Emma Davies: Power game of domestic abuse keeps women repressed

From the 16th to the 19th centuries, 12 million Africans were sold as slaves to the New World, says the Centre for International Crime Prevention. Yet in the past 30 years, in the Asia-Pacific region alone, Unicef estimates that trafficking in women and children for commercial sexual purposes has victimised 30 million people.

Unicef's deputy executive director says that amounts to the largest figure in the history of the slave trade. It is also the context for the images of child pornography seized on the computers of some New Zealand men. Built on greed and abuse of power, it has become a worldwide multimillion-dollar industry, a sickening example of the pornography market at work.

Domestic violence, also built on abuse of power, also permeates our backyard.

It is tempting to believe that domestic violence occurs only in other people's communities. If we're rich, it's easier to blame the poor. I have heard some Maori say there was no family violence before colonisation. Some Pakeha choose to believe it is only brown people who beat up women and children.

In reality, violence against women and children is not confined to one culture or one time in history. Neither is it reserved for those who live in poverty.

A study by Dr Janet Fanslow has found that 33 per cent of Auckland women and 39 per cent of women in rural Waikato have "experienced at least one act of physical and/or sexual violence by an intimate partner in their lifetime". One in 20 had experienced it in the past year. Of that one in 20, 89.6 per cent in rural Waikato and 72.5 per cent in urban Auckland are parenting. The children also suffer the effects of domestic violence. American neurobiologist Professor Bruce Perr said many such people were "incubated in terror".

Witnessing domestic violence often has the same psychological and developmental effects as being a direct victim. Children will often experience fear and intimidation, even when adults do not think they can hear or see the violence. Many of these children - statistics vary from 30 to 75 per cent depending how it is measured - are also being physically abused by those supposed to be caring for them.

It doesn't stop there. Survivors talk about the humiliation and emotional annihilation as the most harmful long-term effects - more so than the physical injuries. And, yes, women can also abuse their power. About half the child deaths caused by maltreatment in rich nations are at the hands of women. If we consider the vastly different amount of time women and men spend with children, the percentages look quite different. There is a long list of physical and mental health effects of domestic violence, including depression, drug abuse, chronic illness and physical injury.

The children who are incubated in terror are robbed of their right to security and lose the innocence of their childhood. These are the children who are more likely to grow up to commit violent crime and show no remorse. These are children who are more likely to repeat the pattern of violence.

A Brisbane City Council study estimated the cost to businesses and corporations of domestic violence at A$1.5 billion ($1.62 billion) in 1999. This included direct costs such as absenteeism, staff turnover and lost productivity, and indirect costs where the taxpayer footed the bills.

In New Zealand, economist Suzanne Snively has estimated - based on a domestic violence prevalence rate of one in seven working women - that domestic violence costs employers $2.9 million a year in lost working days and productivity. As we debate how to get more women into the paid workforce, we need to acknowledge that violence against women is a considerable barrier to participation.

Women living with domestic violence talk about partners preventing them from working or undermining their attempts to further their education or careers. Some women talk about the struggle of keeping up employment - be it the shame of a black eye or the harassment by their partner at work.

Children are often used as pawns in these power games. Sleep-deprived, life in turmoil and in a state of perpetual crisis, it is hard, if not impossible, to be a consistent parent or a reliable employee.

Domestic violence not only costs employers and the taxpayer through our health, welfare and justice systems, it prevents women and children from contributing more to the social and economic development of the nation. So what can we do about it?

There is some evidence to suggest that those societies with the greatest structural inequalities demonstrate the highest levels of social distress and dislocation, leading to a higher incidence of related social issues.

Other evidence suggests that a focus on the needs of pregnant women and our youngest citizens has the most powerful long-term benefits. If we try to prevent domestic violence as a compartmentalised problem - over there - we are likely to have little success. It is unrealistic to expect our domestic violence and criminal justice agencies to prevent family violence on their own.

I hope the proposed family violence safety teams will increase police responsiveness, safety of women and children, and accountability of offenders. Such teams may be part of the answer, but they are not the essence of the solution.

Our task is to challenge the norms of society where violence is passively or actively condoned as an appropriate means of conflict resolution. Somehow, violence prevention has to become a genuine long-term priority for society - through marae, churches and mosques; through schools, sports clubs and workplaces; through our democratically elected leaders to the Treasury.

Economists cannot continue to lead our decision-making in how to deal with social problems. The philosopher John Ralston Saul said that if professional economists were doctors, they would be mired in malpractice suits. Economists have been spectacularly unsuccessful in attempts to apply models and theories to the reality of our civilisation. Violence is part of that reality.

Perhaps this helps to explain why we haven't been able to act on an apparent increase in public awareness of domestic violence. Perhaps our public service has become fixated on efficiency at the expense of effectiveness in our approach to social problems.

Effective solutions are about content and policy delivery. They are about what we do. They require us to think creatively and learn from our mistakes. Yet our institutions are run by managers.

To manage risk and ensure accountability for spending is admirable. But to do this at the expense of critical thinking and the creativity of the community's movers and shakers is self-destructive.

Saul says: "A managerial elite manages. A crisis, unfortunately, requires thought. Thought is not a management function."

Risk managers will not provide paths to preventing violence. Perhaps one of the biggest risks is they inhibit those who might.

* Emma Davies, of the Auckland University of Technology's institute of public policy, spoke to the Parliamentarians' Group on Population and Development.