Men's Health Australia - Mythbusters

SBS TV Insight – upcoming program on sexual harassment in the workplace wants men's voices

2015-04-23T12:29:40Z

SBS Television’s Insight program is putting together a show on sexual harassment in the workplace. So far they've heard from a lot of women about their thoughts on sexual harassment; what do men think? Where do you draw the line? Have you ever experienced it? Or been accused of it yourself? They are keen to hear your stories or your thoughts on the topic. Please email kylet@sbs.com.au.

We thought it might be a good time to revisit an article from The Age published in November 2004 about men and sexual harassment.

The other end of the stick
The Age, November 16, 2004

Since sexual harassment became a hot issue in the 1970s it has generally been assumed that men are the perpetrators. But new research is turning this idea on its head. John Mangan reports.

Steve was an employee at a prominent Australian furniture retail organisation. He became romantically involved with a work colleague, Stacey, and was bitterly upset when their relationship ended. Within two months of their acrimonious split he attended the company Christmas party, where Stacey was being overtly romantic with another male colleague. The next working day Steve made a complaint to human resources, saying that he felt sexually harassed.

Ben, who was working at a Melbourne call centre, was in a gay relationship with someone outside his company when he was propositioned by a male supervisor who asked if they would be interested in a threesome. Ben rejected the advance and subsequently felt he was the subject of victimisation and intense scrutiny of his work performance by that manager as a result of his refusal.

He made a complaint to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal and the matter was resolved with the payment of about $5000 to Ben.

Last month a gay waiter won $9000 in compensation after VCAT found his former boss guilty of sexual harassment, telling friends and workers at his workplace that he was gay and encouraging them to make offensive remarks.

Since sexual harassment became a hot issue in the 1970s and '80s, the assumption has been that men are the perpetrators, women the victims. Now, a rash of research is challenging that first principle, revealing that far more sexual harassment of men is going on than anybody guessed.

At this year's 39th Australian Psychological Society Conference in Sydney, a University of New England study found that the men it surveyed had experienced more low-level sexual harassment than the women.

Also, a recent Deakin University survey found no gender differences in the experience of sexual harassment - in other words, men experienced it as much as women.

Overseas, a University of Minnesota study published in the American Sociological Review in April found that one in every seven men that took part in the survey reported they were sexually harassed by their mid-20s. Yet they had never told anyone about their experience prior to the study.

Men are supposed to be able to laugh it off if the harassment comes from a woman, be man enough to cop it sweet if it comes from another man.

"We were completely shocked when we analysed the data," says Don Hine, a senior lecturer in psychology at the University of New England. His colleague Louise Fitzgerald was examining workplace stability and they noticed that the categories allowed them to do a male-female breakdown on sexual harassment.

Instead of looking at sexual harassment in general, they were able to break it down into three groups: gender harassment, unwanted sexual attention and sexual coercion.

"This kind of study has been done before and almost always finds that females have been more likely to be sexually harassed in the workplace," says Hine. "So we were surprised when for the two milder forms of harassment, gender harassment and unwanted sexual attention, the males actually scored higher than the females."

Marita McCabe, a professor of clinical psychology at Deakin, was similarly surprised by her research, which is set to be published in the Journal of Social Psychology next year.

"For each of the different types of harassment we looked at - touching, patting, fondling, staring and leering, right down to sexual assault - we found no differences between the responses for men and women. The message here is that workplaces need to take sexual harassment more seriously."

The battle against sexual harassment of females has been fought over the past two decades with Sex Discrimination Commissioner Pru Goward reporting that Australians no longer regard the pursuit of sexual harassment as political correctness gone mad. Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission figures show that in cases where people witness such harassment, 87 per cent of witnesses will take some form of action, from comforting the victim to confronting the harasser.

A stigma, though, remains around sexual harassment of men. Men are supposed to be able to laugh it off if the harassment comes from a woman, be man enough to cop it sweet if it comes from another man.

Eyebrows were raised in the South Australian Parliament in September when Premier Mike Rann reprimanded MP Vini Ciccarello for her habit of pinching men's bottoms. She admitted to having pinched the bottoms of the former governor Sir Eric Neal, former Liberal premier John Olsen, former Catholic Archbishop Leonard Faulkner and former prime minister Gough Whitlam.

Groping Gough sounds comic, but as Liberal MP Isobel Redmond told Parliament: "Had it been a male member of the Parliament, he would have been pilloried for that sort of behaviour and, in all probability, thrown out of the house."

While football players have notoriously been the perpetrators of sexual harassment, consulting psychologist John Cheetham says they too can be on the receiving end, with AFL players he knows of being hassled by women in nightclubs or even just made to feel uncomfortable by constant, direct sexual comments at social events.

"It's still not something that comes to light often because there's still that stereotypical view that males are strong and superior, so they couldn't be victims. Of course that's mythology, but we're still dealing with the mythology."

The recent case of the schoolboy who had a sexual relationship with PE teacher Karen Louise Ellis is a good example of that male bravado. "It's certainly perceived by society that he was the victim of predatory behaviour, but it seems that he would argue the opposite," Cheetham says.

Don Hine emphasises that his University of New England sample was too small to be technically random, while Pru Goward points out that more comprehensive HREOC figures show sexual harassment of females remains a far greater problem.

A HREOC telephone survey found that only 28 per cent of those who reported being targets of sexual harassment were male. Interestingly, while substantially lower than the figure for females, it did suggest that males were far less likely to report problems, as men filed only 5 per cent of official complaints registered by the commission.

The fact remains that sexual harassment of men is coming out into the open, says Joydeep Hor, a partner at Harmers Workplace Lawyers.

"The incidence of males making complaints is definitely escalating," he says. "We were doing a lot of workplace training at the time Ally McBeal was on TV and people were asking if those situations could really happen. I made the point that the plots were often based on actual cases in the US and, yes, one day it could happen here!"

Hor attributes the increase in sexual harassment complaints from men to a greater awareness of employee rights and the fact that the more eccentric cases get publicity. "The workplace is constantly changing. Private and personal lives are being brought more into the workplace in what I call the informalisation of the workplace, which is setting up a social context at work that is making these behaviours more likely.

"I think you can trace it back a couple of years to when firms decided to focus on casual clothes. Employers want to make employees feel more comfortable and relaxed with a view to them working harder and working longer. The reality is there are a lot more social activities connected with workplaces now, and social networks tend to be influenced much more by co-workers than 20 or 30 years ago."

Hor says the kind of complaints he's seeing now usually involve disputes with colleagues rather than with bosses. The University of New England and Deakin figures don't indicate what proportion of male sexual harassment reported is being perpetrated by females or other males, but Hor estimates 70 per cent of the cases he sees are males against males.

"A lot of sociological issues come into it. There's the stigma of males bringing claims against females, and the assumptions of what men should be able to put up with and even enjoy. That certainly is responsible for a lot of cases not being reported through formal channels.

"When I'm conducting training sessions and hearing males in the room talking about things that happen to them in their work environment, it's very clear that those norms and perceptions are strong in their minds."

The complaints registered with the HREOC tend to focus on co-worker harassment as well, Pru Goward says. "They're often associated with initiation procedures for the new boy on the block. The older men might act out homosexual acts in front of him. In a big supermarket chain a few years ago there was a case involving women pulling their skirts up in front of the new blokes. Again, it was a case involving co-workers, not female supervisors."

In the past three years of Goward's commissionership the number of complaints registered from men has increased, but until men overcome the traditional mentality that they should be able to laugh off sexual innuendo or advances from either women or other men, Marita McCabe believes harassment will continue to be under-reported. "There's such a cultural taboo against males reporting sexual harassment. Women are less likely to tolerate it whereas for men there's this 'just get over it' mentality," she says.

"It's important to educate people to see sexual harassment as being damaging. Women in the past have experienced it so they know, but guys haven't. I think often men don't really understand the harm that's done by it."

■ Names have been changed in the examples used in this story.

The Guardian Australia corrects domestic violence article

2015-04-17T13:12:01Z

In an article titled "Quentin Bryce urges focus on gender inequality to tackle domestic violence", published on April 6th, Guardian journalist Melissa Davey claimed that "Two women are killed through domestic violence in Australia every week, and it is also the leading preventable cause of injury and death in women under 45, according to VicHealth".

Men's Health Australia wrote to the Guardian explaining the following:

The latest data from the Australian Institute of Criminology found that, during the period 2010 to 2012, 121 females were killed by an offender with whom they shared a domestic relationship (1.2 per week). This rate would have to almost double to reach the two per week claim made by Davey.
The VicHealth data is also seriously misrepresented. They found that intimate partner violence is the biggest contributor to ill health and premature death in women aged 15–44. 82% of this burden of disease was from poor mental health (depression and anxiety) and substance abuse, while just 2.3% was from homicide and 0.7% from physical injury. The leading cause of death for Australian women 15-44 years is malignant neoplasms, and the leading cause of injury is "other unintentional injuries".

Congratulations are due to the Guardian, who have now corrected the article in question.

The article now reads as follows:

"On average at least one woman is killed as a result of domestic violence in Australia every week, and it is the biggest contributor to preventable ill-health and premature death in women under 45, according to VicHealth."

The Guardian also published a footnote reading:

"This article was amended on 16 April to correct the reported rate at which women are killed by intimate partners. Women die this way in Australia at the rate of slightly more than one a week, according to Australian Institute of Criminology statistics – 109 in 2010-11 and 2011-12 combined. Unofficial figures for the first few months of 2015 show a similar rate."

Unfortunately, Davey's article ignored the fact that the same Australian Institute of Criminology report found that one man dies as a result of domestic homicide on average every 10 days. It also ignored the many serious problems with the VicHealth factoid, including that:

The VicHealth Report was not subject to the peer-review process.
The researchers assumed that all violence experienced by women was intimate partner violence, hence considerably overestimating the magnitude of their burden of disease findings (we know that actually most violence against women is not domestic violence). The researchers assumed that anyone reporting 'ever having been in a violent relationship with a partner' was abused by their partner if also reporting current or past, physical and/or sexual violence.
Most lay people who hear this claim assume that it refers to causality, whereas it actually refers to risk factors. A risk factor is a variable associated with an increased risk of poor health. Risk factors are correlational and not necessarily causal, because correlation does not imply causation. For example, being young cannot be said to cause measles, but young people are more at risk as they are less likely to have developed immunity during a previous epidemic. When one looks at the top 5 actual causes of the burden of disease in young women, they are anxiety and depression, migraine, type 2 diabetes, asthma and schizophrenia. Violence, let alone the subset of domestic violence, doesn't make the list.
The researchers were at pains to point out that while there was a correlation between domestic violence and health impacts, their study design was unable to demonstrate causality (in other words, for example, women with mental health and substance abuse issues might become involved in more domestic violence, or women experiencing domestic violence might develop mental health and substance abuse issues, or most likely both - there's no way to tell).
The researchers were also at pains to point out that there remains considerable uncertainty around their estimates that can only be solved with better data sources.
The study found that 82 per cent of the burden of disease from intimate partner violence in young women was from poor mental health (depression, anxiety, eating disorders) and substance abuse (tobacco, alcohol, drug use).
The study found just 2.3 per cent of the burden of disease from intimate partner violence in young women came from homicide and 0.7 per cent from physical injury.
It may well be the case that violence is also the biggest contributor to preventable ill-health and premature death for men under the age of 45, but the study failed to study men because the only data available was for women.
Even if the VicHealth claim were true, it would not mean much. For example, if we could somehow prevent all death, illness and injury for women due to other risk factors, the burden of disease from violence would reach 100%. This would make it sound like things are getting worse when actually violence is staying the same while other factors are improving.

Unfortunately the above problems are glossed over whenever the media make this alarming claim which is regularly presented as a fact.

Domestic and family violence is a serious issue that affects the entire community - men, women and children. We need to get our facts right if we are to make inroads into reducing the levels of violence in Australia.

#ViolenceIsViolence: Domestic abuse advert Mankind

2014-05-25T22:30:48Z

The best ad about male victims of domestic violence we've ever seen. Already going viral with almost 1.5 million views.

40% of domestic violence is against men in the UK. #ViolenceIsViolence, no matter who it's aimed at. The Mankind helpline costs just £35,000 per year to run, by donating a few £ you will help us to support men suffering in this way get the support they need. Please donate here: https://mydonate.bt.com/charities/mankindinitiative - plus follow us @mankindinit

Domestic violence study suspended by UNSW for breach of ethics

2014-04-13T14:01:00Z

An online ‘domestic violence study’ has been ordered offline by the University of NSW Human Research Ethics Committee.

Flyers published by the survey organisers have been ordered destroyed.

The study, being conducted by the Gendered Violence Research Network, White Ribbon Australia and Youth Action NSW, was found by the Ethics Committee to have breached the University’s code of ethics.

The decision comes after a national coalition of men’s health advocates made a formal complaint to the University claiming the survey was gender-biased, poorly formulated and misleading. They argued it could not achieve its stated aims and any consequent findings would be unreliable and likely to mislead the public.

Chair of the Ethics Committee, Professor Heather Worth, found that a quote on the original flyers claiming that “childhood exposure to intimate violence increased the likelihood of intergeneration violence particularly amongst boys” was incorrect. The ethics committee has ordered that the flyers be destroyed and replaced by a new flyer that has correct information, including any quotes.

