Survey.
76. It is reported in Murray and Powell, Sexual assault and adults with a disability: enabling recognition, disclosure and a just response, ACSSA Issues 9, 2008 that 25 per cent of Victorian women who reported sexual assault to the police had a disability. 15 per cent had an intellectual disability, and 5.9 per cent had a physical disability. Without further reliable estimates, this proportion is used across all violence types, recognising that women with disabilities are likely to be over-represented.
77. The 2004 National Drug Strategy Household Survey (NDSHS) covered 30,000 Australians, of whom 463 (1.5 per cent) identified themselves as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander. The survey findings estimated that 42 per cent of indigenous people had experienced violence in the past 12 months.
78. Includes $1.3 billion for children as a stakeholder and $280 million for second generation costs.