Last Friday night on July 8 2022, The ABC broadcast a Q+A episode that discussed the cruel choice facing Australian women in abusive relationships and looked at Anne Summers’ groundbreaking new study with a panel of survivors, advocates and experts. The panel included Anne Aly, Anne Summers, Arman Abrahimzadeh, Jess Hill, and Veronica Gorrie.
WWDA Board Member and WWDACT CEO, Kat Reed, participated in the audience and was chosen to ask the following question:
“We know across Australia women, and girls with disability experience significantly higher forms of all forms of violence than non-disabled women including many of them remain legal and state-sanctioned such as forced sterilisation and other forms of reproductive violence. While Australia has policies, frameworks and services to address violence against women, many of these use narrow definitions of domestic and family violence, which means women with a disability and the types of gender-based violence we experience are excluded.
how can we ensure that women with disability are meaningfully included and the forms of gender-based violence we experience, including family and domestic violence, are addressed?”
– Kat Reed (WWDA Board Member)
Anne Summers responded, and some of those quotes are below:
“275,000 women are currently experiencing #DomesticViolence in Australia. Ninety thousand women want to leave but feel like they cannot.”
“45% of the women in the survey suffered a physical or intellectual disability compared with 18% for the entire population”.
Anne Summer’s complete response is available to watch on ABC iView here. (For Kat’s question, start watching from around the 38.5-minute mark).
WWDA lived tweeted the episode. You can view our tweets from the evening on our WWDA_AU Twitter Profile here.
Also find out more about Kat Reed on our Board and Staff page here.