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How these law students are looking to engage men in the fight against gender-based violence
Two of the founders of WGG Australia emphasise the importance of involving men in the fight against gender-based violence and offer guidance on how this can occur.
Grace Robbie
Speaking on a recent episode of The Protégé Podcast, Giorgia Wilson and Sarah Welfare – two of the founders of WGG Australia and current law students at the University of Newcastle – delved into the importance of involving males in conversations addressing male violence and emphasised the necessity for greater male participation in advocacy efforts.
“The statistics don’t lie. The majority of the perpetrators of this violence is male violence, and that is why we are calling it male violence because that is what it is,” Wilson said.
Despite the daunting nature of the problem, Wilson observed a positive shift in which more males are participating in efforts to dismantle harmful societal attitudes.
“I think we have seen an increase in our male counterparts helping us in dismantling these societal attitudes that allow sexual, domestic and family violence to flourish,” Wilson said.
However, Wilson expressed concerns about the setbacks caused by cultural figures like Andrew Tate, whose widespread media presence has influenced young men negatively.
“I mean, they’re definitely not doing enough, but there absolutely has been more conversation, but we did take a much more than large step back as a nation when Andrew Tate was all over our media.
“Unfortunately, it’s going to take us some time to retrace those steps and build our young male counterparts back up again because, unfortunately, there was a massive cultural shift after that. But there’s definitely some progress,” Wilson said.
Welfare underscored that addressing male violence is not an attack on men but a call for all genders to work together to create a safe society.
“I think probably a big thing for us is to be reminding our other male law students and friends and communities that it isn’t an attack on them.
“We want to work as a team and as a whole to keep us all safe. We would love to see more men getting involved,” Welfare said.
Welfare emphasised the need to encourage greater male involvement in conversations and advocacy efforts, enabling them to actively confront toxic cultures, including rape culture and inappropriate “locker room” conversations.
“All these spaces, like WGG Australia, are open to men and welcome them with open arms. Because the more men that get involved in this and the more that rape culture and those kinds of locker room conversations and things are stomped out in those male friendship groups, at the pubs and in workplaces, the closer we start to get to reduce the kind of figures we’re seeing in terms of the gender-based violence that’s occurring,” Welfare said.
Welfare suggested several ways for those interested in getting involved to participate.
“We’ve got a lot of remote volunteers that work with us because a lot of the work is research-based and things like that in terms of WGG Australia. So if anyone is interested in getting involved, you can,” Welfare said.
Additionally, supporting the cause doesn’t always require direct involvement. Welfare encouraged people to follow relevant pages, repost content, and actively participate in ongoing conversations.
“Otherwise, following pages, reposting, actively joining into the conversations that are being had at the moment, showing your support so that the more people who see the media coverage of gender-based violence, the more that it gets stomped out of society,” Welfare said.
The transcript of this podcast episode was slightly edited for publishing purposes. To listen to the full conversation with Giorgia Wilson and Sarah Welfare, click below:
