Zonta Caboolture partnered with the Parish of St Michaels, Caboolture, to prepare 1200 birthing kits this week, destined for developing countries. These kits help prevent infection and give a healthier birth for babies and mothers.
The kits were purchased for $5 each and consist of a 1m square of plastic, 4 rubber gloves, 3 pieces of string, a scapple, a piece of soap and 5 pieces of gauze.
Thank you to all the Zontians and friends who came along to birthing kit packing this week.
Sister Veronica, Sister Maria, Wayne and her team of helpers were amazing, the team in the kitchen provided and put out a beautiful morning tea/lunch with plenty of tea and coffee.
My sincere thanks go to Edith Fogg for driving 2 hours in the rain to be there for us all. I don’t think Edith will ever want to miss a birthing kit day.
Thank you to Pam B for presenting me with my ” 2025 Birthing Kit Champion ” badge. I feel honoured and humble.
At some stage in all our lives we may encounter a friend, colleague, peer or neighbour in a potentially unsafe situation.
We may see the bruises on her face, cuts on her hands, listen to the screaming late in the night but not know whether or how we should intervene.
Bystanders take action
Our intervention may be seen as an unwanted intrusion, or meddling in affairs which don’t concern us. But domestic violence (DV) in our communities is everyone’s business.
If we are to stop violence and make our communities, schools and businesses more safe for everyone, then, as bystanders we need to step up and take action.
It’s not always easy to identify if you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence or is in an abusive relationship. Violence and abuse are experienced in many different ways. Violence and abuse can include emotional abuse, sexual abuse and financial abuse.
4 things bystanders can do?
As a friend or colleague you can support someone you know who has told you they are experiencing violence by:
Believe what they tell you and making sure they know the abuse is not their fault.
Be supportive, listen, be encouraging and open to what they have to say.
Encourage the person to seek professional help and discuss the types of options they may have.
Offer to go with them when they meet with a support service.
Action starts with us.
If we set off the alarm every time we hear screams or cries in the apartment next to ours or the house across the road; if we called the police if we suspected something was not right; if we gave a hand to the victim, comforted them, and listened to them; we would already be helping to make a difference to one persons life and maybe to many others.
If, in addition, we did not blame the victim; if we didn’t succumb to the stereotype that the woman had provoked her husband or partner, rapist, abuser; we would make more contribution.
That’s something each of us can do.
No woman is to blame
We need to understand that men and women are not equally at risk and that no woman is to blame for being a victim of violence.
There is no justification for beatings, psychological torture, or harassment.
Teach our daughters and sons
We need to teach our daughters and sons about violence against women, and then spread awareness among friends, colleagues, on social networks.
In every conversation we need to take action.
Despite the enormous potential of technology, digital tools, and the internet, these have also perpetuated gender disparities and introduced new forms of oppression for women and girls.
For many, technology-facilitated gender-based violence, is new terminology but not new phenomena.
Technology-facilitated gender-based violence takes many forms including:
cyberbullying
online harassment
hate speech
doxing
intimate image abuse
trolling
deep fakes.
Women, girls, and gender-non-conforming individuals are more likely to be targeted and experience more severe and lasting consequences because of their gender. Studies across the world show that 16 to 58 per cent of women and girls have been targeted by violence online.
The impacts of this type of violence extend beyond the digital sphere, entrenching inequalities and posing a significant threat to women’s rights and safety both online and off.
Climate events such as floods, droughts, food shortages, fires and excessive storms along with slow environmental degradation exacerbate the risks of violence against women and girls due to displacement, resource scarcity and food insecurity and disruption to service provision for survivors.
Following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the rate of rape among women displaced to trailer parks rose by 53.6 times the baseline rate in Mississippi, USA, for that year.
In Ethiopia, there was an increase in girls sold into early marriage in exchange for livestock to help families cope with the impacts of prolonged droughts.
Nepal witnessed an increase in trafficking from an estimated 3,000 to 5,000 annually in 1990 to between 12,000 and 20,000 per year after the 2015 earthquake.
Zonta International through its campaign Zonta Says Now is raising awareness to the plight of women and girls during these significant climate events and is calling for action from governments and agencies to ensure that the interests of women and girls are at the forefront of any disaster preparedness.
Detailed publication and infographics relating to ‘Tackling violence against women and girls in the context of climate change’ are available at Unwomen.org.au.
“Why doesn’t she just leave?” A question many of us ask in reaction to a story of intimate partner abuse. This reaction speaks to the core of the problem and the erroneous belief that an abused woman has agency — a capacity to exert power — in her relationship, when just the opposite is true.
Social researchers and DV practitioners know that psychologically abused women have low self-esteem, which then influences how empowered she feels to have influence over her life. Women with controlling partners experience a slow, insidious, and nearly invisible condition of coercion that entraps them in their intimate relationships. So well hidden, this entrapment can go undetected even by the woman herself.
Being unaware of what is taking place, women naturally minimise and deny the problems with their intimate partners. It’s behaviour so embedded in our culture and social expectations that women don’t see it or have words for it. At the same time, a woman’s experiences costs her a loss of self-esteem and trust in her own perception — making it all the more difficult to see the truth.
As friends, family and community members we must not fall into this stereotypical trap of blaming the victim for not taking action. We need to remember that a controlling partner seeks to overpower by using psychological abuse tactics that coerce and persuade his partner to his way of thinking.
We need to help the victim understand what has occurred in her life and help her heal rather than expecting her to fit a mould which may or may not be helpful.
The 16 Days of Activism against Gender Violence is a global campaign to raise awareness about violence against women and its impact on a woman’s physical, psychological, social and spiritual well-being. Human rights cannot be universal without human rights for women.
