Carrie Bickmore Just Delivered A Powerful Monologue About Violence Against Women

Carrie Bickmore has highlighted the disturbing rate at which Australian women are being violently killed, delivering a powerful monologue on Wednesday night’s episode of The Project about “a national crisis … unfolding in relative silence”.

“Just this month, at least 10 women have been killed at the hands of violent perpetrators, six of them in just five days,” said Bickmore. “Why isn’t this a national crisis?”

“Gayle Potter was killed simply standing outside her own house on October 2. New Mum Kristie Powell was looking after her baby boy when she was killed October 5. Toyah Cordingley was murdered just this week, simply because she wanted to take her dog for a walk on a beautiful week.”

Bickmore compared the issue to the threat of terrorism or the recent strawberry needle crisis, before asking why women being murdered didn’t inspire the same level of outcry from politicians or the general public.

“Why aren’t we talking about this? Why aren’t we all leaping into action?” she asked. “Sure these murders are reported in news bulletins but they haven’t got the whole country panicking. 57 women have been murdered this year … is it just that we’ve become so used to women dying through violence that we’ve run out of words?”

“The data we used [in this story] is from an organisation called Counting Dead Women Australia, who do an incredible job. But the fact that there is an organisation like that, and that their job is to mark the deaths of the women we’ve lost, is absolutely heartbreaking.”

You can watch Carrie Bickmore’s piece on violence against women here (starting at around the four minute mark).