Professor Worth also found that the participants’ information sheet referred to by the survey was not accessible as claimed. The Ethics Committee has instructed that the survey be suspended until the link is in place.

Men’s Health Australia spokesman Greg Andresen said, “We congratulate the University for investigating our complaint so speedily and acting upon these ethical breaches. It is essential that domestic violence research, especially that involving young people, is conducted properly.”

“The incorrect statement in question was lifted directly from current White Ribbon ‘Fact Sheets’ that haven’t been corrected. The University’s investigation determined that some of the methodological issues raised in our complaint would be dealt with in peer review of the findings when the authors submit publications for review. We trust that White Ribbon Australia plans to subject this study to the rigours of the peer review process prior to publishing any reports on its website. It is regretfully common that much gendered violence ‘research’ makes it into the public domain without going anywhere near peer review challenge,” said Mr Andresen.

Media contact:

Greg Andresen
Editor, Men’s Health Australia
Email
Mobile 0403 813 925

Domestic violence study ‘flawed’ say men’s health advocates

2014-03-30T13:01:00Z

A national coalition of men’s health advocates has made a formal complaint to the UNSW Ethics Committee about an ‘online study of young people’s attitudes towards domestic and family violence’ that it appears to have approved.

The complaint states the survey on which the research is to be based is gender-biased, poorly formulated and misleading. It cannot achieve its stated aims and any consequent findings will be unreliable and are likely to mislead the public.

The study, being conducted by the Gendered Violence Research Network at UNSW, the White Ribbon Campaign and Youth Action NSW, states it intends to represent a follow up on research conducted in 1999 by the Crime Research Centre.

Men’s Health Australia has lodged a complaint with the Ethics Secretariat at UNSW, asking the committee to consider withdrawal of approval for the project in its current form.

Men’s Health spokesman Greg Andresen said, “We have three major areas of concern with this research. Firstly the survey questions are poorly formulated and gender biased. Secondly, the methodology used in the survey is so dissimilar to the original as to make any useful comparison impossible. Finally the promotional material to prospective online participants contains false and misleading information.”

“We are concerned that the current survey ignores many of the findings of the 1999 research with respect to the experience of men and boys of domestic abuse and instead focuses almost entirely upon stereotypes and sexist attitudes toward women and girls. The study seem bound to unearth ‘evidence’ of ‘poor attitudes to violence against women’ simply because it contains leading questions and fails to ask about attitudes to violence against men!” said Mr Andresen.

Men’s health advocates are also alarmed that the promotional materials for the study contain significant factual errors and misrepresentations. In one example, the flyer states that “one in four young people have witnessed domestic violence against their mother or step mother,” neglecting to mention that the same percentage of young people have witnessed domestic violence against their father or step father.

Media contact:

Greg Andresen
Editor, Men’s Health Australia
Email
Mobile 0403 813 925

Boys in Custody and the Women Who Abuse Them (USA)

2013-07-02T12:46:00Z

The older authority figure wins the trust of the young target by cultivating a false friendship, having heart-to-heart conversations, giving gifts, offering protection. And then the sex ensues, sometimes forced, sometimes seemingly consensual.

It is a classic predatory tactic known as “grooming,” and no one familiar with it could have been terribly surprised when a new report from the U.S. Department of Justice declared that young people in the country’s juvenile detention facilities are being victimized in just this way. The youngsters in custody are often deeply troubled, lacking parents, looking for allies. And the people in charge of the facilities wield great power over the day-to-day lives of their charges.

What was a genuine shock to many was the finding that in the vast majority of instances, it was female staff members who were targeting and exploiting the male teens in their custody.

The phenomenon -- a particularly unexamined corner of the nation’s long-troubled juvenile justice system – presents an array of challenges for those concerned about better protecting young people in custody: encouraging male teens to understand such sex is, in fact, a crime, that it is never really consensual, and that its long term effects can be seriously harmful; requiring corrections officials to stop blaming the young boys and meaningfully punish the female staffers; and establishing standards of conduct meant to end the abuse.

“Many corrections leaders continue to minimize this abuse, arguing that it’s the kids who are manipulating the staff, that these boys are asking for it,” said Lovisa Stannow, executive director of the California-based nonprofit Just Detention International, which advocates for the elimination of prison rape. “That’s simply not good enough.”

The Justice Department first discovered the startling form of abuse in 2010, when it surveyed more than 9,000 youngsters living in juvenile halls and group homes. More than 10 percent of the respondents said they’d been sexually abused by staff and 92 percent said their abuser was female.

In the last three years, the numbers haven’t changed much.

The Justice Department released its second report last month, and this time researchers surveyed more than 8,700 juveniles housed in 326 facilities across the country. In all, the facilities house more than 18,000 juveniles, representing about one quarter of the nation’s total number of youngsters living in detention centers.

Drawing on their sample, Justice Department researchers estimate that 1,390 juveniles in the facilities they examined have experienced sex abuse at the hands of the staff supervising them, a rate of nearly 8 percent. Twenty percent who said they were victimized by staff said it happened on more than 10 occasions. Nine out of 10 victims were males abused by female staff.

Nearly two-thirds of the abused youngsters said that the officials lured them into sexual relationships by giving them special treatment, treating them like a favorite, giving gifts and pictures.

Twenty-one percent said staff gave them drugs or alcohol in exchange for sex.

Stannow said that the rate of abuse perpetrated by female guards on male victims is the result of a “dangerous combination” of cultural and institutional problems, not the least of which is the fact that women forcing males into sex does not comport with society’s conventional definition of rape.

“When you have an extreme power differential and absolute unchecked power, bad things start happening,” Stannow said. “When you combine this with a culture where sex abuse by females on males isn’t taken seriously, then you have the perfect set-up for women with all this power to get away with it.”

Stannow and others say that the young male victims themselves may not even consider their relationships with women to constitute sex abuse. They might consider it consensual because they didn’t actively fight off their abusers.

“The biggest concern for me is what this means they’re not getting inside detention, which is a positive relationship with adults and with authority figures. They’ve not learned what those positive relationships should be like, and, for many, they’ve never had them in their life,” said Michele Deitch, an attorney and senior lecturer at the University of Texas’s School of Public Affairs in Austin.

“These boys aren’t getting the kinds of treatment and programming that are supposed to make them more productive citizens and healthier youth,” said Deitch, who focuses on improving safety conditions in prisons and juvenile detention centers. “Many have experienced trauma their entire lives and now this is just more trauma for them to deal with.”

Reggie Wilkinson, the former director of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, said that consensual sex between a corrections officer and an inmate is impossible given the power imbalance between the two.

But he also said that, in some cases, both female guards and the boys they molest share some responsibility.

“There’s no such thing as consensual sex when you are supervising someone, regardless of their age, but the reality of it is that some of the guys in prison are very persuasive and some of the women are very persuasive,” Wilkinson said.

“I’m not sure anybody has got a real handle on why the Bureau of Justice Statistics is finding these kinds of numbers, but it’s on the radar screen of a lot of people.”

Wilkinson and Stannow agree that it is important to keep women as detention facility personnel. They often do great work. But the predators, they say, must be identified, halted and prosecuted.

“I think in many cases female staff are better suited than males,” Wilkinson said. “A good mix of staff is what we always want. That so-called motherly impact is a big deal and women who are stern but fair with the inmates I think can perform that job as well as any male could.”

Sex Myths Busted

2013-04-03T11:49:00Z

Sex myths: surprising findings. Photo: Jessica Hromas

It's true that in the complicated and convoluted world of sex, myths will always abound. But a slew of research has disproved some beliefs, mostly based on long-held, gender-based stereotypes. It seems, contrary to what pop psychology books and magazine covers would have you believe, women are not from Venus, nor are men from Mars. Herein we dispel these and other commonly held sex myths.

1. Men are more interested in casual sex than women

FALSE: Despite what sitcoms since the 1970s would have us believe, men are not all out to spread their seed on endless one-night stands. Professor Terri Conley from the University of Michigan recently reviewed an oft-cited 1989 study which supported the theory that men are more interested in casual sex. In that study researchers trained young men and women to proposition strangers for sex. They found 70 per cent of the men approached by a woman seeking sex saying, 'sure' while not a single woman agreed. Conley argued that there is evidence that cultural factors play a major role and context was needed. In her study, when men and women considered hypothetical offers of casual sex from famous people, or offers from close friends whom they were told were good in bed, the gender differences in acceptance of casual sex disappeared.

2. Men want to sleep with their friend's wives

FALSE: If you're worried about adultery within your friendship circle this new research may ease your concerns. A recent study from University of Missouri found that male testosterone levels drop when interacting with the spouse of a close friend. Why there may be ample opportunity due to time spent together, researchers believe it might be an evolutionary aversion.

"Men's testosterone levels generally increase when they are interacting with a potential sexual partner," said Mark Flinn, professor of anthropology at the university.

"However, our findings suggest that men's minds have evolved to foster a situation where the stable pair bonds of friends are respected."

3. Men have more sex partners than women

FALSE: According to a study published in the February edition of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, men and women have more or less the same amount of sex across their lifespan. While there are differences in sexual interest over a lifespan, the variation was highest between individuals, not between sexes. And while studies generally find men reporting more sexual partners than women, there seems to be some fibs being told. In 2003, researchers reported in the Journal of Sex Research that if you trick participants into believing that they are hooked up to a lie-detector test, women actually report the same number of sexual partners as men, with women more likely than men to have different answers depending on conditions under being surveyed.

4. Headaches and sex don't mix

FALSE: That old 'not tonight love, I have a headache' excuse might not work as well as expected when your partner explains that, according to a recent study, they know just the cure. Research from the University of Munster in Germany found that having sex may actually be more effective in curing a headache than painkillers due to the endorphins triggered. They found that more than half of migraine sufferers in the study who had sex during a migraine experienced an improvement in symptoms, though for a third of the responding patients, sex worsened the migraines.

5. Sex is a great workout

FALSE: It seems getting horizontal doesn't have the added benefit of being the workout we once believed. A recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine debunked the commonly held notion after finding that on average a 6-minute romp (the average time they found sex to last) would only burn 88 kilojoules (21 calories). This is well under the inflammatory claims in the past of up to 1255 kilojoules (300 calories) burnt per encounter. You could burn those same 88 kilojoules by taking a 4-minute brisk walk around the block followed by a cold shower.

Nordic Countries defund Gender Ideology

2013-03-12T01:12:40Z

A devastating blow for “Gender Theory”: the Nordic Council of Ministers (a regional inter-governmental co-operation consisting of Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and Iceland) has decided to close down the NIKK Nordic Gender Institute. The NIKK had been the flagship of “Gender Theory”, providing the “scientific” basis for social and educational policies that, from the 1970s onward, had transformed the Nordic countries to become the most “gender sensitive” societies in the world.

The decision was made after the Norwegian State Television had broadcasted a television documentary in which the hopelessly unscientific character of the NIKK and its research was exposed.

The producer of the series is Harald Eia (pictured), a Norwegian comedian, who had gained some popularity in Norway with his satirical TV shows. Besides being a comedian, Mr. Eia also holds a degree in social sciences. He was puzzled by the fact that, despite all efforts by politicians and social engeneers to remove “gender stereotypes”, girls continued to opt for typically “female” professions (such as nurses, hairdressers, etc.) whereas boys continued being attracted by “male” careers (such as that of technicians, construction workers, etc.). Indeed, rather than being reversed by “gender equality” policies, the trend became more accentuated.

In his documentary, Mr. Eia just went, in the company of a camera team, and asked some innocent questions to the leading researchers and scientists of the NIKK. Then he took the replies and brought them to leading scientists in other parts of the world, notably in the UK and the US, asking them to comment on the findings of their Norwegian peers. As was to be expected, the results of the Norwegian bogus science provoked amusement and incredulity among the international scientific community – especially because it was based on mere theory, never supported by any empirical research. Mr. Eia filmed those reactions, went back to Oslo, and showed them to the NIKK researchers. It turned out that, when confronted with empiric science, the “Gender Researchers” were speechless, and completely unable to defend their theories against the reality check.

What is more, the bogus was exposed to ridicule in front of the entire TV audience, and people began to ask why it was necessary to fund with 56 million Euro of taxpayers’ money some ideology-driven “research” that had no scientific credentials at all.

As it turned out, a few innocent questions, asked by a comedian, were sufficient to bring down the pompous edifice of “Gender Theory”. It is hoped that the lesson will be heard in other countries, or in the EU and the UN, where this ideology still holds sway in the corridors of power…

To wacth Mr. Eia’s documentary in full length, visit this site and, when asked to enter a password, type “hjernevask” (the Norwegian word for “brainwash”, which was aptly chosen as title for the documentary). Non-Norwegians don’t need to worry – there are English subtitles.

Part 1 – ”The Gender Equality Paradox”
Part 2 – ”The Parental Effect”
Part 3 – ”Gay/straight”
Part 4 – ”Violence”
Part 5 – ”Sex”
Part 6 – ”Race”
Part 7 – ”Nature or Nurture”

Research backs up 'man flu' sufferers

2013-01-26T11:55:50Z

Man flu ... no longer a myth.

It has been scorned by women as a sign of male weakness for generations - but ''man flu'' might not be a myth after all as men and women have different brains, new research has claimed.

Neuroscientist Amanda Ellison, of Britain's Durham University, has reached the conclusion that men really do suffer more with coughs and colds as they have more temperature receptors in the brain.

