Part 2: Priority areas for primary prevention action

Building on the core and overarching principles for design and implementation of the Second Action Plan outlined in part one above, the following section sets out Respect Victoria’s advice on specific prevention actions to be prioritised in the Second Action Plan. They represent areas where the greatest opportunities lie to strengthen Australia’s prevention efforts, address emerging challenges and accelerate progress to end gendered violence.    

2.1 Strengthen prevention in childhood and adolescence

Prioritising the safety and wellbeing of children and young people is central to achieving the long-term objectives of the National Plan. While policy, service design and programming have traditionally positioned children and young people as bystanders or collateral victims of men’s violence against women, prevention and early intervention efforts can sometimes focus predominantly on shaping their future adult relationships. The Second Action Plan should adopt an intersectional, life-course approach that recognises children and young people as a diverse cohort with different developmental stages, identities, experiences and support needs.  

Ending gendered violence in Australia will require coordinated prevention investment across the systems that shape children and young people’s lives. Universal primary prevention initiatives like Respectful Relationships Education remain the foundation of this approach and must continue to receive sustained investment, implementation support, workforce capability building and quality assurance. However, for school-based prevention programs to be effective, they must be complemented by mutually reinforcing interventions tailored for early childhood education, community sports settings, primary healthcare, youth mental health, child and family services and parenting supports, recognising that children and young people develop attitudes, relationships and identities through their relationships and interactions across multiple settings rather than through one-off interventions (33). Place-based prevention initiatives such as Respect Ballarat demonstrate how a life course perspective can be used to coordinate prevention activity aligned with Respectful Relationships Education to reinforce consistent prevention learning throughout childhood and adolescence.

As children and young people’s engagement with digital environments grow, so too does their exposure to technology facilitated gender-based violence, image-based abuse, the impacts of violent pornography and harmful online interactions all amplified by the increasing influence of generative Artificial Intelligence (26,3). New evidence also points to the increasing influence of online misogyny and manosphere content in shaping attitudes and behaviours among boys in Australian schools (34). 

Evidence demonstrates that children and young people engage most effectively with prevention initiatives that reflect their lived experiences, relationships and increasingly digital lives. While primary prevention remains essential to addressing the underlying drivers of violence, there is growing recognition that our efforts to make online spaces safer could also benefit from harm reduction approaches that acknowledge the central role of digital technologies to children and young people’s lives. Rather than assuming disengagement from online environments is possible, harm reduction seeks to reduce the risks and negative consequences associated with technology through education, capability building, safer digital environments and accessible supports.  

The Commonwealth Government’s online safety reforms, including social media minimum age restrictions, and the introduction of affirmative consent legislation across jurisdictions are important measures. However, regulation alone cannot equip children and young people with the knowledge, critical thinking, digital literacy and social and emotional skills they need to safely navigate increasingly complex online environments (33). These reforms should therefore be complemented by sustained investment in primary prevention including Respectful Relationships Education and targeted critical online media literacy (further discussed at below 2.3) (33). As digital technologies and online harms continue to evolve, so too must prevention practice. Educators, parents, carers, youth workers and other practitioners working with children require ongoing professional learning, implementation support and evidence-based resources to confidently respond to emerging issues and ensure prevention remains relevant to children and young people’s rapidly changing digital lives (35). 

The Second Action Plan should also recognise that the proliferation and strengthening of interventions aimed at children and young people using violence or showing early warning signs of harmful sexual behaviour is both an early intervention and long-term prevention priority. Opportunities to identify and respond to adolescent violence in the home remain fragmented and inconsistent across Australian jurisdictions and families have limited options to access specialist, appropriate support (36). Strengthening these service systems will improve outcomes for children, young people and families while creating important opportunities to interrupt trajectories into future violence. 