The 16 Days of Activism begins on 25th November on International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women and ends on December 10th International Human Rights Day. These two dates highlight that violence against women is a human rights abuse. We invite community members and organisations to coordinate or participate in an event to unite in the struggle to end violence against women.
During the 16 days, activists around the world use the campaign to:
further raise awareness about the prevalence and devastating impact of gender violence,
celebrate victories gained by the Women’s Rights Movement,
challenge policy and practice that allow women to be targeted for acts of violence, and
demand that violence against women be recognised as an abuse of human rights.
Zonta Clubs around the world have engaged in this campaign through the Zonta Says No to Violence against Women and Girls since 2012. In many places, clubs organise the lighting up of significant landmarks and buildings in the colour orange to symbolise activism. Clubs also use orange cut out female figures place din strategic locations to raise awareness and help engage the community. Clubs also organise webinars, podcasts and engage in social media campaigns to get the message to as broad an audience as possible.
Zonta Club of Caboolture advocates during the 16 Days of Activism in a variety of ways:
Zonta Says No walk through Brisbane on 22 November 2023.
Zonta Says No banner displayed at Centenary Park, Caboolture.
Orange figures displayed in local businesses and organisations across Caboolture, Morayfield and Burpengary.
The lighting of Caboolture Town Square in orange lights.
Zonta Club of Caboolture members share information about gender violence in the Morayfield Shopping Centre.
Child marriage, also known as early or forced marriage, is any formal marriage or informal union between a child under the age of 18 and an adult or another child.
1 in 5 child marriages
Girls are disproportionately affected, with 1 in 5 young women aged 20 to 24 years old married before their 18th birthday around the world.
Actually, that 1 in 5 rate indicates progress toward eliminating the practice because just ten years ago 1 in 4 girls were married as children. That is 25 million child marriages stopped.
UNICEF estimates in the last 25 years, some 68 million child marriages have been averted thanks to the efforts of community led projects which are tackling historical and cultural practices.
12 million child brides 2022
Despite these efforts, in 2022, 12 million girls became child brides
Who is at risk of child marriage?
Girls who are at greatest risk of marrying early are also often the hardest to reach with protective services and support. They are often poor, live in rural areas or are otherwise marginalised. Often isolated from family, friends and their communities, they are often deprived of opportunities to pursue a livelihood and to thrive.
Impact of child marriage
Child marriage leads to intergenerational cycles of poverty. Child marriages result in early and unwanted pregnancies, lack of education opportunities and reliance upon others for long-term economic wellbeing.
It is a form of violence against women and for this reason it remains a signature and ongoing project of Zonta International. Zonta Caboolture advocates against child and forced marriage in Moreton Bay Region and Australia.
Services for women and girls experiencing violence can be the difference between life and death. This means that shelters, hotlines, counselling and all support for survivors of gender-based violence need to be available for those in need, even during crises and emergencies.
Every year, the 16 Days of Activism campaign calls for united, global action to end all forms of violence against women and girls.
How can you help?
You can help by calling on governments to bridge funding gaps to address violence against women and girls, ensure essential services for survivors of violence are maintained during crisis and conflict, implement prevention measures, and invest in adapting and improving life-saving services for women and girls in diverse contexts.
Zonta’s commitment
Zonta clubs around the world are already heavily committed and involved with their local women’s support services through volunteering at shelters, donating clothes or supplies, or conducting training as well as providing supplementary funds.
Zonta Club of Caboolture provides service and funding to local organisations including the Centre Against Domestic Violence, Buddy Bags, Caboolture Community Action, Caboolture Public Hospital and more. We also provide grants and scholarships to support local women and girls in their educational endeavours.
Support Zonta Caboolture to make a difference, become a member. Learn more about Zonta and its international organisation.
Zonta says speak up against gender based violence. Unfortunately, this weekend 2-3 December more women died from domestic violence in Australia (Destroy the Joint and Counting Dead Women Australia). Currently the number stands at 58 dead as a result of domestic violence.
Charlotte Bunch, activist, writer and organiser in feminist social justice was there when the campaign against gender based violence started in 1991. In this year a team of 25 women from around the world who came together at the first Women’s Global Leadership Institute at the Rutgers University in New Jersey, USA.
The first 16 Days of Activism
“We were trying to link violence against women with human rights, and somebody said, the Latin American women have declared International Day Against Violence on 25 November, and we have linked that to Human Rights Day , and that’s 16 days. That’s how the first 16 Days of Activism started,” narrates Bunch.
Zonta Club of Caboolture raising awareness of the 16 Days of Activism and Zonta Says No to violence by displaying orange silhouettes in Caboolture organisations and businesses.
Time to speak up
“Wherever you are, take one simple action: Speak up! If you have experienced violence, you can speak up about your own experience. Speak up (even) if you haven’t experienced violence. Speak up when you hear someone’s story of violence and ask what you can do to help, how you can help that person get out of that situation. Speak up when you hear people joking about violence against women, and say, That’s not funny! That’s a serious problem.
And to speak up effectively, you also have to learn more about the violence that exists in your community. People need to speak up about the violence in their own lives, in their own community, in their own neighbourhood, family, and extended community first. As you do that, you can see linkages to violence against women in other places, ” Bunch states.
1 in 3 women and girls
With one in three women and girls worldwide still experiencing violence, the need for action is urgent. We asked activists from around the world for their advice on what each of us can do in our lives, in our homes and communities today and every day.
If we all speak up, we can make a difference. Don’t sweep domestic violence under the carpet. Speak up so one day our daughters can live without violence.
Zonta Club of Caboolture Says NO to gender based violence. Members at the Caboolture Town Hall lit up in orange lights during the 16 Days of Activism.
Learn more about domestic violence, read our other articles on 16 Days of Activism, advocacy campaigns or join Zonta Caboolture and help build better lives for women and girls.