Dr Ellison said the difference lies in the area of the brain which balances a variety of bodily mechanisms, including temperature.

Men and women start out as equals in dealing with colds because the area, known as the preoptic nucleus, is the same size in children.

But when boys hit puberty testosterone starts to act on the area, which is in the brain's hypothalamus and attached to a hormone gland, making it larger.

Dr Ellison, a senior lecturer at Durham, said: ''When you have a cold one of the things that happens is you get an increase in temperature to fight off the bugs.

''The bugs can't survive at higher temperatures. When your immune system is under attack the preoptic nucleus increases temperature to kill off the bugs.

''But men have more temperature receptors because that area of the brain is bigger in men than women.

''So men run a higher temperature and feel rougher - and if they complain they feel rough then maybe they're right.''

Previous research did point towards the reality of ''Man Flu''. But the findings related to genetically engineered mice and were widely regarded as inconclusive.

Dr Ellison has used research carried out by other people on human brains to arrive at her conclusions in her book, Getting Your Head Around the Brain, focusing on the difference between the minds of men and women. The original research methods involved the study of brains in post mortem as well as images obtained from scans.

Telegraph, London

The Workplace Gender Equality Agency once again 'finds' wage discrimination without evidence

2013-01-05T00:59:04Z

The Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) has once again appeared to 'find' wage discrimination without supporting evidence. We have covered this issue previously here.

Thankfully this time around Graduate Careers Australia, the research body that each year compiles statistics on the starting salaries of university graduates, has spoken up about the distortion of its research by the WGEA (see SMH story below).

The myth that women are paid less than men for the same work is so entrenched in our culture that we regularly have to challenge media reports that promote it.

A recent example is Stephanie Peatling's article titled "Equality? The 64-day question" in the Sun Herald on September 2nd 2012. In this article she incorrectly claimed that, "On average, men earn 17.5 per cent more than women in comparable jobs."

After a letter to the editor went unpublished we complained to the Australian Press Council which resulted in a prominent correction (page 2) being published in the October 28th edition of the paper and on the Sun Herald website.

The website now reads, "On average, men earn 17.5 per cent more than women... Correction: The original version of this story incorrectly said that, on average, men earn 17.5 per cent more than women in comparable jobs. The figure is based on the average weekly earnings of women and men working full-time across all occupations."

'Simplistic' view distorts graduate pay scale findings

Sydney Morning Herald, January 5th 2013

Misinterpreted ... the pay gap between male and female graduates was smaller than earlier reported. Photo: Tamara Voninski

THE agency behind a survey of graduate pay scales says its findings have been misinterpreted by a government organisation.

Graduate Careers Australia, a not-for-profit group funded partly by the higher education sector, said on Friday the pay gap between male and female graduates was actually much smaller than earlier reported.

It said the Workplace Gender Equality Agency, a government statutory authority, had taken an "over simplistic" view of graduate pay scales.

The agency's report said that the annual gender salary gap had risen from $2000 a year in 2011 to $5000 last year.

It was based on a survey by Graduate Careers Australia, which gathered data from recent higher education graduates.

But in a statement on Friday Graduate Careers Australia said the agency's findings were wrong.

"The large $5000 pay gap favouring males observed at the overall level can be attributed, at least in part, to the fact that males tend to be over-represented in higher-paying fields such as engineering," the statement said.

It added that some of the larger wage gaps in fields with low response numbers, such as dentistry, could be unreliable.

And while a 2010 survey had found a wage gap of 3 per cent, its causes were "unexplained". The equality agency's report said the gender wage gap had reached 9 per cent in 2012.

Graduate Careers Australia said it was "entirely supportive" of equality in the workplace but was concerned some employers were being "unfairly painted" as discriminating against new recruits.

It said the "residual pay gap" could be a result of workplace inequality but could also be explained by other factors.

The Workplace General Equality Agency denied its interpretation of the data was wrong.

The executive manager of research, Carla Harris, said her organisation's report drew reasonable conclusions from the data.

The myth of the tyrannical dad (BBC News, UK)

2012-10-29T11:34:54Z

Lily Barron (nee Jones), left, and family when her father was home on leave

Fathers of yesteryear tend to be portrayed as cold, detached, even callous creatures. But, says Steve Humphries, the cuddly, hands-on, sentimental dads we know today are by no means a modern-day creation.

Every night when 98-year-old Lily Barron goes to bed, she looks at the large framed photographs that line her bedroom wall and says a prayer for her father, "the most important man in my life. I loved every inch of him."

Lily's dad was a miner who lived with his wife and four young children in the town of Blackwood in south Wales. In his attitudes to his children, he was in some ways surprisingly modern. He never smacked them, he read bedtime stories, and he cuddled and kissed them every day. Twice-married Lily remembers him as "the loveliest and gentlest man I ever knew".

This image of the gentle and loving Edwardian working class father is at odds with our general perception of fathers in the past. We tend to picture them as tyrannical patriarchs whose children were seen and not heard and lived in fear of father's punishments. It is only in recent decades - or so we imagine - that dads have become approachable, caring and committed to the wellbeing of their children. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The testimonies of fathers, and of their sons and daughters during the first half of the 20th Century, reveal just how prevalent the loving and devoted dad was.

This is not to say that corporal punishment wasn't sometimes used, or that some fathers weren't cold and distant figures. But the popular myth of the tyrannical father has seriously distorted our view of the care and commitment shown by generations of fathers towards their children.

Lily's father, John Jones, served as a Lewis Gunner in the South Wales Borderers during World War I. He was killed in November 1917. His body lay undiscovered for nearly six months.

Regimental diaries reveal he was shot in the thigh and left behind as his regiment retreated. A copy of a family photograph with his wife and children was found on his body. He'd had it taken just a few weeks before when he came home on leave.

He was one of something approaching a quarter of a million fathers who lost their lives and whose sacrifice is still lovingly remembered every year by their children.

Spare the rod

It is important to remember just how many dads - like John Jones - don't conform to the cruel stereotype of the Victorian-style father. The minority of fathers who behaved like this were usually very poor, very rich or very drunk - and were made much of in early cinema films and social reform movements.

The research of academic historian Dr Julie Marie Strange, of Manchester University, reveals how the temperance movement helped demonise and create a working class folk devil father that bore little resemblance to most, who only drank in moderation, worked hard and were devoted to their children.

If schoolteachers tried to cane children who were naughty, they would often find themselves confronted by angry fathers who strongly disapproved of any physical punishment of their children - especially their daughters. Social reformers often criticised working class fathers for being too spoiling and indulging their young ones.

Many stories uncovered in the BBC's new Century of Fatherhood series show just how close fathers were to their children during the first decades of the last Century. They helped look after their babies, they played regularly with their sons and daughters, they helped educate them and they tried to get them jobs - with sons very often following fathers in the same trade or profession.

Some even took part in the inter-war Fathercraft Movement which was influential in teaching skills to new dads like changing nappies and encouraging active involvement with childcare.

A 'turning point' in fatherhood

"The nappies then were made of towelling and there was a special way of pinning them on both sides. It was smelly but I was happy to do that for my lovely daughter," recalls Tom Atkins, now 97.

In Professor Joanna Bourke's study of 250 working class autobiographies written during the first decades of the century, she found that "for every one who said that father did not do childcare, 14 explicitly stated that he did."

New life

The importance of fatherhood for the dads themselves is vividly illustrated in the memories of soldiers who served in World War II.

Lancashire-born Wilfred Copley, now in his 100th year, can still vividly recall how after he was seriously injured in the Normandy landings of 1944, it was the vision of being a father and seeing his newborn baby son for the first time that helped keep him alive.

"I was in hospital and covered from head to toe in plaster cast and they lowered him onto me. What a meeting. That really gave me the will to live."

After the deprivations of war the simple pleasures of family life and fatherhood were all the sweeter.

The notion of the new father who enjoys a close bond with his children is not as new as many imagine in modern Britain. Today there is sometimes more emotional intimacy and closeness than in the past, but a tender and enduring love between fathers and their children was well established in Victorian and Edwardian times.

Steve Humphries is producer of the A Century of Fatherhood series, an author and former lecturer at the University of Essex

Below is a selection of your comments.

What an interesting, thought provoking article showing the loving nature of fathers years ago: not so much a patriarchal, stern, starch collared approach, more a tender, hands on, helpful approach - exactly what my dad was like. He was born in 1924 and was the most loving, kind, sometimes strict yet ultimately caring dad. He had been brought up as the youngest of 8 children, without his own father present (we never really knew where he disappeared to after having each of the 8 children), so was brought up by his Baptist, chapel-going, very strict mother, plus his older brothers and sisters.
Emma, Haverfordwest

My father-in-law, who is in his sixties, will readily admit that he is not a child person and changed not one nappy of either of his children. He is similarly distant with his grandchildren. This has been of little benefit to his son who has relationship issues with his parents and his wife, to the extent that our marriage has failed and is currently being wound up like a business that has hit the rocks due to the current recession.
Anon, Shrewsbury, England

he opposing story needs to be told, that of tyrannical mothers.
Zeilig, London, UK

Abraham Lincoln was a very indulgent father and he died in 1865. He doted on his boys and let them run rampant in the White House.
Robert Turner, Crossford, Fife

My father was 46 when I was born in 1949. A schoolmaster, he was a constant presence, rarely angry and invariably encouraging. He imbued in me a love of music, literature and art which have been with me all my life. I owe him a tremendous debt for which I was never able to thank him before his too early death.
Richard Allen, Orpington, UK

This article appears to be attempting to re-write history; my extended family's experience seems to be more in line with the general perception of parenthood of the past; my relatives will often talk of the harsh physical punishments they got at home and school in the 1930s-1950s and how their parents were distant towards them, parents were usually feared; it's only in the last 30 years or so that most parents have become closer and warmer towards their children.
Quin MacLeod, Watford

Interesting article. We must be wary of distorting history to suit our modern thinking where in fact we have many things to learn from our forefathers as they in turn learned from theirs. To assume that all discipline of children was evil and carried out with aggression is wrong, and this article seems to imply that many dads disagreed with corporal punishment. What it doesn't mention is that there were many dads who did approve of corporal punishment, but not from a basis of aggression, bullying, or anger, but because it was the accepted method based upon thousands of years of parenting.
James, Bristol

I think a lot of these people look through rose tinted spectacles. Even in the 60's and 70's, fathers were distant, seen as there to support the family and administer punishment, and this is from all of my peers. I think the difference is, that some fathers coupled this with love and encouragement, which could be the perfect balance really. Without painting too bleak a story, my father didn't partake in parenting unless he was forced to through situation e.g. my mother being taken ill to hospital. I come from a family of 7 and still feel to this day, he resented every single one us taking my mothers attention. Ironically, he adored his father, who didn't treat him very well at all, and still says he treated us better than he was treated, which he believes is progressive.
Peter Pepper, Melksham WIlts

Being a dad is one of the great joys in life, but you only get out of it what you put into it. I think the image of some dads as being cold and distant probably stems from the fact that there was pressure on the fathers not only to provide but to dish out discipline - "the wait till your father gets home attitude". This was unfair on them as it made it more difficult for them to be seen as soft. Those men missed out a huge amount and thank god such attitudes are consigned to history. I have two sons and four grandsons and would not trade them for all the money in the world.
Peter, falkirk

My father did lots for my sister and I he would cook dinner was and dress us ready for bed. My mother worked as a silver service waitress in the evening at a posh hotel - to bring extra money. I always sat on my dads knee watching TV. My son was also look after by my dad while I worked and he loved his grampy to bits. We both miss him greatly there is not a day goes by that he in our thoughts to me he was the greatest. That is not saying that my mum wasn't great as well. Mt sister and I had a wonderful childhood. I miss both my parents they were lovely,
Mags, Leicester

My little girl is 4 months old and it breaks my heart everyday that the gap between me getting home from work and her bedtime is a tiny 30-minute oasis together after a day at the office. The reality is that due to the need to work, most dads can't spend the time they would like with their kids and don't have the chance to be close to them like their mums are.
Kevin, Hampshire

It is lovely to read this article and just goes to show how important dads are in their childrens' lives and for their wellbeing.
dympna, london

I grew up not knowing my father, he left my mother when he found out she was pregnant with me, which was quite unheard of in the late seventies. It makes me sad and envious reading other's accounts of their wonderful dads, and I often wonder if my father ever regrets his decision, if he ever wonders what I'm doing with my life, and if he is a grandparent yet. I really hope the people who have good relationships with their dads treasure that special bond, some of us are less fortunate.
G Smith, Norwich, UK

Male victims of family violence face gap in services and need special consideration: NSW Government report

2012-08-30T18:42:41Z

The NSW Government Legislative Council’s Standing Committee on Social Issues this week released their report on domestic violence trends and issues in NSW: the first ever to acknowledge the existence, needs, barriers to reporting and barriers to accessing support faced by male victims of family violence. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, more than 100,000 men in NSW have experienced violence from their partner.

Greg Andresen, Senior Researcher for the One in Three Campaign said, “This courageous report heralds a new era of gender equity by the NSW Government by finally acknowledging the forgotten one-third of victims of family violence: men and boys.”

