Why does Australia have such a deep misogyny problem?

Two of the women killed on September 19 have not been named. One of them was 90-years-old and reportedly stabbed 19 times. Another was in her 70s, and also stabbed. The third was 23-year-old Danielle Madgwick, allegedly stabbed to death by her partner. All were killed in New South Wales within a 10-hour timeframe. 

According to 2024-25 figures from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, one woman is killed in Australia by an intimate partner every eleven days.

The feminist organisation Destroy The Joint says that by late September, 38 women had been killed by violence. Its tally for 2025 was 53. 

The Cambridge Dictionary defines “unreconstructed” as holding onto outdated beliefs, habits or political views. It could simply have said: “Australia”. Misogyny – derived from the Greek meaning “hatred of women” – is embedded in the national psyche.

Billions of dollars have been committed to ending violence against women, and the issue commands regular political and media attention. Yet the condemnation of violence too often coexists with indulgence of the contempt for women that helps sustain it.

That indulgence extends even to the prime minister. Sexist remarks by Australia’s PM, Anthony Albanese about the Japanese prime minister’s “melons” and Kylie’s shaggability were largely laughed off as harmless banter, while critics were dismissed as politically motivated. 

The Sydney Swans, one of the strongest teams in the Aussie Rules code, kept five suspended players eligible for their club’s “best and fairest” accolade. Their suspension followed what the club’s website called a “breach of club standards”. 

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Four of the players, aged between 25-30, are being investigated by the Victorian Police Sexual Crimes Squad after three women complained they had been sexually assaulted at a Melbourne hotel. There were also reports that drugs were consumed from the women’s bodies. The fifth player is now acting as a witness, while the others have denied criminal wrongdoing.

In the outcry that followed the allegations, club executives offered no apology to the women at media appearances, who said they had been groped and slapped during a paid dance performance. The players reportedly apologised to their teammates for the disruption caused by the furore.

On October 1, one of the men under investigation, Isaac Heeney, 30, won the Bob Skilton Medal for the third consecutive year, though the club changed the award’s description to “most valuable player”. His fiancée has reportedly called off their engagement.

The footballers’ alleged misdeeds were compared by the 7am news podcast to the Cornell Seven gang-rape case in the US, in which seven male students allegedly drugged and raped a fellow student for seven hours. The university’s reaction – which included requiring the accused to write essays – has raised questions about institutional responses to violent male behaviour.

“We are living in a world where the consequences are not where they should be,” said anti-violence activist and lawyer Tarang Chawla, whose sister Nikita was murdered by her partner in 2015. He cited online porn and influencers like Andrew Tate as contributing to young men’s negative attitudes and behaviour towards women.

Repeating the words of Gisèle Pelicot, the Frenchwoman whose husband for many years drugged her so other men could rape her, Chawla said: “Shame has to change sides. The shame should not be with the victims and survivors and women and girls for speaking up, it should be with perpetrators.”

Respect for women is hardly being modelled at the top. Albanese used a podcast appearance to comment, with cupped-hand gestures, on a pair of crown melons – prized in Japan and very expensive – that were presented to him by the Japanese prime minister Sanae Takaichi during her May visit to Australia. He was answering a question about “the most crap gift” he had received as PM.

The use of melons as slang for breasts is not idiomatic in Japanese – though the double-entendre is now widely understood thanks to media explanations. Japanese reporting focussed on the cultural disrespect Albanese had shown, though officials later back-pedalled to calm the diplomatic waves.

While he brushed aside the off-colour comments about his Japanese counterpart’s body, Albanese did “unequivocally apologise” for remarks on the same podcast that would have been better suited to the “snog, marry, avoid” genre of low-brow television. 

Asked his “shag, marry or date” preferences, he said: “Oh Kylie, clearly. All of the above. She’s terrific.”

Sexism has a long history in Australian politics. Julia Gillard, the country’s first and only woman prime minister, delivered her most famous speech in 2012 denouncing the misogyny she faced in parliament. 

Her opposition leader, Tony Abbott, now federal president of the conservative Liberal Party, once stood in front of “Ditch The Witch” placards outside Parliament House. The slogan was revived this year for Jacinta Allan, Victoria’s premier until she was ousted in July. 

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Australia isn’t in denial about the problem of domestic violence. Successive governments have allocated substantial resources to prevention, services for victims and law reform. What they struggle to demonstrate is whether these efforts are making women safer.

Halfway through a ten-year national plan, sexual violence remains near record levels. The domestic, family and sexual violence commissioner, Micaela Cronin, reported last month that the rate peaked in 2024 at its highest in more than 30 years. The intimate partner homicide rate for First Nations women rose to four victims per 100,000 people in 2024-25.

Cronin identified a central failure: investment largely goes to responding once violence reaches crisis point. Opportunities to intervene earlier, support recovery and prevent further harm were being missed, she said.

Parliamentary crossbenchers have taken the accountability gap to the prime minister: governments cannot adequately show where the money goes or whether the measures they fund are reducing harm.

Social services minister Tanya Plibersek is responsible for policy, funding and measures to address family, domestic and sexual violence. She welcomed Cronin’s finding of a slight fall in the number of women killed by their intimate partners. 

She said she had been assaulted at night when walking in Canberra and holds her keys defensively when in dark car parks “in case someone attacks me”.