... and ain't I a woman?: It's serious business!
"It's serious business", said Australian Fashion Week founder Simon Lock as he talked up the week when the fashion industry invests millions to showcase "the latest daring and sexy designs". "We'll generate billions of dollars for the country this year", Lock predicted. Of course, only the coffers of big business and governments really benefit.
NSW Premier Bob Carr supported Fashion Week by setting up the Overseas Buyer Support Program to lure international buyers to "do serious business" while in Sydney. This marketing ploy is aimed at buyers in Europe, North America and Asia, but big money is also changing hands locally. Local fashion industry profits have reached $16 million.
Since 1992, feminists have commemorated Domestic Violence Prevention Week at the same time. It aims to reduce the incidence of domestic violence by raising community awareness and changing attitudes and behaviour. This year more than 150 events were organised in Queensland.
The women's liberation movement put pressure on the Labor government to set up the women's affairs section of the Department of Home Affairs in 1973. Since then, feminists have fought long and hard to extract increased funding for domestic violence refuges and other women's services.
The first feminist refuge was set up in Sydney in 1974; within five years about 100 were in operation. Funding and legislation for women's refuges see-sawed between state and federal governments. The refuge movement soon realised that both Labor and Liberal governments had little difference between them on women's policy.
In the early 1980s, a campaign was launched to salvage federal funding for a range of women's services, including rape crisis centres, abortion clinics and health centres. As part of the national campaign, demonstrations were held at Parliament House in Canberra in May and June 1981. Several women were injured when police were asked to remove and arrest protesters.
In 1985, the Hawke Labor government introduced the Supported Accommodation Assistance Act. Individual agreements were made between the state and federal governments about the terms and conditions of this new legislation. The program lumped homeless people, youth and women into one program and narrowed the definition of refuges to simply accommodation. This was rejected by the majority of the women's refuges, which saw their role as much broader and were worried that it made it easier to dismantle the services.
Because of economic rationalism and a push for refuges to adopt "corporate managerialism", since the mid-1980s more bureaucratic hoops have been placed before refuges. They live with the constant threat of loss of funds. The massive restructuring of the public sector means that women's services have to compete for scarce funding.
Recently, the Queensland Health Department's Prevention of Domestic Violence Against Women Program, now renamed Sexual Assault Support and Prevention Program, has implemented a competitive tendering process as a means of allocating funds to sexual assault services. The Rape and Incest Support Workers of Queensland, a group of workers representing 14 crisis centres across the state, criticised the defunding of a 24-hour free crisis telephone service, the unreliability of police statistics on sexual assaults and the lack of consultation.
The issue of domestic violence remains high on the feminist agenda; one quarter of the world's women are violently abused; one in three women in Australia has experienced domestic violence; in South America, one study found that 70% of all crimes reported to police were women beaten by their husbands.
Increasing incidents of rape, wife bashing and sexual assault on women and children reveal the need for a massive increase in the provision of facilities for the victims of such abuse. We must continue to demand an end to reduced funding and competitive tendering of women's services.
As Fashion Week and Domestic Violence Prevention Week clash, the contrast between the millions made in the name of fashion and the money needed desperately to aid the victims of abuse becomes starker every year.
By Linda Hansen