The findings of the report include:

“There was a broad recognition among inquiry participants that women offenders and male victims do exist” (p.218). “Of [reported] victims of domestic assault in 2010, 69.2% were female, while 30.8% were male.” (p.28)

“Male victims have been much less visible and able to access supports than should be the case” (p.xxiv)

“The experience of [males]... is equally as bad as that of other victims” (p.xxxii)

Recognising “the gap in services for male victims and [encouraging] the government to examine how services can most appropriately be provided to male victims of domestic violence” (p.xxxii)

Identifying males as “in need of special consideration with regard to domestic violence,” along with Aboriginal people, older people, people with disability, and several other population groups (p.89).

Mr Andresen said, “We are especially pleased the Committee has recommended that the entire system for preventing and responding to family violence needs to take account of, and be effective for, all victims and perpetrators: not just women and children victims and male perpetrators as has been the case up until now.”

“The Committee has also advised the Government that legislation and policy should be written in gender neutral terms – something we have been advocating for some time. They have also strongly recommended that male victims and female perpetrators be addressed in the Government’s forthcoming Domestic and Family Violence Framework.”

“Until now, the Government’s entire specific support for male victims and their children has been a single page on their domestic violence website. Men have been unable to access the Government’s Start Safely and Staying Home Leaving Violence programs. They have been denied access to safe rooms and legal assistance at court as well as emergency accommodation for themselves and their children. They have also been absent from the National Plan to Reduce Violence against Women and Children.”

“We look forward to seeing the Report’s recommendations implemented by the NSW Government, and to working with them to ensure that each element of the criminal justice system, as well as the range of support services, is sensitive to the needs of all victims of family violence” said Mr Andresen.

MEDIA CONTACTS

Andrew Humphreys, Spokesperson, One in Three Campaign, 0418 378 568 or

Greg Andresen, Senior Researcher, One in Three Campaign, 0403 813 925 or

Download a PDF version of this media release from here.

SUBMISSIONS AND TRANSCRIPT

The One in Three Campaign's submission to the Inquiry can be found here (PDF). The Campaign appeared before the Inquiry on 20th February 2012. You can read the transcript here (please refer to pages 16-24), and our Questions Taken on Notice, Supplementary Questions and Additional Information here.

QUOTES

Notable quotes from the Committee's Final Report include:

“there are male victims and female perpetrators” (p xxi)

“the system for preventing and responding to [domestic] violence needs to take account of, and be effective for, all victims and perpetrators” (p xxi)

“some women perpetrate domestic violence and... some men are victims” (p xxiv)

“male victims have been much less visible and able to access supports than should be the case” (p xxiv)

“while it is important that some groups’ access to women’s refuges improve, for others, most especially male victims, it is more appropriate that alternative emergency accommodation be provided via brokerage services administered by a relevant support service.” (p xxxi)

“there are male victims of domestic violence” (p xxxii)

“While men are less likely to be victims [than women], the experience of those that are is equally as bad as that of other victims” (p xxxii)

“We recognise the gap in services for male victims and encourage the government to examine how services can most appropriately be provided to male victims of domestic violence, including via brokerage funds” (p xxxii)

“We make recommendations in Chapters 2, 4, 5 and 6 that we expect will achieve better recognition and responses to male victims” (p xxxii)

“We also note our strong endorsement in Chapter 4 of the Auditor-General’s recommendation that the forthcoming DFV Framework establish mechanisms to continually address both barriers to reporting and barriers to accessing supports. Once again, we see male victims as an important group here, and actively encourage the government in this task.” (p xxxii)

“Of victims of domestic assault in 2010, 69.2 per cent were female, while 30.8 per cent were male.” (p 28)

“some women perpetrate domestic violence and... some men are victims, and also... male victims have been much less visible and able to access supports than should be the case. We consider that the system for preventing and responding to domestic violence needs to take account of, and be effective for, all victims and perpetrators, and we address this further in Chapter 4 concerning the forthcoming NSW Domestic and Family Violence Framework, Chapter 5, concerning prevention and early intervention, Chapter 6, concerning services for victims, Chapter 10 concerning legal representation for respondents in ADVO matters, Chapter 11 regarding legal services for victims, Chapter 14 on sentencing and penalties, and Chapter 15 on perpetrator programs.” (p 31)

“legislation and policy should be written in gender neutral terms” (p 31)

“In addition to male victims, a number of population groups were identified during the inquiry as in need of special consideration with regard to domestic violence” (p 31)

“we... recognise that there are female perpetrators and male victims... It is important that... these... be addressed in the forthcoming DFV Framework” (p 57)

“[men are one of the] population groups identified as in need of special consideration with regard to domestic violence” (p 89)

“many victims’ services are women specific” (p 155)

“there are male victims of domestic violence. While men are less likely to be victims, the experience of those that are is equally as bad as that of other victims. We recognise the gap in services for male victims and encourage the government to examine how services can most appropriately be provided to male victims of domestic violence, including via brokerage funds.” (p 156)

“the forthcoming DFV Framework needs to take account of and be effective for all victims and perpetrators. Correspondingly, our Recommendation 5 was that the Framework be inclusive of both genders.” (p 156)

“we envisage that our Recommendation 24, for universal primary prevention strategies focusing on violence against women to be complemented by strategies targeting specific population groups, would necessarily address violence against men.” (p 156)

“in relation to Recommendation 30, which calls for an expansion to brokerage funds, that these would be an appropriate way to respond to the emergency accommodation needs of male victims. It is foreseeable that there would be other needs that brokerage funds can address for this group.” (p 156)

“in order to improve male victims’ access to victims services, we also consider that the needs of male victims would be an important focus of the responses to Recommendation 20 in Chapter 4, to improve victims’ awareness of domestic violence services, with particular attention to the needs of specific population groups.” (p 156)

“we note our strong endorsement in paragraph 4.146 of the Auditor-General’s recommendation that the forthcoming DFV Framework establish mechanisms to continually address both barriers to reporting and barriers to accessing supports. Once again, we see male victims as an important group here, and actively encourage the government in this task.” (p 156)

“there was a broad recognition among inquiry participants that women offenders and male victims do exist. Each element of the criminal justice system, as well as the range of support services, needs to be sensitive to the needs of both groups. It is important to ensure that these systems are resourced and equipped to respond appropriately.” (p 218)

A wasted opportunity to engage with the literature on the implications of attachment research for family court professionals

2012-07-09T12:22:00Z

Anti-shared parenting lobbyists in Australia, the U.K and U.S made much of Jennifer McIntosh's "findings" that no overnight stays or joint physical custody is best for toddlers. Professor Lamb however, sheds light on a central problem with her research. Does she tend to present her information in a way favourable to her point of view? Rather than reviewing relevant information objectively, has the researcher-turned-advocate shaped the data to prop-up the outcome she wishes to achieve? Tangential to McIntosh’s misrepresentations of the literature, her attempt to prop up the numbers as guest editor of the Family Court Review is also revealed.

Abstract

The Family Court Review Special Issue edited by McIntosh provided a misleadingly narrow view of attachment theory and of previous attempts to explore the implications of that theory and related research for family court professionals. For example, the editor chose to interview professionals whose opinions seemed likely to accord with hers, and when they dissented, she failed to explore the implications. She thus represented Bowlby’s notion of monotropy as though it was an established and accepted fact; neither the research (which shows the idea to be incorrect) nor Bowlby’s own later disavowal of the idea were addressed, although the implications are profound. More generally, the extensive relevant scholarship was ignored and unrepresented, leaving the unchallenged focus on the editor’s own research and on opinions that accord with her own. As a result, the Special Issue became a platform for opinion, rather than a forum for critical examination of the literature.

Key Points for the Family Court Community:

Most children in two-parent families form attachments to both of their parents at the same stage in their development.
Relationships with both their mother and father profoundly affect children’s adjustment, whether or not they live together.
Professionals need to be careful when generalising from research which may have involved families in circumstances quite unlike those experienced by the individuals they are trying to assist.

About the Author

Michael E. Lamb is a professor of psychology at the University of Cambridge. A former student of Mary Ainsworth’s, he has been studying the formation and consequences of attachments to mothers and fathers since the 1970s and has also investigated nonparental care as well as the role of children in the legal system. He received the 2003/4 James McKeen Cattell Award for Lifetime Contributions to the Application of Psychological Research from the Association for Psychological Research.

The 'wage gap' myth rears its ugly head once again - update

2012-06-24T06:03:31Z

The Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency (EOWA) has issued a media release claiming that Australian workplaces discriminate against women because of an average gender wage difference between male and female graduates of $2,000. The source data cited actually found this difference was not due to discrimination but due to the fields of study chosen by males and females, along with other factors such as hours worked and type and location of employer.

Here is a copy of the media release along with our letter to the director of the EOWA in response.

Here is a copy of a reply by Helen Conway, Director of EOWA, claiming that "At this stage, there is no clear evidence that there is any statistical correlation between these 'other factors' and the differences observed in starting salaries between genders... In the circumstances, it is not unreasonable to conclude that, prima facie, discrimination is the reason for the anomaly."

Unfortunately Ms Conway appears to be ignorant of the research on this issue. The Graduate Careers Australia (GCA) Graduate Salaries 2009 report conducted extensive research on this issue and found that there was indeed a statistical correlation between the gender wage gap and broad field of education, personal characteristics, enrolment characteristics, and other employment characteristics. It found that female graduates earned an average hourly starting salary 3% less than their male counterparts after controlling for a range of factors, and concluded "this does not necessarily mean that a female graduate commencing with a particular employer is paid less because she is female; however this finding does strongly suggest that female graduates do not have the same access to higher-paid positions as male graduates within a given type of employment."

Note that GCA didn't actually find any evidence of this, they just assumed it to be the case. Another likely explanation is that there are many other factors which GCA wasn't able to test for which can explain the small 3% gender wage gap for new graduates. These were covered in great detail by Warren Farrell's book Why Men Earn More: women commonly prefer jobs with shorter and more flexible hours to accommodate the demands of family. Compared to men, they generally favor jobs that involve little danger, no travel, little financial risk and good social skills. Such jobs generally pay less.

Child sex case: female former teacher arrested on Sydney's northern beaches

2012-06-22T03:29:00Z

Police have laid seven charges against a female former teacher at a northern beaches high school, who is accused of grooming a teenage male student for sex.

The woman was arrested at a unit block in Dee Why at 9.15am and taken to Dee Why police station.

The crime manager of Manly Local Area Command, Detective Inspector Luke Arthurs, told media a short while ago that the unnamed women, then 46 and now 50, had been charged this morning with five counts of aggravated sexual assault and two counts of aggravated indecent assault.

He said the boy, now aged 19, had come forward to police with his parents in February. It is alleged she groomed the boy then aged 15 for sex in 2008.

The alleged victim was "fine" but undergoing counselling.

Detective Inspector Arthurs said police had received "intelligence" that the woman might have targeted others and called for anyone else who might have had "an inappropriate" relationship with a teacher in the area between 2003 and 2010 to come forward.

He also asked anyone who had heard of "inappropriate relationships" on school premises to come forward.

The alleged offences are said to have taken place at various locations around the northern beaches and at a classroom in the school, which police have refused to name.

The woman taught at the school between 2005 and 2008 but was teaching at other schools until 2010.

Detective Inspector Arthurs said those schools were mainly on the northern beaches and a small number on the north shore.

"The school is aware of some rumours floating around and has been very supportive of the police investigation," Detective Inspector Arthurs said.

At this stage no one else was alleged to be involved, apart from the woman charged.

Press Starting To See the Light in Abduction Case | Fathers & Families

2012-05-30T04:48:00Z

This case has stirred the Australian press for almost a month now. I posted this piece about it some two weeks ago. It’s the case of the Australian woman who moved to Italy to study the language, met an Italian man, married him and had four daughters with him. They separated with her getting primary custody and him getting fairly sparse visitation. Two years ago, she took the girls to Australia for what she said was a holiday, never to return. He’s been going through various court procedures to try to get his kids back and earlier this year, prevailed. An Australian court found that the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction required the girls’ return to Italy. The mother had claimed that the father was abusive, but the Australian judge found no evidence of that.

What’s been most remarkable about the case is the press coverage it’s received in Australia. In my first piece on it, I pointed out that, of the many articles on the case, not one reporter thought to contact the father. Against a seamless backdrop of pro-mother outrage, the father remained literally voiceless. That was true despite the fact that the mother had plainly violated the law. As well, her claims of abuse had been investigated and found unsupported. So in fact, the judge did the only thing he could do and the only thing he should have done for the sake of the children, the father and the rule of law – order them returned to the father in Italy.

But the fact that the legal system worked properly and reached the correct result seemed not to dawn on any reporter on the case. If it did, they never let on about it.

Since the initial writing of the narrative that featured a fearless mother desperate to protect her innocent daughters from a dark and foreign brute, things have changed. Facts have come out that contradict that narrative and the Australian news media are looking foolish trying to backtrack. There’s a brand new story and it bears little resemblance to the pre-fab one we’ve read to date.

In the first place, given the fact that no reporter thought to pick up a telephone and call him, the father has made his own statement.

The father saw his children three times last week and released a statement on Thursday hitting out at the “negative description of me [which] has been presented unilaterally, untruthfully and knowingly distorted by the media.

“As a result I now feel the urgent need to state that I am a father completely different from that which has been published and repeated about me.

“The Italian courts and any other justice system are aware that I am a model father. No evidence has been presented to any courts which supports the unfounded and incorrect allegations made against me.”