2.2 Coordinate national action to engage men and boys in primary prevention

Respect Victoria welcomes the Commonwealth Government’s recent commitment to developing a coordinated approach to engaging men and boys in violence prevention. The Second Action Plan enables the ongoing development of policy and practice related to men and boys and has the opportunity to deliver appropriately resourced, impactful and fit-for-purpose work that is informed by and accountable to, women, feminist principles and primary prevention evidence and expertise to ensure a ‘do no harm’ approach. Building healthy masculinities and engaging men and boys has been a strong focus of many prevention organisations (such as Our Watch and Respect Victoria) for years and it has been embedded in Change the Story since 2015 (11). The increasing emphasis on engaging men and boys in prevention and more men’s health organisations entering this space is welcome. It is important that such violence prevention efforts are complementary and challenge the drivers and reinforcers of violence. .We are starting to see promising examples of gendered violence prevention and men’s health fields coming together through networks such as Men Engage. To build on and support such work in future, existing primary prevention infrastructure and expertise must be maintained to allow new initiatives and organisations focused on men and boys to partner, build and support this work in mutually reinforcing ways for maximum impact.  

Violence against women and children remains a profound and persistent problem. Women and children continue to experience significant injury, trauma and death because of men’s violence. Preventing this violence must remain the central objective of efforts to engage men and boys. At the same time, the evidence demonstrates that the rigid gender norms, restrictive constructions of masculinity and gender inequality within relationships, systems and institutions that drive violence against women can also contribute to poor mental health outcomes, social isolation, reduced help-seeking and restrictive social expectations for men and boys (37). Recognising these broader impacts reinforces the importance of gender-transformative approaches that challenge harmful attitudes, norms and structures while promoting healthier, more equitable relationships (12).  

The rapid growth of online misogyny and resistance to gender equality has fundamentally changed the primary prevention landscape. Increasingly, online manosphere platforms and content are providing boys and men with a sense of belonging, identity and purpose while overtly or covertly shaping harmful ideas about masculinity, gender roles, relationships and respect. Australian and international research has found social media recommendation algorithms can expose boys and men to misogynistic and anti-feminist content even when they have shown no prior interest and are engaging with mainstream interests such as sport, fitness or gaming, with exposure becoming more frequent and more extreme over time and as engagement increases (39). These online environments can reinforce grievance, harmful masculine norms and, for some, create pathways towards broader extremist ideologies and violence. Researchers have described this phenomenon as “misogynist radicalisation” (40). It highlights the importance of primary prevention approaches that engage men and boys early, before harmful attitudes become entrenched and generate violent behaviour (24). It also underscores the importance of ensuring any nationally coordinated approach to engaging men and boys in violence prevention under the Second Action Plan is closely connected with broader reforms to address misogyny, gender-based violent extremism and online safety while remaining firmly grounded in Australia’s primary prevention evidence base and gender transformative practice.  

Primary prevention, early intervention, health and mental health promotion play distinct but complementary roles in this work and should be recognised and supported accordingly.  As investment grows, governments should build on this existing evidence and practice rather than creating parallel approaches. Building on the Healthy Masculinities Trial and Evaluation, the National Men’s Health Strategy 2020-2030 and the Australian Longitudinal Study on Male Health (Ten to Men), the Second Action Plan should support shared workforce capability, evaluation, practice standards and a common theory of change, while allowing different approaches to be adapted to different communities and settings. Funding agreements, grant criteria, commissioning processes and evaluation frameworks should explicitly align with Australia’s primary prevention evidence base, gender transformative practice and the objectives of the National Plan alongside objectives to encourage help-seeking and protective behaviours among Australian men and boys.

Australia has developed significant expertise in engaging men and boys across the life course through the work of specialist prevention organisations like Respect Victoria, Jesuit Social Services, Women’s Health organisations and Victoria’s peak body Safe and Equal. Importantly Aboriginal community-controlled organisations, researchers, sporting organisations and community-led organisations should also be engaged given their wealth of expertise and knowledge and experience engaging men and boys where they live, work and socialise (41). Mechanisms for partnership between the primary prevention sector and men’s health and mental health organisations will ensure work in this burgeoning area contributes to preventing violence rather than inadvertently reinforcing harmful gender norms or undermining existing prevention efforts.  

The following case study demonstrates how evidence-based primary prevention interventions and men’s mental health and wellbeing promotion are complementary, not competing objectives. By encouraging help-seeking, emotional literacy and positive relationships, prevention interventions like Respect Victoria’s What Kind Of Man Do You Want To Be? campaign can provide constructive alternatives to the harmful gender norms, attitudes and stereotypes often promoted through online misogynistic communities. 

