Switching on the radio, I heard a man's despairing voice: "I tried to quit, I tried to stop, but I realised I couldn't do it on my own. I needed help."
It was part of the "Men's Help-line" campaign, a newly funded project of the Western Australian government which aims to reduce domestic violence by teaching men to change their behaviour. The man in the commercial was talking about "quitting" his abuse towards his partner.
It is good that the campaign places the onus on men to take responsibility for domestic violence. However, the hotline was funded by the government at the same time as a number of refuges for women escaping domestic violence were closed.
In WA, there 32 refuges. Despite the fact that Aboriginal women suffer a higher incidence of domestic violence, there is only one refuge that specifically caters for indigenous women. The refuges are facing increased financial hardship and, due to the size of WA, women in isolated areas find it extremely difficult to access these services.
The federal Coalition government has attempted to turn back the progress that women have made in freeing themselves from the work in the home traditionally done by women. The government has increased its rhetoric about the sacredness of the family while putting in place measures that make it more difficult for women to leave unhappy home environments. This includes making divorce harder to obtain, privatising child-care and making it generally more difficult to survive economically as a single woman with children.
The government has constantly repeated that the "best welfare system is in the home". What this really means is that shifting the burden of child-care, health care and domestic drudgery back onto women, the state can avoid the costs of providing these essential services.
While the men's domestic violence hotline plays a role in assisting some men to control their violent behaviour, in itself this is not enough. Governments must address the fundamental causes domestic violence.
Men are socialised to believe that women are the subordinate sex and this provides the "justification" for taking out their frustrations on women. Counting to 20 in order to defuse violent urges, as is suggested in the booklet explaining the hotline's services, is not going to change men's behaviour in the long term, nor the way many men view women.
The booklet overwhelmingly portrays men as the victims, struggling to overcome their feelings of rage and wracked by endless guilt. The last sentence states: "Men who are dealing with the problem of violence often feel alone, odd or even crazy. To know that you're not alone, makes the world of difference."
In the sense that the roots of domestic violence lie in a class-divided social system, many men do suffer from alienation and frustration flowing from financial misery, job insecurity and so on. But to address the pressures on working-class men who assault women while ignoring those experienced by their women victims, who suffer both class and gender oppression, can exacerbate the guilt that is experienced to some extent by almost all women in domestic violence situations.
Increasing funds for men's services alone is not the way to reduce domestic violence, especially when those funds are being withdrawn from women victims of violence. Domestic violence is a crime and perpetrators should be dealt with appropriately by the justice system, yet frequently it is not taken seriously.
The answer is to increase services for women, provide increased opportunities for work and education (thereby increasing women's economic independence) and abolish all the factors that keep women tied to the home. At the same time, public education programs to change societal attitudes towards violence and the perceived worth of women are needed.
Ultimately, it is the nature of the social and economic system in which we live — capitalism — which places the extreme pressures on individuals that lead to violent behaviour. This system will have to be completely transformed for women to be truly free from violence.
BY AMIE HAMILTON