And Australia was second-highest in the world,behind only Malaysia,when asked if it was acceptable to use sexist or misogynistic language online,with 14 per cent saying that it was OK. The global average was 8 per cent. Of the Australians surveyed,23 per cent of men said it was OK,compared to 5 per cent of women.
Australia was also second-highest,behind Malaysia,when asked if it was OK to share intimate images of a woman online without their consent,with 11 per cent saying it was OK compared with the global average of 6 per cent.
Almost one in five Australian men said it was acceptable compared with just 4 per cent of women.
Kelly Beaver from Ipsos said she was shocked by the results and told Ms Gillard that they exposed “some real issues” in Australia when it came to gender bias and equity.
“Some of the numbers in particular for Australia ... we can see it’s substantively higher than other countries on the biases on an online perspective and what’s acceptable. I think there are some real issues there,so yes,shocked and disappointed,” she said.
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“The numbers will be higher in real life because not everybody will want to acknowledge that they have those biases,so the numbers are the best-case scenario in terms of the level of prevalence,” she said.
Saxon Mullins,rape survivor and director of the organisation Rape and Sexual Assault Research and Advocacy,said she believed Australia had made progress on attitudes towards women when compared to a decade ago. But she said she was particularly disturbed by the survey’s results about online harassment – which she believes needs to be treated just as seriously as other kinds of abuse.
“Online harassment … comes with a very dismissive ‘you could just turn the computer off’ attitude,” she said. “But we are online all day,working,socialising all those things;our whole lives are on there.”
Susanne Legena,chief executive of Plan International Australia,said she was not shocked by the results but “would have hoped” for better male attitudes considering the past year had seen such a focus on women’s safety at work and consent education.
Ms Legena said she wanted to see a “reckoning” with male misogyny from Australian men themselves and to hear from organisations like the AFL or male-dominated ASX businesses on what they planned to do to change men’s attitudes.
“Are they shocked by these results? Because I’m not,” she said.
“I can’t help but feel like,‘where are all the Australia men allies on the scene? Where are they in our culture really calling for systemic deep change?’ Because I can’t see them. I often feel I’m talking to myself in a bubble.”
Former British prime minister Theresa May,who last month visited Australia on behalf of the Victorian Liberal Party to help it improve its women’s representation,said she had found the country backward on the issue.
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“I just got that sense that perhaps things haven’t moved as a far forward as they have here[in Britain],in terms of approaches of getting women into politics,” Lady May said.
“I think there is quite a lot to be done in Australia … but if I’m honest,I was a little surprised at the extent of the Australian figures,” she said,referring to the Ipsos research.
Asked to nominate what single gender issue they would target in the next year,Ms Gillard singled out violence against women saying the issue had been highlighted bythe murder of Sarah Everard in London.
Lady May said she was most concerned about women’s mental health as a result of online attacks on them and that it would discourage a future generation of women leaders from entering politics or other public service jobs.
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