2.3 Take action to prevent technology-facilitated gender-based violence  

Australians increasingly live, work, learn and socialise through digital technologies. As online and offline lives become increasingly interconnected, technology is reshaping how gendered violence is perpetrated, experienced and prevented. Technology-facilitated-gender-based-violence (TFGBV) is no longer a niche or emerging form of gendered violence. It affects children, young people and adults, occurs across schools, workplaces, universities and homes and takes many forms including image-based abuse, technology-facilitated coercive control, online sexual harassment, cyberstalking, gendered misinformation or disinformation and AI-generated abuse (43). The Second Action Plan should recognise TFGBV as a growing national primary prevention priority requiring a coordinated, national approach that combines regulation, industry accountability and harm reduction measures with strong primary prevention interventions.  

The Commonwealth Government’s has established important foundations through reforms to the Online Safety Act, continued investment in the eSafety Commission and social media age restrictions. However, regulation and enforcement alone cannot keep pace with rapidly evolving technologies or prevent the rapid normalisation of online misogynistic content and increasing rates of TFGBV (44). A comprehensive national approach to preventing TFGBV should combine stronger regulation, industry accountability and safety-by-design measures with sustained investment in primary prevention, harm reduction and online media literacy.

Despite the rapid growth of TFGBV, investment in primary prevention tailored for digital environments has not kept pace. Few jurisdictions have explicitly recognised TFGBV within family violence or prevention policy frameworks and there are very few dedicated funding streams to support primary prevention initiatives, workforce capability building, knowledge sharing or evidence generation. This represents a significant gap in the National Plan’s efforts to prevent gendered violence. Digital environments are no longer simply settings where violence occurs, they are active spaces where attitudes towards gender, relationships and violence are formed, reinforced and challenged (45). Strong investment and activation of primary prevention of gendered violence approaches across digital environments is therefore essential – not only to prevent TFGB but to effectively address the underlying drivers of all forms of gendered violence where they are fostered and sustained.  

Respect Victoria recently co-convened a national forum with the eSafety Commissioner bringing together prevention practitioners, researchers, technology experts, regulators and governments to identify emerging evidence and practical policy solutions to prevent TFGBV. The forum highlighted the importance of drawing on specialist primary prevention expertise to build the capability of policy makers and the technology industry, while also equipping prevention experts with the knowledge and skills to understand how digital platforms operate and the ways in which technologies shape online experiences, influence behaviours and create opportunities for primary prevention intervention. Dedicated funding and better integration of TFGBV across every pillar of the Second Action Plan will be essential to ensure momentum in this area is harnessed. Respect Victoria will shortly publish further guidance on harm reduction in digital environments and critical media literacy to support governments and practitioners in this rapidly evolving area.  

As digital technologies become increasingly embedded in everyday life, primary prevention should be strengthened and complemented by harm reduction approaches that recognise that most people cannot simply opt out of engaging in online environments. A harm reduction approach offers a promising framework by focusing interventions at both the interpersonal and ecological levels (46). At the interpersonal level, harm reduction includes initiative such as critical digital literacy, consent education and giving users a choice to opt in or out of social media algorithms, such as the Teach Us Consent Fix Our Feeds campaign. At the ecological level, it includes measures that make digital environments safer by design, including platform accountability and Safety by Design measures (46). As the evidence base continues to develop, there is an opportunity to embed primary prevention and harm reduction approaches within national initiatives that seek to improve online safety and digital participation. Further discussion of the application of harm reduction to digital environments will be available in Respect Victoria’s forthcoming paper, Conceptualising harm reduction in digital spaces for the prevention of gender-based violence.

The Commonwealth Government’s recent commitment to develop Australia’s first National Media Literacy Strategy provides an important opportunity to embed primary prevention of TFGBV and harm reduction within media literacy initiatives across the life course. For example, alongside respectful relationships education, online media literacy should equip children and young people with the knowledge, skills and critical thinking needed to recognise TFGBV, understand digital consent and safely navigate increasingly complex digital environments. Importantly, it must also build the capability of all Australians to question and challenge online misogyny, harmful gender stereotypes and manipulative online content. This is increasingly important given evidence that social media recommendation algorithms can expose users – particularly men and boys – to manosphere content even where they have not actively sought it out (47). Strengthening online media literacy will complement regulatory reform if it effectively embeds primary prevention principles and addresses the attitudes, norms and behaviours that underpin TFGBV.  

