Published January 2021

In order to produce this paper, AWAVA’s team undertook a literature review and held meetings with our Advisory group members to better capture positions on the issue within our membership. Being a member-based alliance and representing 25 specialist women’s services from every state and territory,

Our role is to ensure that our policy positions reflect the joint positions and benefit all members. While there is a consensus among our members and other experts on violence against women that coercive control is a serious and foundational part of sexual and gender-based violence against women, there
are diverse views on how best to prevent, address and respond to it. Differences in legal, historical and policy contexts between jurisdictions as well as intersectional lived experiences of violence among diverse groups of women are among the reasons for different stances on the criminalisation of coercive control. This paper provides an outline of the current political and legislative landscape along with
existing evidence. Concerns from women’s organisations and gaps in evidence are identified and recommendations for the ways forward are tabled to inform future policy and legislative process on this issue. We also note that compared to other issues there is still a lack of literature and research on
the issue. (From the Introduction). Record #7859