One in six Australian women has experienced physical abuse by a current or former partner, and one in five has experienced sexual violence. Domestic homicide may be a relatively rare event but these figures tell us something we might prefer not to hear: that gender violence doesn't just exist on the fringes. The ubiquity of this national shame – where one-quarter of Australian children and adolescents have witnessed physical domestic violence against a mother or step-mother – appears to place it front and centre of our cultural identity.

We're not unique in this, by the way. In the United States, the number of women who die at the hands of men each year is the same as the fatality count of 9/11; a parallel prompting comparison between the unified response to terrorism and the reaction to the systematic and relentless campaign of terror waged by husbands and partners across the US.  According to MacKinnon, this diabolical state of affairs might be something we're stuck with for as long as women are considered "things" rather than people.

On this side of the Pacific, a report released in March by Quentin Bryce, former governor-general and chair of Queensland's Special Taskforce on Domestic and Family Violence, is no less ominous, characterising domestic violence as the gravest of human rights issues, and pointing to the unequal distribution of wealth and power between men and women as a critical factor. This is where things get really troubling, because Australia's gender wage gap is one of the worst of all OECD countries, while other indicators, such as participation on boards or in parliament, reveal women are still getting a poor deal. Worse, we're not even moving in the right direction.

Bryce, who will oversee the implementation of the taskforce recommendations, is keen to stress the link between rigid gender roles and domestic violence, although that hasn't stopped a full frontal serve of gender stereotyping herself from conservative commentator Piers Akerman – who, incidentally, said Julia Gillard didn't know the meaning of misogyny and labelled Tanya Plibersek Labor's "shrew-du-jour".  Akerman declared that the pivotal contributions of the former governor-general were to the garment industry and women's magazines.

Meanwhile, female representation in the media is less a remedy than a barometer of just how bad the situation really is. The national broadcaster's female presenters are labelled aggressive for interview techniques that are the norm for their male counterparts, and a large number of women bloggers and commentators have long since grown weary of the volume of online comment that is sexist, misogynist and homophobic – the holy triad of sexual violence. 

So, to sum up – if you've got the stomach for it — here's how things stand in the opening decades of the 21st century: women can expect to be paid less than men for another 70 years; the groping of female surgeons by senior male colleagues is par for the course; the maidenhood of our young women is still considered a commodity by prominent figures; gender parity in government remains almost half a century away; and our female parliamentarians can expect to have their gender, personal relationships and marital status sneered at while the sexist slurs roll on: "bitch", "witch", "barren", "small breasts, huge thighs and a big red box'. Gillard probably got the gist of misogyny after all that.

If we need to revise our toxic attitudes to gender before we can make inroads into our domestic violence crisis, things are looking dire indeed.

Sarah Gill