The Australian femicide count reaches an appalling number in 2024 - averaging one woman violently killed every four days

 

This year 2024 marked 50 years since the creation of Australia's first women's refuge Elsie in Glebe, Sydney, for those fleeing domestic violence and 50 years since the establishment of the Sydney Rape Crisis Collective in Redfern, Sydney.

It is 29 years since a female counsellor was gaoled for protecting the privacy of her rape victim client by refusing a subpoena by the accused rapist for the counselling notes petaining to his victim.

It is 10 years since Destroy the Joint started the online Counting Dead Women recording the monthly toll of women who died violently at the hands of partners, family members, acquaintances or strangers.

It is also 9 years since this campaign commenced....

Death toll based on media reports as of 18 December 2024

The RED HEART Campaign’s Memorial to Women and Children Lost to Violence is an ongoing journalism-based story-driven project tracking every known Australian woman and child killed as a result of murder, manslaughter or neglect from White Settlement to now. Simply tap a heart to read each victim’s story. To add a loved one, change an entry or request more information, email admin@theREDHEARTcampaign.org

NOTE: The Red Heart campaign includes in its count Australian women who died violently while outside the country.

Things are crook in Tallarook and Muswellbrook, the mood is down in Brisbane town, while everything's wrong in Woolongong and Woodenbong - in fact spirits seem to be low in many households all around Australia

 

The reason for this gloom? Well if household spending is any indicator, it is likely to be because cost-of-living pressures have been grinding people down for what seems like a long and tiresome 29 months.

The Reserve Bank cash rate target/interest rate may have stopped climbing at 4.35% and stayed there for the last 12 months but it's not showing signs of coming down anytime soon.

Households around the country are still having to tighten their belts in order to make pennies stretch as far as possible in the face of persistently high prices for goods and services.

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Australian Bureau of Statistics, Monthly Household Spending Indicator: Experimental estimates of household spending, Reference period September 2024, Released 1/11/2024

In 2024 from 1 January to 30 September national household spending fell from 4.2% to 1.3% as most people focused on covering the essentials – food, medicines & other health costs, transport costs including petrol & car repairs, mortgage payments, rent, schools fees etc.

While household discretionary spending fell from 3.6% in January to 0.8% in September, as many chose to avoid clothing/footwear purchases and spent less on such thing as recreational activities & eating out.

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Australian Bureau of Statistics, National household spending, March to September quarterly graph, September 2024

The national barometer for the level of tension in household spending choices is possible marked most clearly when it comes to the purchase of alcohol and tobacco.

National fall in spending on alcoholic beverages and tobacco – January to September 2024

NSW   -12.3%

Vic      -13.3%

Qld     -8.8%

SA      -11.9%

WA     -2.9%

Tas     -11.1%

NT      -5.7%

ACT    -6.7%.

International Womens Day 2024: So how is female suffrage getting along in Australia?

 

United Nations banner

So how is female suffrage getting along in Australia?

After federation came into effect and the Commonwealth of Australia began its life in January 1901, the first federal parliament contained no women as elected representatives.

It wasn't until 1902 that Commonwealth Franchise Act established equal suffrage at a federal, allowing adult women the right to vote in federal elections and elect members to the House of Representatives and the Senate.

By 1903 women began to stand for federal election - as independents or as candidates for minor parties as neither the forerunners of the Liberal Party of Australia or the Australian Labor Party would support woen candidates.

It took another forty years before the first two women were elected - Enid Lyons, the Liberal MP for Darwin (Tas) and Dorothy Tagney Labor Senator for West Australia.

Both women entered a Parliament House which since its erection in 1927 had been totally devoid of toilets set aside for female members of parliament. [National Museum Australia, "First women in parliament", 2024]

For another forty years between 1946 to 1986 another 6 women MPs and 26 women senators came and went in the federal electoral cycles. A woefully small number. [Australian Parliament website, "Women parliamentarians in Australia 1921-2020", December 2020]

In May 2010 first federal Labor elected & then in August the national electorate endorsed the first female prime minister of Australia. In the federal government ministry, as at the end of June 2010, there were nine female ministers and parliamentary secretaries (representing 23% of ministers and parliamentary secretaries), including the Prime Minister The Hon Julia Gillard MP and a further three who were Cabinet members. Around 17% of shadow ministerial and parliamentary secretary positions were held by women [ABS, Measures of Australia's Progress, 2010]

However, it took until 2014 before women made up 26.7 per cent of the House of Representatives and 38.2 per cent of the Senate.

Now in 2024 the gender landscape in the Australian Parliament stands thus......

A total of 37 of the 78 Labor Government MPs in the Australian House of Representatives are women. That number represents 47.53 per cent of all those sitting on the government benches in the Lower House and 63.79 per cent of all federal women MPs in 2024.

A total of 17 of the 25 Labor Government senators in the Australian Senate are women. That number represents 68 percent of all those sitting on government benches in the Upper House and 40.7 per cent of all women senators in 2024.

Women in the Albanese Labor Government make up a combined total of 24 per cent of all MPs and Senators in the Australian Parliament. While women of all political persuasions comprise 44.44 percent of all parliamentarians sitting in the Australian Parliament in 2024. [Australia Parliament website, March 2024]

By December 2023 17,721,975 Australian citizens over the age of 18 years were enrolled to vote and the enrolment rate was 98 per cent. Historically overall voter turnout at elections is high. However, if the trend since 1996 holds, slightly more female registered voters are likely to turnout to vote than male voters at a federal general election.

In June 2023 the Australian estimated resident population numbered 26,638,544 individuals of which est. 50.35 per cent were female. [ABS, National state and territory population, June 2023]

It has only taken women 123 years to get to less than half the elected political representation their population demographic suggests they are entitled to expect.