Who’d have guessed? The Australian papers didn’t have a clue even though the judge had made that explicit finding. They didn’t know because they didn’t want to know. Model fathers don’t fit their narrative in any case, and this one in particular. And of course it’s so much easier to just channel what Mom says because after all, why would she lie? Well, maybe because she’d violated the law herself; maybe because child abduction is itself a form of child abuse; and given those two things, she had to justify her behavior somehow. That’s why she would lie, but the ace reporters didn’t think of it.

Nor did it occur to them that Mom’s hiding the children so the police couldn’t turn them over to Dad was rather strange behavior. This time she was in violation of a court order in addition to all the rest of her wrongdoing, but it didn’t occur to the press that there was a pattern of lawlessness here. The idea that a parent who continually violates the law in order to keep the other parent out of the children’s lives might not be the saint of a mother she presents herself to be didn’t register. And then there’s that nasty little term, “parental alienation” for which the mother is beginning to look like the poster child. That term didn’t occur to the Australian reporters either. It’s truly amazing how people can stare something straight in the face and not see it.

Now Dad is in Australia. He came there to pick up his kids whom the court ordered to be returned to him. Since Mom sent the kids into hiding and they were recovered by the police, they’re now in foster care. That means Dad gets to visit them three days a week, and when he did, the girls were overjoyed to see him. Mom had told all and sundry that they were terrified of him and doubtless she wanted them to be. But they weren’t.

She has claimed the father is violent and their daughters are afraid of him.

But he denies her allegations and photos he has posted on Facebook support his version of events.

They show the four pretty girls, smiling and looking at ease with him during a supervised custody visit on Thursday in Brisbane.

In one photo, the youngest two are sitting on Dad’s lap in between the older two, all with arms around each other. Other photos show each girl individually hugging Dad.

The body language appears natural and unforced.

The meeting “was fairly emotional as you’d expect when someone hasn’t seen their kids for two years,” says the father’s Brisbane-based lawyer, Giovanni Porta.

“They had a birthday cake and celebrated all the birthdays that they had missed.”

So it’s pretty clear that the Australian and Italian judges were right all along – the man is a fine father who loves his daughters and they love him. Will the Australian press finally figure out that the mother has been lying all along for the sole sake of depriving her daughters of their father? She’s the one whose visitation with them should be supervised, not him.

Into the bargain, it looks like the girls’ maternal grandmother is no prize either.

The mother has said she will stop at nothing to keep the girls in Australia, and when the Family Court ordered their return to Italy two weeks ago, a relative took them into hiding. Disturbingly, the court has also heard that the girls’ maternal grandmother has threatened to “murder the children”, and to “encourage her daughter [the girls' mother] to kill herself too”.

Nice.

Finally, one reporter is starting to make sense of this case. Here’s the article by the Daily Telegraph‘s Miranda Devine (Daily Telegraph, 5/27/12). She points out the obvious – that what makes sense is to follow the law. What a concept. But as it turns out, even that won’t be easy, at least not for the father. He understood that the girls were to be turned over to him, so he took two weeks off his job in Florence to fly to Australia and pick them up. But then Mom sent them into hiding and managed to convince the High Court to hear the case, which it won’t do until August. How much longer Dad will be without his children is anyone’s guess. How much more mischief can Mom make in that time, particularly with him thousands of miles away. Meanwhile, the girls remain in foster care. Well done, Mom. Now your girls have neither parent.

And so far, all of that is perfectly fine with the Australian courts that are poised to do nothing to punish the mother’s multiple offenses against laws and court orders.

And while the mother has defied court orders, she faces no sanction.

A spokesman says the Family Court does not “take it upon itself” to bring “contravention proceedings” against people who fail to comply with orders, but requires the other party to do so. The father has wisely chosen not to pursue any sanctions.

“His only aim has been to be re-united with his children,” his solicitor says.

As a society we demand “deadbeat dads” be hunted down and rightly penalised for failing to honour their responsibilities to their offspring.

Yet when a father desperately wants to be involved in the upbringing of his children, his rights ought to be treated equally seriously.

You only have to look at the loving photos of the girls with their father to see what is in their best interests.

Thank you Miranda Devine for finally seeing what was there all along.

Another female paedophile walks free

2012-05-10T09:57:00Z

IN COURT: Pandela Carmel Salmon. Source: The Courier-Mail

A "RESPECTED" former Queensland Health employee has avoided jail despite pleading guilty to repeatedly having sex with alcohol or drug-addled boys aged 14 and 15.

Lawyers for former QH indigenous health care worker Pandela Carmel Salmon claim the acts were committed when she was deeply depressed at work - from alleged bullying - and suffering rare side effects of prescription medication.

Prosecutor Andrew Lossberg told the Brisbane District Court Salmon lured the boys into sex after alcohol and drug-fuelled parties at her Kallangur home, north of Brisbane, more than four years ago.

Mr Lossberg said that the morning after a night of sex Salmon told one boy: "This could be our little secret. Whenever you want some (more sex) you can come here and get it."

Barrister James Benjamin, for Salmon, said his client's elevated libido and outrageous flirting was the result of a drug-induced "mania" or "hypo-mania" caused by medication to treat depression.

Salmon, 46, was yesterday given 2½ years' probation, with no criminal conviction recorded against her, after pleading guilty to four counts of unlawful carnal knowledge with a child under 16 between April 4 and 25, 2009.

The court was told the non-recording of a conviction would make it easier for Salmon to regain employment after QH terminated her on "erroneously" learning she had earlier pleaded guilty to the offences.

Mr Lossberg said Salmon, then aged 42, had sex with the first boy, then aged 15½, after a Friday night party where alcohol and marijuana was readily available.

He said the teenage boy had gone to sleep on a lounge, but Salmon woke him for sex.

Mr Lossberg said the 14-year-old boy was invited to Salmon's bed under similar circumstances.

He said the pair had sex while another boy slept in the bed next to them, and moved to the backyard to continue having sex so as not to wake him.

Mr Benjamin said Salmon's behaviour changed dramatically once she began taking mood-altering prescription drugs to treat her depression.

The court was told even Salmon's daughter noted her mother "turned into a rebellious 18-year-old who acted like a tart" while taking the drugs.

Judge John McGill, in sentencing, said he accepted the offences were committed as a result of "rare and unexpected" side effects of the prescription medication she had taken.

Male victims overlooked because of sexist assumptions acknowledges Minister « The Men's Network (UK)

2012-04-26T10:03:00Z

Taking The Sex Out Of Trafficking – 41% of victims are male says new report

A Government Minister has acknowledged that male victims of human trafficking are overlooked and go without support because of sexist assumptions about women being the main victims.

The news came as a new government provider of human trafficking support services revealed the 41% of the victims it helps are male. This contrasted with a YouGov survey which found the public perception was that no more than 29% of victims are male – according to a report in The Guardian.

Minister for justice, Crispin Blunt, said: “Human trafficking is often seen as predominantly affecting women – meaning that male victims are often overlooked and are forced to go without the support they so desperately need.”

The news reflects an apparent move to take some of the gender politics out of human trafficking.

The last Government put the sex trafficking of women and girls on the public agenda but faced criticism in 2009 when the UK’s biggest ever investigation of sex trafficking failed to find a single person who had forced anybody into prostitution in spite of hundreds of raids in a campaign that involved every police force in the country – see report here.

A book by Laura María Agustín published in 2008 also challenged the “myth of trafficking” reporting a survey revealing that most migrant women, including those in the sex industry, made a clear decision to leave home and take their chances abroad and are not “passive victims” in need of “saving” or sending back by western campaigners.

Charities such as unseen(uk) still make bold and inaccurate claims that as many as 800,000 women are trafficked into the EU every year. According to The Salvation Army, which now provides support services for people trafficked to England & Wales, 85 of 190 men and women it helped in the second half of 2011 were forced in sexual exploitation.

The Government faced criticism in 2011 after making a decision to award The Salvation Army a £6m Government contract to support male and female victims of human trafficking. The main critic was Eaves Housing which had previously held the Government contract for supporting female victims of sex trafficking – see report here.

The Ministry of Justice acknowledged that Eaves Housing “had done a very good job” in recent years, but the Salvation Army had put in a stronger bid for the contract, to provide support for trafficked men as well as women.

A Government spokesperson said: “Eaves are upset and it’s not great for them, but it’s much better for victims of trafficking”.

Glen Poole, Strategic Director of The Men’s Network said: “It is refreshing to hear a Government Minister acknowledge that male victims are overlooked by support services. There are many other areas including suicide support, domestic violence services, sexual violence services, family breakdown, eating disorders and genital mutilation where men and boys are often overlooked and are forced to go without the support they so desperately need”.

In 2011 The Coalition Government outlined its commitment to tackle the inequalities men experience after 100 individuals and organisations working with men and boys, led by the UK, sent a joint letter to parliament on International Men’s Day 2011 – read more here.

However the Government faced criticism from men’s sector in March this year when The Home Office announced that funding allocated to services for male victims of domestic and sexual violence would mostly go to women’s charities - see full report here.

Below is a banner advert from the UK charity unseen(uk) whose focus is to combat the trafficking of women for sexual exploitation which makes the innacurate claim that as many as 800,000 women are trafficked into the EU every year.

Inaccurate claims like these contribute to public perceptions that human trafficking is a women’s only issue meaning that male victims are often overlooked and are forced to go without the support they so desperately need.

The source of this figure appears to be a report that estimated that anywhere between 100,000 and 800,000 men and women could be being trafficked into EU countries every year.

While unseen(uk)’s charitable objective is to help ANYONE who may have been a victim of human trafficking or sexual exploitation, it’s website makes no mention of male victims – see website here.

Money for nothing

2012-04-10T12:43:00Z

Munish Dalal and his wife, Preeti. Photo: Simon De Trey-White

Munish Dalal was once the most detested man in India. In 2003, his then fiancee, Nisha Sharma, told police he had arrived at her house on the eve of their wedding and asked for 1.2 million rupees ($A23,000) and a car as dowry. In a country where demanding dowry is illegal Sharma was hailed for standing up to a greedy bridegroom, while Dalal spent two months in jail before being released on bail.

Over the next few years Dalal lost his reputation and his job. His mother, too, lost the teaching position she had held for 36 years. Meanwhile, the case was used in school textbooks to illustrate the social evil of dowry, with Dalal portrayed as the villain and Sharma as a courageous woman who took a principled stand.

But then everything changed. In February, a court acquitted Dalal of the charge. The judge found that Sharma had been in love with another man and wanted to marry him. So by falsely accusing Dalal of demanding dowry she was able to get out of the marriage to Dalal without angering her parents.

Suhaib Ilyasi with his 15-year-old daughter, Aaliya. Photo: Simon De Trey-White

Dalal's world turned upside down that day in 2003 when he was vilified by the media in India and around the world.

"There was no limit to my humiliation. I went to get married and found myself in jail. It was unbelievable," he says. He thought he was being singled out for punishment by the gods. It was only much later in his ordeal, after he got in touch with members of the Save the Family Foundation in Delhi, that he realised that thousands of other men had suffered the same experience, albeit without the sensational media attention that his case attracted.

Every Saturday afternoon, Dalal, 24, used to travel from outside Delhi to the city's Patiala House Court complex to talk to other men for some "therapy" to heal mental wounds, damaged reputations and ruined lives. Like most of them, he became an expert on 498A, the Indian law designed to protect women from being tortured for more dowry by husbands and in-laws after marriage.

Under this law, no evidence has to be produced by the woman alleging her husband or family are demanding dowry and the police can arrest him immediately. Bail depends on the discretion of the judge and he is considered guilty until he can prove his innocence.

The law is deliberately draconian. One of the great evils of Indian society is women being persecuted, tortured or murdered for dowry, even though giving or demanding dowry has been outlawed for more than five decades.

The latest figures from the National Crime Record Bureau show there were 8391 cases of dowry-related deaths in 2010. One common form is where women are doused in kerosene, set alight and burnt to death. The in-laws then claim the death was an accident. The Bureau's figures for 2010 also show almost 90,000 cases of torture and cruelty towards women by their husbands or family.

As he sits in Nathu's, a sweet shop and cafe in Delhi's New Friends Colony, Swarup Sarkar, founder of the Save the Family Foundation, which helps men who have been falsely accused of extracting dowry, is quick to acknowledge the "monstrosity" of dowry deaths.

But he also says women cannot be allowed to abuse the law to frame innocent men.

It is a growing trend in India. Indeed, Sarkar was falsely accused by his own wife soon after their marriage. But in 2008, the courts acquitted him.

He says women fabricate the charge for all sorts of reasons: the marriage might be turning sour and she wants to "punish" the husband; or it's to settle scores; or if they are heading for divorce, she uses the threat of 498A to extract a generous financial settlement, gain family property or custody of the children.

Sometimes, a woman like Sharma wants to get out of an arranged marriage but lacks the courage to tell her parents and opts for misusing the law instead. Sometimes, a woman has been found guilty of adultery but refuses to face the consequences and turns the tables on her husband with 498A.

Even if, given the subservient status of most women in India, the Foundation's complaints of "rampant abuse" of the law are taken with a touch of scepticism, members of the legal community vouch for the fact that innocent men are being defamed and harassed.

A Supreme Court judge has said that the law, intended to be a "shield" to protect women, has been turned into a "weapon" to torment men. Another judge described the misuse of the law as "legal terrorism" by women.

