What is happening to women?

You have to ask what the expectations of civil society are and whose responsibility it is for these rights and values to be enacted. The Howard Government demonstrated its absence of regard when they took the decision to downgrade the Office of the Status of Women by its removal from the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet - the policy powerhouse of the government - and to relocate it to the Department of Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, and its renaming as the Office for Women.

The role models for women flop between the likes of Paris Hilton and skinny young things that love the success of money.

Shows like Desperate Housewives don’t even blush at the defamatory language that gives them permission to portray women as body obsessed, desperate, sexually driven women capable of deceit and violence with no spirituality or capacity for lasting relationships. Forget about being PC: my niece has had the board game of Desperate Housewives on her Christmas list she was 13. Some say it’s harmless, as did my sister in law, but what are the messages young women receive about themselves, their sisters and their future?

It may be that we soothe ourselves that our daughters will survive or that this is the new generation Y - but it’s a chilly balm. They are not surviving, they are enduring.

It is true that discrimination and violence are not new phenomena, but what is missing is hope. There was a wave of feminism that rolled from the 60s and into the 80s that gave birth to the hope that violence would be reduced, that women’s access to fair employment conditions would improve, that women would be able to be free.

If you have never considered the social costs of these violations of women’s rights then just start with this. The human impact of domestic violence is incalculable, in a report published in 2000, Impacts and Costs of Domestic Violence on the Australian Business/Corporate Sector, staff absenteeism and replacement costs alone were estimated to cost employers over $30 million a year while the total cost (including direct and indirect costs) to the corporate/business sector was estimated to be around $1 billion a year.

A more recent, and very detailed, study by Access Economics, commissioned by the Office for the Status of Women (OSW), The cost of domestic violence to the Australian economy, Part 1 and Part 2, 2004, estimated that the total cost of domestic violence in 2002-03 was $8.1 billion. This estimate includes the costs of pain and suffering, health costs and long-term productivity costs.

There are things we can do: we can stop watching shows that degrade women; we can stop buying magazines that promote women as non-thinking skinny things; we can stop voting for leaders who show no commitment to civil liberties and equality; we can stop accepting violence and women’s position as status quo.

We can write letters when advertising exploits women; we can work together to talk about how to make parties safe for young women; how to oppose work practices that discriminate against women and how to ensure that women enjoy the same civil liberties as their male counterparts.

The thing is we have to just do it!