Initiatives such as the Commonwealth’s Preventing Tech-based Abuse of Women Grant Program provide important opportunities to develop and test innovative approaches. These initiatives should be rigorously evaluated, shared across jurisdictions and scaled where effective, ensuing prevention of TFGBV evidence-based approaches are proliferated and embedded rather than remaining short-term and project based. 

2.4 Expand dedicated action to prevent violence affecting LGBTQIA+ communities  

Violence against women and violence against LGBTQIA+ communities is deeply interconnected, with drivers of both forms of violence rooted in many of the same harmful beliefs, attitudes and behaviours. LGBTIQIA+ communities (particularly trans and gender diverse people) are impacted by many of the same gendered drivers of violence as cisgender heterosexual women, including rigid gender roles and stereotyped constructions of masculinity and femininity (48). Australia’s established primary prevention evidence base provides a strong foundation for addressing these common drivers. At the same time, violence affecting LGBTQIA+ communities is also shaped by distinct and overlapping forms of discrimination – including homophobia, biphobia and transphobia – which are supported and enabled by cisnormativity, heteronormativity and rigid gender binaries (49). This necessitates inclusive and tailored prevention approaches.

The National Plan recognises LGBTQIA+ people as a priority population, particularly because they experience disproportionately high rates of gendered violence (19). Of respondents to the 2019 Private Lives 3 survey, almost two in three (64.9%) had experienced family violence, three in five (60.7%) had experienced intimate partner violence and almost one in two (48.6%) had experienced sexual assault. These rates were much higher for LGBTQIA+ people with disabilities and for trans and gender diverse people (50).  

Rigid gender stereotypes, particularly associated with masculinity, also underpin homophobia, biphobia and transphobia. These attitudes are often used to police and punish people who do not conform to dominant gender norms and contribute to violence affecting LGBTQIA+ communities and to gender inequality more broadly (51). Respect Victoria’s What Kind of Man Do You Want To Be? campaign, demonstrates that prevention initiatives that challenge harmful norms about masculinity can also shift attitudes associated with gender inequality and transphobia. Forthcoming evaluation findings show reduced endorsement among surveyed men of the belief that ‘a trans man is not a real man’ (42). These findings reinforce the importance of gender-transformative primary prevention approaches that address the shared drivers of violence.  

The First Action Plan delivered the National Survey of LGBTQIA+SB Experiences of Sexual Violence, workforce capability building initiatives and several pilot programs focused on testing inclusive prevention and response interventions for certain cohorts within the LGBTQIA+ community (18). However, overall, investment dedicated to prevention of violence against LGBTIQA+ people and communities was minimal. The Second Action Plan presents an opportunity to expand efforts and ensure they are commensurate with the very high rates of violence experienced by LGBTQIA+ communities.  

LGBTQIA+ community-led organisations have significant expertise in designing and delivering culturally safe, inclusive and evidence-informed primary prevention initiatives. Increasingly, these organisations are partnering with the broader primary prevention sector to strengthen prevention across community, institutions and systems (52). Many of these organisations – particularly those led by trans and gender-diverse communities – continue to experience insecure funding and limited capacity, thereby constraining their ability to sustain prevention initiatives, contribute to policy development and participate in long-term systems reform. Actions under the Second Action Plan must be designed and delivered in partnership with LGBTQIA+ community-controlled organisations to ensure they reflect the needs and experiences of the many subpopulations within the LGBTQIA+ community. This includes adequately funding these organisations to ensure they are properly resourced and remunerated so that they can contribute to policy and legislative reform.

The forthcoming Changing with Pride: A National Framework to Prevent Violence Against LGBTIQA+ People, developed in partnership by Our Watch and Rainbow Health Australia, will establish the roadmap for a national coordinated approach to preventing violence affecting LGBTQIA+ communities. It will articulate shared drivers, principles and accountabilities across sectors and settings. Adopting Changing with Pride to guide implementation of activities under the Second Action Plan will ensure nationally consistent, coordinated and evidence-informed prevention approaches across every jurisdiction, while simultaneously supporting tailored interventions that are responsive to the diversity of LGBTQIA+ communities.  

Implementation of the Second Action Plan should also be closely aligned with the Action Plan for the Health and Wellbeing of LGBTQIA+ People 2025-2035, ensuring these complementary national strategies can drive a coordinated and consistent approach to both preventing and addressing the impacts of violence experienced by LGBTQIA+ communities.  