Sadhana Ramachandran, a female lawyer in the capital who used to take up women's cases, has become disillusioned. "I'm always seeing decent men put in jail by women because they want custody of the children or the house. Strong, successful men turn into mental wrecks fighting these cases because they go sometimes for two decades," she says.

Another lawyer, Neeraj Gupta, says the law is a sword of Damocles that sometimes hangs over a married man. "Some women use it to keep the husband under their thumb. They've got their finger on the trigger all the time," he said.

The Foundation's helpline is inundated with calls from distraught men. Fear of being trapped in expensive litigation is universal because 25 million cases currently clog up the judicial system, forcing people to wait at least a decade, and often longer, for a verdict.

"In the last nine years, we went to the court at least 320 times and the court was 75 kilometres away. It was tough for my elderly mother and aunt, who were also accused along with me," says Dalal.

Some wives do not just accuse the husband, but also his parents and siblings. Pankaj Kumar, 37, who lives in Old Delhi, was accused by his wife just three months after their marriage in 2010 of demanding dowry before she left the marriage. In her complaint at the local station, she also accused his mother and two sisters of harassing her for more dowry.

A librarian for a television channel, Kumar spent 11 days in jail before his bail application was heard. "I recorded her on my mobile when she threatened to have me and my mother put away in jail for years. It's going to take time but I am determined to prove her wrong in the courts," he says.

Meanwhile, Swarup Sarkar often points out the double standards in dowry law for men and women. "When a woman falsely accuses not just her husband but also his mother and sisters and has them arrested, what about their rights? Aren't they women too? Is it fair to try women without first providing any evidence?" he says.

He was also struck by the fact that, according to the National Crime Record Bureau, the conviction rate in dowry cases was only 2-3 per cent, indicating an enormous number are eventually thrown out by judges.

Other crimes in India have a conviction rate of around 40-50 per cent.

A nationwide group of 30,000 members with groups in a dozen cities, the Foundation operates a helpline and has published a guide to surviving 498A. Its Bangalore group even runs a shelter for "abused" men harassed by wives.

"The victims of 498A tend to be successful men. That's why their wives try to extort money out of them by framing them," says engineer Niladri Shekhar Das, a Foundation volunteer. "Poor men, fortunately, don't suffer from abuse of the dowry law because there is no point framing a bus driver or a rickshaw wallah, is there? He added: "Most men are so scared of having their name blackened that they agree to whatever the wife demands to avoid being dragged through the courts. The threat alone is enough to make them grovel. We tell them that if they are innocent, they should not pay their wife a single penny."

This kind of advice flows freely during the Foundation's Saturday afternoon sessions on the scruffy lawns of the Patiala House Court complex.

One man tells of how his wife threatened to accuse him of demanding dowry to stop him from divorcing her. Another discovered that his wife's odd behaviour was the result of an affair with her former boss, which began before their marriage. When he asked for a divorce, she threatened him with a false dowry charge.

For some men, the allegation of demanding dowry strikes at the very heart of their self-image and causes them great pain. Suhaib Ilyasi, a Delhi television producer who pioneered India's first reality show, was dumbfounded when three months after his wife committed suicide in 2000, her mother and sister had him arrested.

"I loved my wife. We met at college. It was a love marriage. Forget asking for a dowry, I even paid the wedding expenses. To be accused of something that I loathe and detest was horrific," he says.

Sitting in his small office near the colonnaded Connaught Place in central Delhi, where he is putting the finishing touches to a new film he has made on the abuse of dowry laws, 498: The Wedding Gift, the soft-spoken Ilyasi says it was not his own ordeal that inspired him to make the film, though his experience was bad enough.

Overwhelmed by grief over his wife's suicide, he was then falsely accused of demanding dowry, despite the fact that his dead wife's father and brother protested his innocence to the police and the courts. His mother-in-law also accused him of murder. "She wanted to ruin my name so that she could have custody of my daughter," says Ilyasi.

The murder charge has been dismissed as had the child custody case. But his mother-in-law has lodged a case in a "guardian court". The case is still pending, as is the dowry charge against him. "Given the strong testimony in my favour, I expect an acquittal in the next few months," he says.

Rather than his own experience, it was the 2009 suicide of his dearest friend, Syed Makdoom, a Canadian national of Indian origin, that prompted Ilyasi to make the film.

Ilyasi says that while living in Canada, Makdoom met a woman on the internet. He moved to India to marry her and they had a son. Later, Makdoom discovered that his wife had been married four times before, under different names, and each time had accused her husbands under the dowry laws before leaving them.

During the dispute over their son's custody, she accused him of demanding dowry and refused him access to his son. "He told me that he half died the day he was accused of demanding dowry," Ilyasi says.

Ilyasi says Makdoom was extremely attached to his son and despaired at not being able to see him. In April, 2009, he made a video imploring his wife and people in the community generally to help him see his son before putting it on YouTube. "Then he committed suicide," Ilyasi says.

"I believe we need strict laws against dowry. It is a thousand-year- old custom and there are greedy people in our society. Women are killed and men are cruel. That is the reality.

"But we need to amend the law so that innocent men do not suffer when the law is misused. That is the sole purpose of my film - to stop this ordeal," says Ilyasi.

Amrit Dhillon is a Delhi-based writer.

Not tonight, darling: why men say "no" to sex

2012-04-10T12:30:00Z

Contrary to the stereotype, it's increasingly likely to be men who are giving women the cold shoulder in bed, say the experts. By Rebecca Frank.

It can feel like the ultimate rejection — the thinking goes that a man always wants sex, so he must have stopped finding you attractive, right? Wrong, on both counts. A reduced sex drive is a common side effect of our modern lifestyle and a growing problem among men, says sexologist Dr Gabrielle Morrissey. "Many men are working longer hours, experiencing more stress and drinking more alcohol, all of which can have a direct effect on libido. "The brain is the biggest sexual organ, as much for men as it is for women," adds Morrissey.

Some experts believe that an unhealthy lifestyle is causing a widespread drop in male testosterone levels. "Testosterone is directly linked to libido, and while it starts to decrease anyway from the age of 28, prolonged stress, being overweight and excessive alcohol intake can all affect the production of testosterone," says Dr Richard Petty, medical director of London's Wellman Clinic.

If this is all sounding scarily familiar, don't panic, it doesn't mean that you're destined for a sexless relationship. If you can identify what's dampening your man's sex drive and use our expert strategies to help him revive his libido, it is possible to quickly get things back on track.

He’s having a sex sulk

"If you're highly critical of your partner, he won't want to have sex with you,' says Weiner Davis.

"As women have become more assertive, some have also become more disparaging and controlling." "Men sulk sexually and will punish by withholding sex as much as women," says Phillip Hodson, fellow of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy.

And while some habits have changed, men still tend to control how much sex happens in a relationship. Research shows if women initiate sex and are often turned down, they're more likely to stop trying regularly than a man would. So it's likely there will be less sex in a relationship where the man has low desire.

Action Plan

Praise the little things
"The quickest way to get change in this situation is positive reinforcement," says Weiner Davis. "Instead of criticising the smallest things, say how much you appreciate it when he's getting it right."

Communicate better
Stop using blame statements ('You never do this', 'You're always doing that') and instead communicate your feelings clearly. Saying 'When we're together and you're on your phone all the time, it makes me feel less important' will have a far more positive impact

He's depressed

"More men than women suffer from depression," says Hodson. Loss of desire is a common symptom of depression, as well as lack of motivation, difficulty sleeping, change in appetite, irritability, and crying spells. Some antidepressants also cause loss of desire.

Make sure he gets help
If you think he might be suffering from depression, encourage him to see his doctor. If he is already taking antidepressants, get him to check whether these may be affecting his libido and, if so, whether there is an alternative.

Get active
"Exercise is the most powerful antidote to depression and it has no side effects," says Weiner Davis. Join a gym together, or sign up for an activity you'd both enjoy like a fun run or beach volleyball — once he starts to experience the feelgood effects of exercise, he'll be hooked.

He's very stressed

Anxiety about work or finances affects men even more profoundly than women. "Men's self-esteem is so wrapped up in their achievement. The two are inextricably linked and if he's feeling terribly anxious or down about his work situation, his libido will suffer," says US relationship expert Michele Weiner Davis, author of The Sex-Starved Wife (Simon & Schuster).

Action Plan

Be supportive
"Encourage him to talk about what's stressing him out," says Weiner Davis. "If he's lost his job, it's tempting to keep encouraging him to apply for jobs, but it might actually be more helpful to say, ‘I can see how difficult this must be for you.' If he thinks you understand him, he'll feel like he has an ally rather than he's coping on his own."

Make time for play
"To open up the opportunities for sex, you need to be light-hearted with each other, flirt, have banter," says Petty. Arrange downtime together that's phone- and laptop-free. Don't demand sex, but be intimate — hug and caress him and say something nice — this will make him want to have sex much more than straight out asking for it.

For the full story, see the May issue of Good Health

What about the men? White Ribbon, men and violence: a response to Dr Michael Flood by Men’s Health Australia

2012-03-30T03:47:45Z

The White Ribbon Foundation is an organisation that works to prevent male violence towards women – a goal that is extremely worthy and worth supporting. The White Ribbon website states that “all forms of violence are unacceptable,” however in 2009 the organisation issued a document to it’s male Ambassadors which used erroneous ‘facts and statistics’ to downplay, diminish and report incorrectly about male victims of violence. These Ambassadors use federal government funding to take the White Ribbon message into regional, rural and remote communities. These significant errors could have led the Ambassadors, and through them the general public via federal funding, to be misled about the nature and dynamics of interpersonal violence in Australia.

Some of the dangerous myths about violence circulated in the document include claims that men are less likely than women to experience violence within family and other relationships; that we don’t yet know the impact of violence on men’s overall health; and that there is no evidence that male victims are less likely to report domestic violence than are female victims.

Men’s Health Australia – Australia’s primary source of information about the social and psychological wellbeing of men and boys – contacted White Ribbon with its concerns about this document. Men’s Health believes that violence prevention is not a competition: that governments and NGOs can work to prevent violence against women and violence against men. We believe it isn’t necessary for White Ribbon to downplay, diminish or report incorrectly about male victims of violence in order to highlight the tragedy of female victims of violence. The horrific statistics about violence against women speak for themselves.

Men’s Health Australia are fully supportive of all attempts to reduce violence against women. However we believe it is essential that a high-profile organisation such as the White Ribbon Foundation provides its Ambassadors and the general public with an accurate picture of violence in Australian society, especially when in receipt of federal government funding. It is only when we start with an accurate picture of violence that we can take the necessary steps to reduce its incidence and impact. If we start with an inaccurate picture, our violence-prevention strategies are bound to be less effective, and could potentially cause harm – especially to children.

White Ribbon’s initial response to our concerns was five months of silence. Once we pursued the matter we were sent a response to our concerns written by Dr Michael Flood – a White Ribbon Ambassador and Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Wollongong with a long involvement in community advocacy and education work focused on men’s violence against women. This response failed to address our core concern: that it isn’t necessary for White Ribbon to downplay, diminish or report incorrectly about male victims of violence in order to highlight female victims of violence.

In addition, Dr Flood’s response:

Failed to address a number of our specific concerns about statistical and factual errors
Contained more errors than the original document when responding to other specific concerns
Resorted to ad hominem attacks in an apparent attempt to discredit Men’s Health Australia
Failed to successfully challenge any of Men’s Health’s specific concerns.

Fortunately the White Ribbon Foundation appointed a new CEO, Libby Davies in early 2011, who appears to have adopted a fresh approach to working with men’s organisations. Men’s Health met with her in May 2011 and discussed ways in which our two organisations might be able to respectfully co-exist in the future. Some ideas floated included:

To agree on a common set of statistics/data on which to base our work
To both issue media releases in areas where we overlap (e.g. genuine respectful relationships programs for boys and girls)
For both organisations, as much as possible, to avoid gender competition in our work (i.e. ‘men vs women’ thinking) and simply lobby for our respective constituents (e.g. instead of saying “women experience x times as much domestic violence as men”, just say “x% of women experience domestic violence” and likewise for men).

On 11th March 2012, the Fatherhood Foundation’s weekly e-Newsletter titled The High Cost of Being Right re-published our November 2010 media release. As a result readers have contacted us questioning the veracity of Dr Flood’s response to criticisms of White Ribbon materials made by Men’s Health Australia. We felt it appropriate to respond, not in any effort to attack the White Ribbon Foundation, and certainly not to ignite any gender competition, but simply to set the public record straight. This document is that response.

We are hopeful that this issue will now be put to rest and that White Ribbon and Men’s Health can move forward to work side-by-side to reduce all violence in Australia. White Ribbon’s core concern is preventing male violence against women; Men’s Health’s core concern is preventing violence against men and boys (by men and women); other organisations are working to prevent child abuse, elder abuse, lesbian domestic violence and other forms of violence and abuse. There should be no competition for victimhood – all victims of violence and abuse deserve services and support.

Download full response by Men's Health Australia

ABS Releases Gender Indicators and Ignores Male Disadvantage

2012-02-07T12:06:29Z

Today the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), Australia's so-called impartial statistical body released its Gender Indicators report: "a summary of gender specific data in six domains representing Economic security, Education, Health, Work and family balance, Safety and justice, and Democracy, governance and citizenship".

