Journal Articles
Tully O’Neill, Rachel Loney-Howes and Jessica Oldfield, ‘, Social and Legal Studies (2025)
Abstract: The past decade has seen significant policy and law reforms relating to gender-based violence in Australia. Notably, there has been an emphasis on rape law reforms and related policy changes driven by the advocacy of survivors of sexual assault and child sexual abuse. Coupled with these reforms has been the emergence of public survivors — individuals who establish prominence in public and political arenas by identifying as survivors of sexual violence. In this article, the authors examine the political, cultural and legal conditions that have created opportunities for public survivors to emerge in Australia. They argue that public survivors are co-constituted by these conditions, along with a broader politics of speaking out and a politics of listening that constructs a willing audience ready to consume and support survivor narratives and advocacy. These politics are vexed, however, in their reinforcement of long-standing archetypal attitudes and knowledge about sexual violence that feed into who can successfully obtain and maintain the status of a public survivor. p
Sarah Ailwood, ‘’, Social and Legal Studies (2024)
Abstract: In Australia, the #MeToo movement triggered a comprehensive inquiry into workplace sexual harassment led by the Australian Human Rights Commission. This article explores the dynamic relationship between voice and listening in the Commission's National Inquiry into Sexual Harassment in Australian Workplaces and the resulting Respect@Work Report (2020). Drawing on a range of methodologies including thematic coding, citation analysis and discourse analysis, it explores what it means to victim-survivors to have a voice in the National Inquiry, narratives of law and justice that emerge in victim-survivor submissions, and how the Commission responds in its role as institutional listener. Analysing the politics and practices of institutional listening reveals hierarchies of attention at work within this law reform process, that recognised victim-survivors as experts only in their experience of being sexually harassed in the workplace, and devalued their voices in terms of legal and regulatory change. This analysis highlights both the importance of institutional transparency in how law reform processes are conducted, in publishing data and in citation practices, and the critical need for institutions to listen to victim-survivors of gender-based violence with openness, attentiveness, receptivity and responsiveness. It is only by implementing a victim-survivor-centred approach to listening that institutions can effectively engage with and respond to the affective legal subject and address gender-based violence through transformative change.
Cassandra Sharp, ‘, Social and Legal Studies (2024)
Abstract: In speaking to a particular moment in time, when women are increasingly frustrated that their stories are not heard by the law, this article analyses comments posted to the hashtag #March4Justice, to offer a contextualist account of how women are locating themselves in (and against) the law by means of social media. It suggests that the use of this hashtag contributes to, and is evidence of, an overarching rallying discourse that pleads for law reform. The article showcases an empirical analysis of social media narratives to demonstrate that emotionality, narrativity, and communal identity weave together to represent (and constitute) a critique of law's ability to listen to the needs of women.
Sarah Ailwood, Rachel Loney-Howes, Nan Seuffert & Cassandra Sharp, '' Feminist Legal Studies (2022)
Abstract: Australia is witnessing a political, social and cultural renaissance of public debate regarding violence against women, particularly in relation to domestic and family violence (DFV), sexual assault and sexual harassment. Women's voices calling for law reform are central to that renaissance, as they have been to feminist law reform dating back to nineteenth-century campaigns for property and suffrage rights. Although feminist research has explored women’s voices, speaking out and storytelling to highlight the exclusions and limitations of the legal and criminal justice systems in responding to women’s experience, less attention has been paid to how women's voices are elicited, received and listened to, and the forms of response they have received. We argue that three recent public inquiries in Australia reveal an urgent need for a victim-survivor-centred theory of listening to women’s voices in law reform seeking to address violence against women. We offer a nascent theory of a victim-survivor-centred approach grounded in openness, receptivity, attentiveness and responsiveness, and argue that in each of our case studies, law reform actors failed to adequately listen to women by silencing and refusing to listen to them; by hearing them but failing to be open, receptive and attentive; and by selectively hearing and resisting transformation. We argue that these inquiries signal an acute need for attention to the dynamics of listening in law reform processes, and conclude that a victim-survivor-centred theory of listening is a critical foundation for meaningful change to address violence against women.
Law Reform Submissions
Sarah Ailwood, Rachel Loney-Howes, Nan Seuffert and Cassandra Sharp, (2024)
Summary: This submission to the ALRC Inquiry into Justice Responses to Sexual Violence was made by the Women, Listening and Law research team at the University of ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½. The submission draws on the team's research to urge the ALRC to adopt a victim-survivor-centred approach to listening in its inquiry process. The submission outlines a framework grounded in four key elements: (1) Openness — being open to new voices, ideas and perspectives; (2) Receptivity — developing a genuine mindset receptive to challenge and change; (3) Attentiveness — attending to historical privilege and dismantling hierarchies of attention, particularly with regard to intersectionality; and (4) Responsiveness — ensuring that listening results in meaningful response to the lived experience of victim-survivors. The submission notes that the team's foundational article on this approach was awarded the Law and Society Association of Australia and New Zealand Article Prize for 2023.
