Australia Lagging Behind in Protecting Women

This is an excellent article by The Age on November 3rd in regards to how we are doing, as a nation, to combat violence against women.

The article compares us to Albania, with similiar statistics on the domestic violence front, and looks at the campaign they initiated in 2005. Scotland has a "Zero Tolerance" program and it mentions how Norway, the Netherlands and Denmark have a "whole of Government" approach. What the article doesn't state is that those three countries have the highest reports of rape than any other industrialised nation. It is not yet been established if the percentage of reporting of rapes is higher. On that subject, did you know that in 2003 in South Australia there were 786 reported rapes. South Australia stipulates that 25% of sexual assaults are reported, but globally, it is estimated that only 15% of sexual assaults are reported. But anyway, we'll go with South Australia's anomoly of 25% which means that approximately just over 3,000 rapes occured in 2003. Of those, 100 made it to court, and 12 were found to be guilty as charged.

That's quite a pitiful effort, so it is worth looking at other nations to see how they handle their judicial systems for a higher conviction rate, thus, more protection for women.

The link to The Age article by Kate Gilmore is here: Australia Lags on a System to Protect Women