Domestic abuse is a the public emergency on a scale with fire and traffic accidents

[IwantToRetire]

To tackle this gap in public awareness, Women’s Aid has launched a new campaign to ensure that domestic abuse is recognised as a public emergency on a scale with fire and traffic accidents.

The campaign highlights the stark reality that:

• Women are 50 times more likely to be injured by their partner than in a house fire
• Women are twice as likely to die at the hands of their partner than from smoke and gas inhalation
• Women are over three times more likely to be killed by a partner than by not wearing a seatbelt
• Four in five Brits don’t believe the scale of the issue of domestic abuse in the UK is greater than that of a car accident/house fires

While public safety campaigns around house fires and car accidents have existed for decades, the same has not been seen for domestic abuse, despite the fact it poses a larger risk to the lives of women than these other emergencies.

The Ignored Emergency has been launched to help people realise how prevalent and deadly domestic abuse is in England and features two key films and Each film is styled like a classic safety video, depicting familiar emergency scenarios that audiences instinctively know how to respond to.

A new survey, conducted as part of the campaign, found that 49% of Britons do not know there is a dedicated emergency line, 999-555, designed as a silent lifeline for situations, like domestic abuse, where help may be urgently needed but speaking is not an option.

Full press release at https://www.womensaid.org.uk/womens-aid-launch-public-awareness-campaign-ahead-of-16-days-of-activism-bringing-attention-to-the-ignored-emergency/

Domestic abuse is a warning sign for Domestic terrorism - present in 33% of cases.

Terrorists practice at home.

This. There seems to be a chronic inability to join the dots among the authorities and society generally.

Good way to think about it.

I think WHO (maybe UN?) declared VAWG a global public health issue some years ago but I don't recall campaigns that broke it down like this.

On a related note, I was interested in the impact of access to divorce | access to reproductive care on homicide (or, in this case, femicide) rates.

In U.S. states, barriers to divorce were associated with higher pregnancy-associated homicide rates while better access to reproductive care was linked with lower homicide rates.

Boyle KM, Regoeczi W, Meyer CB. State Divorce Laws, Reproductive Care Policies, and Pregnancy-Associated Homicide Rates, 2018-2021. JAMA Netw Open. 2024 Nov 8;7(11):e2444199. doi: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.44199. PMCID: PMC11549657.

jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2825998

Those ads are really effective imo. Well done Women's aid.

The videos are good.

However, I mentioned them to a couple of colleagues and, in follow-up discussion, realised that I don't know:

• how many women are killed in a year through not wearing a seatbelt
• how many house fires occur in occupied dwellings in a year.

That press release seems to have a typo about the number of '5's following 999 (screenshot).

• Four in five Brits don’t believe the scale of the issue of domestic abuse in the UK is greater than that of a car accident/house fires

I would have been one of the 1/5, but that's because I couldn't give a ball park figure for car accidents (different to seat belt example in some ways) and house fires (see above point) but believe domestic abuse is common.

To break it down, I looked up women's deaths from smoke and gas inhalation (as per the press release: "Women are twice as likely to die at the hands of their partner than from smoke and gas inhalation") and this was the first answer:

In England, the average number of women who die from smoke and gas inhalation each year is about eight, based on deaths from volatile substances between 2001 and 2020. This is a rate of 0.3 deaths per million women.

I tried looking up the number of house fires in England or UK and ended up with several numbers that I can't reconcile but there was this number re: fatalities:

In 2023, the UK had 218 dwelling fire fatalities

www.insuranceclaims.co.uk/house-fire-statistics/

To mix my sources, I don't know the sex breakdown but it seems to be a higher number of men in some age-groups:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/detailed-analysis-of-fires-attended-by-fire-and-rescue-services-england-april-2021-to-march-2022/detailed-analysis-of-fires-attended-by-fire-and-rescue-services-england-april-2021-to-march-2022

I couldn't readily find car occupant accident fatalities that I could stratify. I did see several references to non-seatbelt wearing status, of which 16%-20% were the proportion of women's fatalities (34% of men's).

www.brake.org.uk/get-involved/take-action/mybrake/knowledge-centre/uk-road-safety

I like the campaign. I believe that VAWG is a global public health issue that is poorly understood and that is true of the UK. I'm irritated by the lack of data that would help me to discuss it or even to scope it.

I think this is a brilliant idea - those statistics are shocking, but ring true to me based on my very rough awareness of the prevalence of all three things.

I do think most people assume that DV is much rarer than it is. Especially murders which are classed as DV. Because remember for every woman who is murdered there are probably a lot more living with abuse.

I don't think it actually matters if the numbers of women who die in house fires and car accidents are lower than assumed because both of those things have reduced in prevalence compared with previous decades, and also because women are less likely to die in those ways than men are. The campaign works because those kinds of deaths are things that we think of as being likely enough that we actively take preventative measures - smoke alarms, not leaving cooking unattended, seatbelts, car safety ratings - unlike for example, being mauled by a shark or killed by a falling tree.

And that's exactly what the campaign wants to do - make you aware that DV is in the category of "things which are likely enough to kill you/someone you know that it's well worth taking preventative measures", rather than being in the category of "freak rare occurrance that will never happen".

I do think most people assume that DV is much rarer than it is

I know my POV has changed in recent times from "Most blokes are all right really" to... (and I'm not going to try to put figures on it, but let's say) "A hell of lot higher proportion of men than I thought are misogynist cunts". And, maybe even worse, the perception (which 'might' be wrong, but I doubt it) that things are actually getting worse, not better.

It must be so heart breaking that year after year they try to get people, politicians, anybody to be aware of the everyday threat to women of DV and people just shrug.

I hope this approach works.

One of the other problems which has been happening since the start of Women's Aid is the way refuge the organisation has been able to get the media to just make it look like they are the only organisation that are providing DV support.

It is amazing how the media will never ever correct a false narrative they have created.

Fact Erin Pizzey did NOT start the first women's refuge. That was Olive Morris in south London. But surprisingly (not) the media made a heroine of a nice white woman, but ignored a black lesbian, known for squatting etc..

When local women aid projects got together to create a federation, in fact Refuge was not included because its standards weren't good enough to be included.

The National Domestic Violence Helpline was set up by WAFE (Women's Aid Federation England) but when eventually the Government took on funding it they made they apply for the contract and then somehow Refuge (a single member project) got the contract. Nothing to do with Cherie Blair being a good friend of Refuge.

(If interested you can do an internet search for some of the many employer / employee conflicts Refuge has had)

And at the moment (I wonder if Camilla knows) the Queen - guaranteed to get media coverage - is helping Refuge raise money to expand its (corporate) services.

Meanwhile, as it happening all over the country, yet another local authority is looking a bit red faced to find they have agreed the closure of the only women's aid refuge in their area because a finance officer presented a report saying a women only refuge isn't a good use of council money.