Gender, Community and Social Change

Running head: GENDER, COMMUNITY AND SOCIAL CHANGE
GENDER, COMMUNITY AND SOCIAL CHANGE
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GENDER, COMMUNITY AND SOCIAL CHANGE
Gender-based violence has been considered as any detrimental act purposed against
individuals or groups of individuals on the basis of gender (Devries et al. 2014). These acts may
involve sexual violence, domestic assault, trafficking, imposed early marriage or other forms of
harmful practices (Henry and Powell 2015). Emphasizing on sexual and gender-based violence
in post-conflict contexts is regarded to be immensely crucial for promoting responsibility,
liability and attaining sustainable peace (Ellsberg et al. 2015). The following paper will evaluate
the information provided on the website of Australian Human Rights Commission and on
newspaper article published on The Guardian based on issue of domestic violence related to
gender and sexuality and further comprehend the underlying conjectures provided by these
information.
The website of Australian Human Rights Commission explicitly measures the genuine
context of assault and violence against women as majority of events of domestic violence and
hostility tend to be disregarded and unnoticed by media (Humanrights.gov.au 2018). The article
purposed for the Commission sheds light on the alarming rate of domestic violence posed against
women in Australia. It has been observed that intimate partner aggression or violent behaviour
has been recognized as one of the universal forms of atrocity executed against women whereby
around 2% of women have reported regarding acts of violence by either present or former
partners in past one year (Humanrights.gov.au 2018). However, information associated to sexual
violence published The Guardian newspaper mentions the way one in every six women in
Australia have been facing critical forms of violence and abuse current or previous associate
(Knaus 2017). The article reflects on the research conducted by the Australian Institute of Health
and Welfare which highlights criticalities of the extent of physical as well as sexual violence
towards Australian women.

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GENDER, COMMUNITY AND SOCIAL CHANGE
Furthermore, the article on Australian Human Rights Commission website highlights acts
of sexual harassment occurring specifically at workplaces continue to sustain as one of the
critical issues in Australia (Humanrights.gov.au 2018). Several investigations on sexual
aggravation conducted by the Australian Human Rights Commission reveal that women in
particular young woman tend to encounter greater degree of violence, assault and harassment
through social media sites (Berns 2017). Such forms of violence further involve the high rate of
dissemination of confidential data and images of women without any consent or their awareness
(Devries et al. 2014). However, Berns (2017) has observed that women who attempt to advocate
against such crimes tend to be highly exposed towards greater level of threats and atrocities that
typically incorporates both family as well as domestic assault. Knaus (2017) enquired one of the
chief executives of White Ribbon who signified these elevating rates of occurrences as highly
devastating and an innate phenomenon which has been posing critical threats to the Australian
society. It has further been noted that the increasing degree of atrocities and disrespect towards
women is insidious and requires national value and prominence to successfully prevent women
from these acts (Ellsberg et al. 2015).
The issues have been represented in a highly comprehensive manner which further
exposes the underlying reasons to which women in Australia are experiencing such ruthless acts.
Several reports have exposed that women primarily belonging to Indigenous Communities tend
to experience higher degree of physical atrocity at around 3.1 times more in relation to Non-
Indigenous women (Humanrights.gov.au 2018). Data obtained from other resources have further
been analysed which comprehensively mentions the abuse women with disabilities tend to face
and are typically being subjected to such merciless acts for a long period. On the other hand, the
newspaper article presented detailed information of an approximate of 50 acts of sexual violence