Forced Marriage as a Form of Family Violence in Victoria | Monash Gender and Family Violence Prevention Centre

Since 2013, forced marriage has been a central pillar of the Commonwealth response to trafficking and slavery-like practices, it is responded to as form of servitude. There has been consistent research pointing to questions regarding the efficacy of this model, with strong calls within Australia for forced marriage to be viewed as a specific form of family violence. In 2018, the Victorian Family Violence Prevention Act 2008 passed an amendment to include forced marriage and dowry-related abuse statutory examples of family violence. In March 2019, these new examples came into effects, thus marking an important shift in how forced marriage is conceptualised. Victoria remains the only Australian jurisdiction to have recognised forced marriage in this manner. However, there is currently no publicly available information or empirical research examining the impacts of the new legislation in Victoria, including resources investments in victim support processes, and questions remain about the implementation and impact of this new legislation. In this seminar, Dr Siru Tan draws on preliminary research with family violence and forced marriage service providers in Victoria to explore the opportunities and shifts that have followed the inclusion of forced marriage as an example of family violence.

Dr Shih Joo Tan (Siru)

Dr Shih Joo Tan (Siru) is a post-doctoral research fellow with the Monash Gender and Family Violence Prevention Centre, and a researcher with the Monash Migration and Inclusion Centre. She is a feminist critical criminologist whose work is interdisciplinary and focuses on gendered labour, migration, regulation, human security, exploitation and criminalisation. In interrogating these intersections and the impacts that labour and immigration structures can have on sustaining exploitation and everyday insecurity for women migrants, her goal is to help create awareness about the need for effective policies that can offer genuine safety and security for marginalised women.

Most recently, she has published on countertrafficking responses in Southeast Asia, looking specifically at the impacts and effectiveness of legal and protection mechanisms for women migrant workers. Shih Joo’s current research is focused on the experiences of security and safe work in the everyday home-workplace for female migrant domestic workers.