The ABS produced a media release about the publication. This release could have noted that:

Across the board males fare much worse than females in the education system - most notably being 24% less likely to be enrolled in a bachelor degree or above
Across the board males fare much worse than females in the health arena - most notably suffering death rates from cancer, heart disease, suicide, motor vehicle accidents and drug abuse between 1.6 and 3.4 times higher
Males are 12% more likely than females to feel their work and family responsibilities are rarely/ never in balance
Males are almost twice as likely as females to have experienced violence during the last 12 months and one third more likely to be a victim of physical or threatened physical assault.

However, these facts were conveniently ignored in favour of a media release titled "Busy mums want more paid work," citing the rate of underemployment being twice as high for women (8%) than for men (4%). Sadly it seems that the lace curtain extends all the way into our country's top statistical body.

Money, power...adultery? (Canada)

2011-09-08T02:54:00Z

By Marina Adshade | September 08, 2011

The standup comic Chris Rock famously said that a man is only as faithful as his options. Despite media portrayals to the contrary, a higher income doesn’t increase the likelihood of a man’s infidelity; men rich and poor cheat on their wives. Instead, the evidence suggests, that what really predicts infidelity isn’t money, but power. And if that’s not a completely new revelation, you might be surprised to learn that powerful women are just as likely to be unfaithful as powerful men.

A new study by a group of Dutch researchers collected data from a range of managers, team leaders to CEOs. The researchers asked how often these managers had been unfaithful, measured their willingness to cheat again, and probed both the managers’ opportunities for cheating and their confidence in their ability to seduce new lovers.

Among respondents, 26% had cheated on their partner at least once. Those who wielded more power in their jobs were not only more likely to be among the cheaters, but reported more extra-marital encounters the higher up the corporate ladder they’d climbed. The more powerful were also more likely to predict that they’d continue to cheat.

What explains the link between workplace power and fidelity? Business travel and long hours at the office provide opportunity, but Chris Rock was only partly correct when he said that adultery is about options. The most convincing statistical explanation is actually about confidence: more powerful business people reported much higher levels of assurance that they could find a sexual partner should they want one.

What’s most interesting is that the women in this study behaved just like the men in indicating a history of cheating and a willingness to cheat that increased as greater power bolstered their confidence in their charms. If true, it calls into question our time-honoured perception that women are biologically hard-wired to be more faithful. Perhaps one reason females seem more faithful is that they’ve historically occupied fewer positions of power. But with more women than ever occupying more corporate leadership positions, the next Mark Hurd could well be a she.

Marina Adshade is a Dalhousie economics professor and author of the blog Dollars and Sex.

TIME Cover Story: Why Men and Women Should End the Chore Wars (USA)

2011-07-24T06:11:00Z

Big news, ladies! Turns out your husbands haven’t been slackers all along.

TIME’s cover story this week (available here for subscribers) examines the “Chore Wars” that take place in most modern marriages, where women have long felt the burden of being overworked. Ever since women entered the workforce en masse in the 1970s, they’ve felt the pressures of paid work on top of their pressures of unpaid work such as chores around the house and childcare. Their husbands, by contrast, seemed to move at a glacial pace to increase their fair share. This pressure on working women has caused, NewsFeed imagines, many a marital spat.

(PHOTOS: Married for 50 Years: Love Ever After)

Yet some of those recent spats might have been for naught. As Ruth Davis Konigsberg reports, men and women’s work each week is now actually pretty much on equal footing. Though it’s still true that women with young children do put in more hours around the house and with the kids, at the same time their husbands are putting more time in at the office (where cutting back hours as a new dad isn’t typically an option). According to the most recent data by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics on hours worked by women and men who are married, employed and have kids, the ladies are actually only putting in about 20 minutes more work (paid and unpaid) per day than their husbands. Sure, they’re working more, but it’s not the 15 hours a week difference made famous by The Second Shift, the hugely influential book by Arlie Russell Hochschild.

As a result, Konigsberg writes that overstressed women should stop pointing the finger so squarely at men. “On balance, husbands and wives have never before had such similar workloads. Quantitatively speaking, we have no grounds to stand on. And it’s time that women — myself included — admit it and move on.”

To read the full cover story, go here.

Megan Gibson is a reporter at TIME. Find her on Twitter at @MeganJGibson. You can also continue the discussion on TIME’s Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.

Kisses and cuddles make for happy men

2011-07-14T12:20:00Z

Contrary to conventional wisdom, cuddling and caressing are more important to men than women in a long-term relationship, according to a new international study.

Researchers studied responses from adults in the United States, Brazil, Germany, Japan and Spain, and discovered that men were more likely to be happy in their relationship and that frequent kissing or cuddling was an accurate predictor of happiness for men.

"I was a little surprised," said Julia Heiman, the director of Indiana University's Kinsey Institute, which conducted the study that will be published in the Archives of Sexual Behaviour journal.

"Some of the stereotypes we have are borne out of what we feel comfortable believing - that men prefer sex, or women prefer intimacy over sex, for example," she added.

The researchers examined more than 1,000 couples aged 40 to 70 who had been together for an average of 25 years.

Unlike men, women were happier as time went on, according to the findings. If they had been with their partner less than 15 years they were also less likely to be sexually satisfied, but that percentage rose significantly after the 15-year mark.

"Possibly, women become more satisfied over time because their expectations change, or life changes with the children grown," Ms Heiman said.

"On the other hand, those who weren't so sexually happy might not be married so long."

Japanese men and women were significantly happier in their relationships than Americans, who were more content than Brazilians and Spaniards.

Japanese men in particular were more than twice as sexually satisfied in their relationships than other nationalities.

"I honestly don't know why this is," Ms Heiman said. "Japanese couples may interpret the survey questions slightly different. Maybe Americans interpret this in a much more critical way."

Japanese and Brazilian women were also more likely than American women to be happy with their sex lives.

"Americans are pretty notoriously not satisfied with things," Ms Heiman said.

"The United States is certainly not the happiest country when it comes to comparing it to others."

Ms Heiman said that the data may reflect the dynamics of a long-term relationship.

"Maybe it's about durability. A major factor is how long you've been together. What you value as important may mean a lot more after the near-term."

Reuters

Monash academic retracts erroneous claim that DV is major cause of divorce

2011-07-11T03:00:00Z

The following statement seeks to correct the public record with respect to some minor and inadvertent inaccuracies that were contained in the book “Child Abuse and Family Law” that was published in 2007 by Allen and Unwin and co-authored with Professor Thea Brown. The following material statement also seeks to correct the media release that was issued by Monash University's Media and Communications Unit in August 2009.

Incorrect statements in the Book

On page 20 of the book, there is a statement which reads as follows:

“Domestic violence is increasingly reported as a cause of partnership breakdown, with two thirds of couples in Australia attributing the separation to domestic violence and one third to severe domestic violence, (FLPAG, 2001).”

The statement is incorrect.

The book cites a 2001 FLPAG Report as the source of this data. However, the material relied on was not taken from the FLPAG Report itself, but rather was drawn from a verbal presentation to the FLPAG Committee on which Professor Brown served.

Professor Brown is aware that the presented data was drawn from another AIFS study, the "Spousal Violence and Post Separation Financial Outcomes Study", which itself used the data base of an earlier study, the "Divorce Transitions Project" to identify suitable families to interview.

The presentation to the FLPAG Committee suggested that figures for family violence accompanying or as a cause of divorce identified in the earlier Divorce Transitions Project study (Wolcott and Hughes 1999 Towards understanding the reasons for divorce, Working Paper 20, Australian Institute of Family Studies) were an underestimation of the true situation showing that some 65% of women and 55% of men stated domestic violence was part of their former failed relationship, however the couples did not attribute their separation to domestic violence, the presenters to the FLPAG Committee did. Professor Brown failed to make this important distinction in the book.

The statement in the book states (and again references the 2001 FLPAG Report) that one third of couples in Australia attribute their separation to severe domestic violence. This statement is incorrect. The presenters to the FLPAG Committee (not the couples themselves) assessed one-third of the domestic violence experienced by 65% of women and 55% of men in failed relationships as severe. Thus, it is at most 33% of 65% of couples whose separation could be attributed to severe domestic violence, and not "one-third" of such couples as stated in the book.

Secondly, on page 111 of the book there is a statement which reads "some 30% of all marriages in Australia fail because of domestic violence". This statement is also incorrect and the figures that have been relied upon in making this statement are incorrect.

Incorrect statements in the 2009 media release

The 2009 media release is incorrect for the same reasons as noted above.

In particular the media release is incorrect in so far as it states that:

(a) "earlier studies suggest that domestic violence is the major cause of parental separation in 66% of parental relationship breakdown"; and

(b) it is the couples themselves who nominated violence as the reason for their separation. As noted above, it is the researchers/ presenters to the FLPAG Committee who made this assumption, not the couples.

Let The Arguments Fly: Study Shows Women More Likely To Cause Traffic Accidents (USA)

2011-07-06T09:38:00Z

A University of Michigan study of 6.5 million car crashes will undoubtedly be the source of many tense discussions around the kitchen table if not Vegas comedy riffs, finding that an inordinate number of accidents happen when both drivers are women.

Insert your own tired women-are-bad-drivers comment here. And if you post this story on your Facebook page, get ready for a commenta-palooza.

Michael Sivak, the study's principal author and a research professor who studies human factors in car accidents, is hesitant to come out and say women are worse drivers than men. But since men drive more miles every day than women, the neighborhood sexist will have a field day with this little bit of data.

Using the General Estimate System data from a nationally representative sample of police-reported crashes, the researchers expected to find that male-to-male crashes would account for 36.2% of accidents, female-to-female would make up 15.8% and male-to-female would make up 48% of crashes.

Instead, they found female-to-female accidents made up 20.5% of all crashes, much higher than expected. Male-to-male crashes were lower than expected, at 31.9%, and male-to-female crashes were 47.6%.

Why the discrepancy? The study doesn't offer any hard reasons. Women and men may have different experiences with different driving scenarios, have different abilities to handle those scenarios, and may feel like there are different expectations on their behavior.

It's essentially a nature vs. nurture argument, saying gender stereotypes dominate driving behavior: In other words, men do most of the driving, and women, who ride along as passengers, are less experienced or confident -- thus prone to wrecks.

But there could be another reason, the researchers say, so they're not ruling out any possibilities.

Intersections are particularly troublesome for women: They're often t-boned on the driver's side while trying to make a left turn, or are hit on the passenger side while trying to make a right-hand turn, the research shows.

Those crashes could be caused by height differences, the study says, because women tend to be shorter than men and have a harder time seeing out the windows. This issue is becoming worse, not better, with modern cars, as designers have been creating higher in-car "belt-lines," the height of the door relative to the driver before the window glass begins.

But besides being shorter, women may also have some brain differences that work against them. Some studies show men are better able to perceive time and speed and can more easily rotate 3-D figures in their brains, skills which are helpful enough to overcome other risky behaviors behind the wheel.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, it's tough to get the usual third party experts to weigh in on this study. Consumer Reports said it would pass on AOL Autos request for comment. Ford Motor Co., whose executive in charge of environmental and safety engineering is a woman, also passed on commenting.

A Ford spokesman did say that women order safety options on their cars at a much higher rate than men. Turns out that's a wise decision.

Every academic study, even those peer reviewed, has supporters and detractors.

Rather than looking at the national Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS)-- which most safety advocates use because it is based on police-reported data from the most severe and most documented kinds of crashes, those that resulted in a death -- it uses the National Household Travel Survey for its mileage counts. That survey is conducted every decade or so, and asks drivers to keep a diary of their travel, which could be easily fudged. It also looks at a sampling of accident data from police records, which is not as comprehensive as the fatality database.

Plus, it doesn't mention the fact that women are more likely to be driving with children, who are among the biggest distractions in a car.

Sivak's research contradicts other studies like one in Britain that showed men take more risks and drive more powerful cars. That study also showed that although women also have their fair share of crashes, those accidents often happen at slower speeds, so they tend to be less severe.

Bottom Line: The University of Michigan study shows that crashes involving female drivers running into female drivers is higher than expected given the number of miles women drive versus men. While the study is interesting, and gives chauvinists and comedians fresh fodder to bash women drivers, there is plenty of room to challenge the study's validity.

Feminism? Forget it, sisters (UK)

2011-06-28T18:13:00Z

The long night of modern feminism might be about to end. A glimmer of light is flickering in the encircling gloom.

A study published this week by Dr Catherine Hakim of the London School of Economics has found that men do slightly more work than the women they live with when employment and domestic work are measured together.

This is the first time I can remember in 40 years that an authoritative study on a key issue of so-called gender politics has come out with a self-evident truth that runs directly contrary to orthodox feminist ideology. The fact that it has been written and published by a woman makes it even more delightful.

Ever since the late Sixties, it has been an incontestable article of faith in the feminist creed that men are lazy, slobbish, barbaric, barely civilisable and incapable of switching on the vacuum cleaner without breaking it – and eternal shame on Alistair Campbell and his partner Fiona Miller for boasting about the fact that he lives up to that mould-encrusted cliché.

It has been an essential tenet in the feminist catechism – endlessly repeated on Woman’s Hour and in the Guardian – that men exploit and oppress women at home and in their domestic arrangements in the same way that men put women down at work and in the wider society.