2.5 Prioritise primary prevention of sexual violence

Recent reform, including changes to consent legislation across many jurisdictions and the Australian Law Reform Commission’s Inquiry into Justice Responses to Sexual Violence, have rightly strengthened the national focus on sexual violence. While sexual violence shares many of the same gendered drivers as other forms of gendered violence, it also requires a distinct primary prevention approach that warrants greater policy attention and dedicated investment.  

New analysis of National Community Attitudes towards Violence against Women (NCAS) by Respect Victoria demonstrates that attitudes relating to sexual violence, including victim-blaming and understandings of consent, remain among the most resistant to change, highlighting the need for sustained evidence-informed prevention approaches that extend beyond legal reform and crisis response to address the entrenched, harmful social norms, attitudes and behaviours that underpin sexual violence (8).  

Legislation can establish expectations and accountability, but it cannot on its own shift the community attitudes, norms and behaviours that underpin sexual violence. Emerging evidence supports relationships-centred approaches that teach consent as an active, ongoing communicative practice rather than a narrow legal concept (53). Justice reform across every jurisdiction, including national harmonisation of affirmative consent laws, should therefore be complemented by targeted comprehensive relationships and sexuality education that builds understanding of consent, power, boundaries, healthy sexuality and respectful relationships in developmentally appropriate ways across the life course (33). Victoria’s affirmative consent reforms demonstrate the value of this approach. Alongside legislative change, the Victorian Government invested in targeted education and primary prevention initiatives, including the Supporting Young People to Understand Affirmative Consent program delivered by Sexual Assault Services Victoria, YAC Vic and Safe and Equal. This integrated approach illustrates ways in which primary prevention can offer wrap-around support for legislative reform and strengthen its implementation and impact.

The Second Action Plan should prioritise further research and stronger primary prevention approaches that explicitly address sexual violence across the life course. This should include sustained investment in Respectful Relationships Education and comprehensive relationships and sexuality education that equips children and young people with the knowledge and skills necessary to critically interpret messages conveyed through pornography and other online content about gender, consent, intimacy and relationships (33). Drawing on recommendations from the 2024 National Survey of LGBTQIA+ Experiences of Sexual Violence, consent and sexuality education across Australian schools should embed LGBTQIA+ specific content to ensure all young people see themselves reflected in primary prevention messaging (54). These efforts should also support parents, carers and educators to discuss and navigate these issues confidently, both with their children and in their own lives.  

Pornography has become an increasingly influential source of information about sex and relationships for many children and young people – often being viewed (on purpose or by mistake) before formal sex education begins (55). Emerging evidence suggests exposure to violent and degrading pornography can shape attitudes, expectations and behaviours relating to consent, gender and sexual relationships – for children and adults alike (56). Yet policy responses remain fragmented, with ongoing uncertainty about the most appropriate combination of regulation, education and primary prevention required to mitigate the risk of children and young people developing harmful sexual attitudes and behaviours (57). The Second Action Plan provides an opportunity to strengthen evidence-informed prevention work in this area, alongside other work addressing technology-facilitated gender-based violence and online misogyny.

Sexual violence occurs across all ages and demographics, but some population groups experience disproportionately higher rates, including First Nations women, people with disability, women and children from culturally diverse, migrant and refugee backgrounds and LGBTQIA+ people (58). These communities require sexual violence prevention approaches that respond to their experiences and the intersecting forms of discrimination that increase their level of risk. The Second Action Plan should strengthen universal sexual violence prevention alongside population-specific approaches, including community-led initiatives such as Transfemme which promotes healthier relationships between trans-women and cisgender men and U Right, Sis?, a culturally-safe prevention program, empowering First Nations communities in Central Australia to identify and respond to technology-facilitated sexual violence and abuse (59).

Flexible and sustained investment is also required to build the capacity of the specialist sexual violence sector to undertake early intervention approaches, including the provision of services to respond to early warning signs of harmful sexual behaviours in children and young people. Appropriately resourcing the sector to build this capability will complement implementation of the Australian Law Reform Commission Inquiry’s recommendations and ensure Australia is investing not only in responding to sexual violence, but also in preventing it.