The National Summit on Women's Safety, which commences today with an address from the Prime Minister, has been widely criticised for excluding the voices of victim-survivors of domestic, family, and sexual violence. The Summit coincides with the release of a new study from Monash University highlighting the importance of engaging diverse victim-survivors in the development of public policies and services.
The study presents findings from an in-depth analysis of victim-survivor advocate Rosie Batty AO and the significant social and policy change she helped to drive in Australia.
The power and perils of using victim-survivors of family violence as agents of change has been explored in a new study by Monash University.
Based on an in-depth interview with family violence victim-survivor Rosie Batty AO, and interviews with policy makers, it examined how Ms Batty's personal characteristics, combined with her status as an "ideal victim" and the sociopolitical context at the time helped bring about remarkable changes in laws and policies.
However, it also highlighted that not all victim-survivors receive the same public platform and the door hasn't necessarily opened to more diverse voices, particularly from marginalised communities.
Ms Batty was thrust into the public spotlight in February 2014, when her 11-year-old son Luke was murdered by his father, Greg Anderson, at cricket training.
She has since been recognised as a driving force for family violence policy reform and for raising awareness of the failure of governments to address this serious social, legal, economic, and public health issue.
As a result of her advocacy, a growth in interest in understanding, addressing, and preventing such violence was increasingly projected into public discourse and family violence was identified as a national priority in what the media labelled the 'Batty effect'.
The Batty Effect: Victim-Survivors and Domestic and Family Violence Policy Change was led by Doctoral Researcher Lisa Wheildon from BehaviourWorks, part of the Monash Sustainable Development Institute, and co-authored by Professor Jacqui True and Associate Professor Asher Flynn from the Faculty of Arts and Abby Wild, also from BehaviourWorks.
"The rise of powerful individual advocates, particularly those with lived experience of gender-based violence, is recent and not well understood," Ms Wheildon said.
"On top of her impressive people skills, what we found made Rosie so influential was the power and urgency of her lived experience, which was able to overcome institutional divisions and ideological differences to build networks encompassing the expertise and institutional know-how required to achieve substantial family violence policy change.
"She was motivated by a powerful vision for a better future and desperately wanted to make something out of the tragedy she experienced so others would not have to go through a similar ordeal.
"In our analysis, we also recognised there were other contextual factors that contributed to Batty's influence, including decades of work undertaken by the women's movement to provide foundations for change, and a window of opportunity created by a change of government and the commitment of Premier Andrews."
In her witness statement to the Royal Commission, Ms Batty acknowledged the reason she was able to speak to so many people about her story was that she is white, middle class, well-educated and articulate.
"It was a message that family violence can happen to anyone," Ms Wheildon said. "Also - the usual