Like every other tenet of modern feminism, this potty notion was always balderdash (or more frankly another word beginning with “b” – why be polite about so pernicious and poisonous a creed?). Not only did it run contrary to the evidence that British men work longer hours, for less pay, for more of their lives than any of their western European counterparts – and then spend their weekend mowing grass, cleaning cars and fixing shelves. It was, also, obvious that, as life changed so fundamentally for women in education, employment and sexual life, men changed, too.

That much was transparently clear even 40 years ago when I was at university. Not one of the young men I knew expected or even yearned to marry a woman who would be a domestic serf. Every one of them – me included – wanted a more equal partnership than our parents’ marriages and looked forward to being more actively engaged in their children’s upbringing – just as they looked forward to hearing the happy chink of coins when their partner’s monthly pay-cheque landed in the joint account.

Many of those men had lived alone, learnt to cook and run a home before they lived with women; and some of them – me included – have looked after children alone after marriages failed. More than 300,000 men in this country are the sole parents of children, fully responsible for every element of their domestic lives. Are they to be told – as Fay Weldon declared with majestic stupidity last year – that they are congenitally incapable of picking up a sock?

All my adult life, I wanted to create a family life of equal partnership with a woman and, after many failures, finally achieved it in my 50s, with the mother of our two little daughters, now seven and four.

In our home, I do most of the food shopping, more of the cleaning and some of the cooking. My wife sees to the laundry and is responsible for about 65 per cent of the childcare while I have been responsible for paying about 95 per cent of the bills. When she works, I do everything in the home and everything for the children. When I work, it’s the other way round. We share the gardening – incompetently.

Our is not an unusual arrangement. Only a body of people blinded by ideology – as feminists have been – could fail to see that millions of men and women in this country are harmoniously working out their own domestic arrangements, and that men have been active, enthusiastic partners in these changes.

What next? Might a respectable study soon reveal that, contrary to what we are always told, one in four men does not batter the woman he lives with? Or that not all men are rapists? Might the entire edifice of lies that comprises modern feminism now be about to tumble?

Hasten the day.

AIC report ‘ignores key research on young people and domestic violence’

2011-06-27T03:00:00Z

Attorney-General Robert McClelland and Minister for Justice Brendan O’Connor today released a new Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC) report Children’s exposure to domestic violence in Australia.

In this paper, current knowledge about the extent of children’s exposure to domestic violence in Australia is described, along with the documented impacts that this exposure can have on children.

However, a leading men’s health organisation, Men’s Health Australia, says the report completely ignores the largest ever Australian survey of young people and domestic violence.

Published in 2001 by the National Crime Prevention division of the Commonwealth Attorney General’s Department and the Department of Education, Training and Youth Affairs, the national research involved a survey of 5000 young Australians aged between 12 and 20, and in-depth discussions with special groups, namely homeless youth, victims of domestic violence, and youth from different ethnic backgrounds.

This was the largest sample of young people ever surveyed on their experiences of parental domestic violence in Australia or, most likely, the world.

The main findings relate to young people’s understanding of and attitudes to domestic violence, their experiences of witnessing parental or carer’s domestic violence and of violence in their dating relationships, and how they deal with these experiences.

Key findings of this national research ignored by the new AIC report, include:

· Considering physical violence only, nearly a third (31.2%) of young people had witnessed one of the following: a male carer being violent towards his female partner; a female carer being violent to her male partner; or both carers being violent.

· 14.4% of young people reported that this violence was perpetrated both by the male against the female and the female against the male. 9.0% reported that violence was perpetrated against their mother by her male partner but that she was not violent towards him. 7.8% reported that violence was perpetrated against their father by his female partner but that he was not violent towards her.

· Most reported parental violence seemed to be minor, in that no effects were reported by the majority of child witnesses. Where outcomes were reported, the most likely outcome was the separation of the parents. The most severe disruptions on all indicators occurred in those households where both male to female and female to male violence was reported (ie two-way couple violence).

· Witnessing parental domestic violence had a significant effect on young people’s attitudes and experiences. Witnessing was also the strongest predictor of subsequent perpetration by young people. The best predictor of perpetration was witnessing certain types of female to male violence, whilst the best predictor of victimisation in personal relationships was having witnessed male to female violence.

· Where young people had, or were experiencing parental domestic violence, a third of them had not told anyone about it. This rate was higher amongst boys than girls and higher amongst the 12 and 13 year olds than the mid or older teens.

· Young people were more likely to say a woman is right to, or has good reason to, respond to a situation by hitting, than a man in the same situation. And while males hitting females was seen, by virtually all young people surveyed, to be unacceptable, it appeared to be quite acceptable for a girl to hit a boy.

Men’s Health Australia spokesperson Greg Andresen, said, “It is regrettable that these important findings were omitted from the new AIC report. If the government is serious about protecting children and young people from the effects of domestic violence, the National Plan to Reduce Violence Against Women and Their Children must be expanded to include male victims and their children.”

Media contact: Greg Andresen | media@menshealthaustralia.net | 0403 813 925

Government deception won't reduce family violence

2011-06-09T03:00:00Z

Last week the Federal House of Representatives debated the Family Law Legislation Amendment (Family Violence and Other Measures) Bill 2011. During the debate, the Minister for the Status of Women, Kate Ellis, made a series of false statements to the Parliament and the Australian public. Regretfully, this disregard for the truth follows a pattern of behaviour by state Offices for Women across the country. In August 2009 after a report by the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, the NSW Office for Women's Policy issued errata correcting three of fourteen incorrect and misleading statistics contained in its Discussion Paper on NSW Domestic and Family Violence Strategy. In August 2010, the South Australian Ombudsman issued a report finding that the SA Office for Women had published false and/or misleading information on the Don't Cross the Line website, had failed to correct this information, and had failed to act with reasonable diligence and speed once errors were brought to its attention.

In what appeared to be an attempt to bring gender politics into a serious debate about an issue that affects the entire community, the Minister downplayed male victims of family violence by claiming that, "while it is true that men are more likely to be victims of violence [overall], this violence occurs predominantly at the hands of a stranger and in public places, such as the street or the pub, not at the hands of a family member, not at the hands of a partner, not at the hands of those they trust the most and not in their own home."

The Minister is correct that Australian men are indeed more likely than women to experience violence at the hands of strangers and in public places. What she seems to be unaware of, however, is that this does not mean that men are less likely than women to experience violence at the hands of persons known to them, or in the home.

Additional figures only just released from the ABS Personal Safety Survey 2005 show there is no statistically significant gender difference between the prevalence rates for male and female victims of physical assault by known perpetrators in the last 12 months. They also show there is no statistically significant gender difference between the estimates of numbers of male and female victims who experienced physical assault by family members or in the home in the most recent incident in the last 12 months.

The Minister went on to cite statistics on all violence against women (including the 25% perpetrated by other women) which further confused matters in a debate not about violence in general, not about violence against women, but about domestic and family violence. Overinflating statistics about domestic and family violence against women does nobody any good. If anything it lends support to those in the community who deny that domestic and family violence is a serious issue and reduces the credibility of legislation whose objective purports to be to reduce such violence.

Ms Ellis then claimed that separated mothers do not make false accusations of family violence and child abuse to gain a tactical advantage in family law proceedings. The only evidence she was able to provide was "a report in 2007 by the Australian Institute of Family Studies finding that the family violence allegation rates in custody proceedings in the Family Court of Australia or in the Federal Magistrates Court are similar to the reported rates of spousal violence profiles in the general divorcing population."

Surely the Minister must be aware that persons going through custody proceedings in the FCA or in the FMC are 'the sharp end of the stick', and are not at all representative of the general divorcing population. Therefore any correlation or not between family violence allegations/rates is meaningless.

In recent community research by VicHealth, half of all respondents said that 'women going through custody battles often make up or exaggerate claims of domestic violence in order to improve their case', and only 28% disagreed. It is most likely this is because they had personal knowledge of a friend or family member who had experienced this, or had experienced it themselves.

A survey of 68 NSW magistrates concerning apprehended violence orders (AVOs) found that 90% agreed that some AVOs were sought as a tactic to aid their case in order to deprive a former partner of contact with the children. A similar survey of 38 Queensland magistrates found that 74% agreed with the proposition that protection orders are used in Family Court proceedings as a tactic to aid a parent's case and to deprive their partner of contact with their children.

There are many organisations around the country that deal with false allegations of domestic and family violence on a daily basis - Dads in Distress, Men's Rights Agency, Lone Fathers Association, Shared Parenting Council of Australia, Dads4kids Fatherhood Foundation and Dads on the Air, to name just a few. Perhaps the minister would be wise to spend some time talking to these organisations to gather a more accurate picture of false allegations in a Family Law context.

It is clear, however, that the minister and her Government have no interest in investigating the issue of false allegations, as they have commissioned countless studies into the prevalence and impacts of domestic and family violence on separating families, but not a single study into the prevalence and impacts of false allegations. As anyone who has been on the receiving end of false allegations can attest, the impacts are utterly devastating.

Ms Ellis was not the only Government MP who misled Parliament last week. Graham Perrett, Labor MP for Moreton, claimed that "all too often it is men – occasionally women – who hurt the ones they love." Mr Perrett would do well to look at the latest statistics on child abuse released by the WA Department for Child Protection. Women made up 57% of perpetrators of substantiated cases of child maltreatment in 2007-08, and mothers were three times as likely as fathers to abuse their children.

Thankfully the minister got her facts right about one thing: child abuse and family violence are real, especially during divorce proceedings. As the recent AIFS Evaluation of the 2006 family law reforms report stated, they profoundly affect men, women and children:

Around two-thirds of these separated mothers and around half of the fathers reported that their child's other parent had emotionally abused them prior to or during separation. One in four mothers and around one in six fathers reported that the other parent had hurt them physically prior to separation. Around one in five parents reported safety concerns associated with ongoing contact with the child's other parent."

However there is no reason to throw away due process – as the government's proposed amendments do – in an attempt to protect people from child abuse and family violence. Supporting what appears to be the current fashion in Federal Government circles, not only to mislead the Parliament, but to support perjury in the family court, the current draft of the Family Law Legislation Amendment (Family Violence and Other Measures) Bill 2011 effectively says to families going through the family law system, "it's OK to lie - go ahead, you have our blessing." It does so in three ways.

Firstly, it removes the ability for the court to award costs against a party who has been found to have "knowingly made a false allegation or statement in the proceedings". Let us be clear here - under present legislation someone who makes an allegation of violence but simply lacks the evidence to support their claims cannot be found to have "knowingly made a false allegation". That is, no untoward consequences can arise for someone making a genuine report of family violence under current laws.

Secondly, it removes the "reasonableness clause" which requires that any claims of fear as the result of violence or abuse be established as reasonable - in order to prevent persons making up unwarranted claims of fear purely as a legal tactic during court proceedings.

Lastly, it widens the definition of family violence so broadly that almost every family going through relationship breakdown will fall under it. The proposed definition incorporates much normal conflict in separating families as well as the abusive behaviours of ongoing dominance or violence that must be addressed. It is unrealistic not to expect heightened emotions, and even raised voices and "put-downs", in most relationship breakdowns. There needs to be a distinction between this normal behaviour and the abuse of physical assault and emotional terrorism.

This cocktail of changes will give carte blanche to any parent (male or female) wishing to lie in court to use the spectre of family violence as a weapon against the other parent where there is animosity and conflict (and it is commonly accepted that it is primarily those failed relationships where extreme conflict exists that find their way into court). The resulting clogging up of the court system will mean that cases of serious violence and abuse will not be given the time, attention and resources they deserve.

We have heard recent reports from family law solicitors that should the proposed changes to the Family Law Act be passed, violence allegations will be attempted to be used by solicitors as a legal strategy much more often than they are currently.

Fortunately the Government's deception and the support for perjury that the draft Bill provides were called to attention during the debate by George Christensen, member for Dawson. In his colourful but honest and straightforward speech, he dared call a spade a spade:

Mr CHRISTENSEN: Earlier in this debate we heard the Minister for the Status of Women tell this parliament that no-one uses claims of family violence in such a way. I have some very bad news for the minister: it actually does happen. It happens every day; and if she is not aware of it happening then she is gravely out of touch with reality. If the minister does not have any contact with her own constituents, perhaps she could spend a few minutes at her laptop doing some research. Here is the sort of thing that you can find in two minutes: the newspaper headline 'Ugly feud fought on Facebook'. The article tells about a Family Court hearing late last year. At the end it says:

She had already strung the case out by falsely claiming her ex-husband had been sexually assaulting their children after one judgment went against her. Then she falsely claimed the father's new wife had been assaulting them. 'The mother has over the years attempted to manipulate the court system,' Justice Barry said.

That is just one case that can be found with two minutes of Google research, and yet the minister came into this House and said that making false allegations of family violence and using family violence as a weapon in the courts is a myth. Do some homework, Minister.

The fact that this minister has told a lie to this parliament-

The DEPUTY SPEAKER (Ms AE Burke): The member will withdraw.

Mr CHRISTENSEN: I will withdraw, but I will say that the minister has told an untruth to this parliament. It is clearly not true to say that it is a myth.

It is possible to draft balanced laws designed to both protect people from violence and from false allegations of violence – both cause immeasurable harm to the lives of victims. The current Family Law Act already does this very well. It appears that gender politics are more important to this Government than the truth. They appear to care not one iota about protecting people from the false accusations of violence and abuse that all too often deny children an ongoing relationship with one of their loving parents.