‘And the system fails us all the time’: Responses to domestic violence against First Nations women in Australia and the case for an integrated rights-based approach founded in self-determination
Bibliographic record
Abstract
First Nations women in Australia experience domestic violence disproportionately compared to Australia’s ‘settler’ population. Prior research suggests that domestic violence responses developed with the ‘settler’ population in mind may be problematic for First Nations women, but to date no studies have examined First Nations women’s domestic violence service interactions prior to fatal violence. I accordingly review a whole-of-population sample of domestic violence-related homicide cases from several Australian jurisdictions, alongside findings from yarning and interviews with First Nations Elders, specialist domestic violence workers and survivors, to examine and analyse First Nations women’s service contact histories preceding fatal violence. Viewing findings from a postcolonial, intersectional perspective attuned to Australia’s history of invasion/colonisation and the ongoing violence of ‘settler’ occupation, I argue the domestic violence response system—comprising criminal justice and specialist service responses—is an expression of colonising state power. I then ask how responses to domestic violence against First Nations women can be improved. While Australia’s domestic violence response system reflects current international standards, my findings suggest that these standards may be problematic for First Nations women in the Australian ‘settler’ context. I review United Nations (‘UN’) guidance to ascertain how, and to what extent, First Nations women’s right to self-determination has been considered relevant to First Nations women’s rights to be safe and free from violence. I conclude that, to date, UN standards and state monitoring of Australia has been insufficiently attentive to the interaction of these rights. I propose enhanced rights-integration (normative integration) as a way to support improved state responses to domestic violence against First Nations women, however I remain cautious about the UN’s ability to transcend its state-centric focus and support meaningful self-determination in its most fulsome sense.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.009 | 0.016 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.008 | 0.014 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.007 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.008 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".