Red Heart: What needs to change to stop violence against women

Content warning: This article discusses femicide, child death and gender-based violence. It may be distressing for many readers, particularly survivors of abuse, violence or trauma. If you need to talk to someone, please access the support resources below.

Sherele Moody has been mapping femicides across Australia, telling the stories of women whose lives were cut short by men, stopping them from becoming just another statistic. She also provides support for loved ones bereaved by femicide, having witnessed its impacts at an early age.  

So she understands how the systems continually fail these women and girls. She knows that femicide is the outcome of cultures that aren’t challenged enough, and that prevention isn’t prioritised enough.  

We have to believe that these systems could change and that the future for women and girls could one day be safer. So who needs to step up? Sherele has some ideas.  

For Sherele, systemic change requires a collective shift in social behaviour.   

“We’re seeing more men coming out and talking about violence,” she says. “Which is great, because you can’t end violence without men being in control of ending it.” 

She points out that most victims of male violence are men. Women are the second most common. 

“So if we end male violence against women, we have a really good opportunity to reduce male violence against men. So having men take control of the solution is really important – it makes me happy to see men moving into that space and being part of that.” 

Calling out harmful behaviour. Challenging misogyny. Modelling equitable relationships. It’s a shift that happens incrementally; in homes, in friendships, in workplaces, but its impact is cumulative.    

“It’s not about saying… don’t be violent,” she says. “It’s saying, just be equitable.” 

Violence doesn’t exist in isolation. It exists within a culture that either challenges it, or allows it to continue. 

In 2025, the federal government’s Women’s Budget introduced a raft of measures targeting domestic violence, from prevention programs to crisis support. 

But across the country, services remain overwhelmed. 

One of the biggest gaps is housing. Access to safe, stable, long-term accommodation is often the difference between leaving and staying – between safety and risk.  

Without a pathway to permanent housing, women are left in limbo or forced to return to unsafe environments. In many parts of Australia, waitlists for appropriate housing stretch for years. “If we had enough housing… we would reduce the deaths,” Sherele says. This reflects a reality the sector has been pointing to for years: safety is about infrastructure, not just about crisis response. 

Underinvestment shows up everywhere. 

Support services are at capacity. People seeking help – both victim-survivors and men looking to change their behaviour – are turned away because there simply aren’t enough places or resources.  

Perpetrator programs play a critical role in prevention, but are often oversubscribed. Men who seek help can face wait times of months, by which time there’s a risk the moment for intervention may have passed.  

It’s one of the clearest examples of how the system is set up to respond after harm rather than prevent it. And yet, the economic case for investing in prevention is already clear. 

A 2017 economic analysis estimated that domestic violence costs Australia at least $21 billion each year – and that figure doesn’t even include the full scale or long-term impact. 

Framing investment as “throwing money at the problem” ignores the reality that we are already paying for it – financially, socially, and generationally. Just not in ways that keep women safe. 

More investment in safety, in better systems that work and in preventing harm before it escalates could save a lot more than it costs.  

Media plays a critical role in shaping culture, in this case how violence is understood and talked about. And culture shapes systems.   

Too often, reporting on violence against women strips away context and reduces victims to headlines that centre the crime, not the person. Women are described in relation to their deaths, or in relation to the men in their lives, rather than as individuals.  

“Take Frances Crawford,” Sherele says. Frances, a psychologist, was killed in 2024 near Toowoomba, allegedly by her pilot husband. He is accused of killing her and then putting her body under a ride-on lawn mower and claiming she fell off it, and is awaiting trial. 

“The early reporting around her death totally erased her,” Sherele says. “She just became the ‘lawnmower murder’ or the ‘RAAF pilot’s wife’ – something ‘other’. She wasn’t Frances Crawford, psychologist and mum, lost to violence.”

There’s also the quietly persistent narrative of victim-blaming: questioning what a woman was doing, where she was, what she was wearing, why she didn’t leave… and the sexualisation or misrepresentation of victims through selective imagery and framing.  

When reporters choose these words, they shape how the public understands violence, who they empathise with, and ultimately, how seriously the issue is taken.  

When victims are diminished or blamed, the urgency to act diminishes with them. Without urgency, there’s no pressure for change.  

The way stories are told shape culture; and culture shapes what we tolerate. 

Femicide is an ancient story that hasn’t improved as much as it should. Women are being killed this year in a similar pattern as previous years.  But for all the failures, shifts are happening. 

“Watching the groundswell of female voices in particular talking about it,” is one positive Sherele sees. “Whether it’s a victim-survivor speaking out about their experience, going into a podcast or doing a social media post – to incredible voices like Grace Tame, Brittany Higgins, Saxon Mullins, Rose Batty… we’ve now got these very loud, articulate voices.” 

“We’re seeing women take ownership of this conversation in a way that wasn’t possible 10 or 20 years ago.” 

By creating their own platforms – podcasts, social media, independent media – women are reshaping how these stories are told, and who controls them. 

“That’s one of the biggest positives I’ve seen in this space,” Sherele says. 

Even after fighting this fight for more than a decade, Sherele is fierce, articulate, passionate, and brave AF.

This is heavy work – to witness and to live with, and not many shoulders could bear it. For Sherele, it’s constant. Every new case adds another name, another family, another story to carry. She endures hate and threats online, and even personal attacks from men trying to silence her.   

But she carries on, because her work is vital in understanding the bigger picture. In recognising patterns. In refusing to look away. 

Her vision for the future is simple and uncompromising: “I want that counter on the map to be zero, permanently.” 

There’s no magic fix. Change doesn’t happen all at once. But it does build - voice by voice, story by story. Refusal by refusal. 

But there is a path forward: better data, properly funded services, accessible housing, cultural change, political courage – and a refusal to accept the current rate of femicide as inevitable. 

This story can be changed, and lives can be saved. Not by one person or one organisation, but by all of us. Calling out misogyny, supporting the work, staying informed. Let’s keep the conversation going, and back the systemic change that could stop those little red hearts appearing on the map of femicides.  

• Listen to the She Matters podcast, supported by Verve Super  

• Follow Sherele’s work @sherelemoodyfemicidewatch / AustralianFemicideWatch.org  

• Buy awesome Red Heart merch to help fund these projects.  

If this article has raised concerns or you need support, you’re not alone: 

1800RESPECT - 1800 737 732 or 1800respect.org.au 
Lifeline - 13 11 14 or lifeline.org.au 
Full Stop Australia - 1800 385 578 

If you are in immediate danger, call 000. 

 
Verve Super has previously supported Sherele Moody’s She Matters podcast. This article is not affiliated with that partnership.