Books

Jess Hill
Losing It

Jess Hill’s Quarterly Essay, Losing It, asks a simple but profound question. Why hasn’t Australia been able to stop violence against women and children? Despite years of awareness raising, counting of dead women, campaigns about respecting women, champions of change, white ribbons galore, marches, protests, countless conferences, millions of dollars raised, even legislative reform, if anything the situation is getting worse.

Hill begins her essay with shocking statistics. “The sexual violence crime rate has risen every single year – reaching a 31-year high in 2023 – even as other crime categories have gone down,” she writes. The violence has become more brutal, with reports of anal rape, strangulation and child-on-child sexual assault shooting up. As the rate of sexual violence has risen, the rate of women and kids who are willing to report has gone down. Worst of all, there has been a 28 per cent rise in domestic homicide in 2022-23 and – as Hill puts it – we don’t know why.

Coercive controlling behaviours have also increased. Women are having their movements tracked by a former partner more commonly than ever before. Partly this may be due to improvements in technology, but if our well-meaning efforts were working, surely that would not be enough on its own? “[W]hy,” Hill asks in a tone of controlled rage, “are some forms of gender-based violence rising? And why is it getting worse for the very generation these efforts were supposed to benefit the most?

Much of her essay hinges on the fact that we have largely been flying blind when it comes to the reasons behind violence against women and children. Plans have been made, organisations formed, campaigns launched, particularly since the first national plan to combat this scourge was announced in 2010, but without much result. Hill points the finger at the shibboleth underpinning the flurry of activity. Namely, that if you fix gender stereotypes and disrespectful attitudes to women, violence will, if not disappear, at least diminish. Hill is not arguing that such work is of no value, but she is asking us to face the fact that such efforts have so far failed to prevent gendered violence.

After 35 years in the advertising industry, I am well aware that changing attitudes does not – by itself – change behaviour. Decades of campaigns telling Australians not to drink and drive were very successful, according to consumer research. If you asked people if they should drink and drive, they overwhelmingly agreed they should not. However, if you asked them if they did drink and drive, they admitted they did. Their attitudes had changed, but their behaviour had not.

What changed behaviour, and comprehensively lowered the road toll, was random breath-testing. Consequences change behaviour. Does that mean the decades of attitude changing was a waste of time? No. Without that work, governments would never have had the social licence to introduce random breath-testing. Hill is clear in her essay that we should not “discard the current approach”. What she is arguing is that we need to recognise the complexity of the task and the many factors that contribute to violence. She warns that by pinning all our hopes on respect and gender equality, we are demonstrably failing. Hill points the finger at alcohol, pornography and gambling and suggests stronger regulations. She also wants governments “to make courageous structural changes that would support women to live independently; and to bolster consequences (of various forms) for adult perpetrators and the government systems that protect and enable them”. Hear, hear.

Hill is at her most compelling when she examines the way we raise our children. She points to the 2022 Australian Child Maltreatment Study, a survey of 8500 people, including 3500 aged 16 to 24. The results she quotes are shocking: “Almost two-thirds of Australians have experienced at least one form of maltreatment” before the age of 18. She points out that the effects of such abuse can be lifelong. Fifty per cent of the children who were maltreated went on to develop mental health issues, compared with 21.6 per cent of those who were not, and sexual and emotional abuse had the most serious consequences.

The researchers expected the results for the younger survey participants to be better. They were not. Things like exposure to domestic violence remained unchanged (four in 10), sexual abuse and neglect were almost unchanged and emotional abuse had actually increased to one in three. A separate study revealed that 60 per cent of young people have been physically punished by an adult caregiver at least four times. Emotional abuse in the study was specifically described: “Did any of your parents insult you, humiliate you, or call you hurtful names? Did [they] often ignore you, or not show you love and affection? Did [they] tell you they hated you, didn’t love you, wished you were dead or had never been born?” Hill quotes one of the researchers saying that emotional abuse has increased for girls and, again, “it’s hard to know exactly why”.

Hill draws a straight line between the maltreatment of children and the intransigence of violence in intimate and family relationships. She makes a powerful case that Australia needs to look at everything that contributes to violence and abuse if we are to have any chance of changing the current shocking statistics. Maybe we have reached the random breath-testing moment in the campaign to end violence against women and children.

Hill’s essay is a thoroughly researched and dispassionately passionate cry of grief and outrage. She is demanding we face the facts about violence and take action, before more women and children die.

Quarterly Essay, 128pp, $29.99

Quarterly Essay is a Schwartz imprint

This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on May 3, 2025 as "Losing It".

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