Primary Prevention Isn't Too Hard. It's Just Undersupported.
Ask most workplaces about their gendered violence prevention approach and they'll talk about their policy, their training program, and their reporting process. Ask them about primary prevention — and you'll often get a pause.
"Isn't that a bit... broad?"
Primary prevention stems from public health frameworks and in the last decade has been adapted to address violence against women and gender-based violence specifically. In 2021, Our Watch described it clearly in Change the Story: primary prevention addresses the first or underlying drivers of violence — gender inequality and intersecting forms of structural inequality — before violence occurs.
That's not vague. That's precise. And it has direct implications for how workplaces are designed, how leaders behave, how promotion decisions are made, how language is used, and whose voices are centred or marginalised.
The continuum of violence is instructive here
Primary prevention requires us to look honestly at the full continuum — from everyday attitudes and behaviours (the base of the pyramid) through to the most serious forms of violence and abuse. The base matters because it creates and sustains the conditions that normalise harm. Sexist jokes, dismissive language, the casual sidelining of women's contributions — these aren't "minor" issues at a distance from "real" violence. They're part of the same continuum.
Addressing that base is uncomfortable work. It asks organisations to look at their own culture, their own power structures, their own norms. It asks leaders to examine not just what they prohibit, but what they model and reward.
And it doesn't happen through a training session. It happens through consistent, embedded, whole-of-organisation approaches that thread prevention through strategy, leadership, procurement, communications, and accountability systems.
The intersectional dimension is non-negotiable
Primary prevention of gender-based violence must also reckon with the fact that gender doesn't operate in isolation. Race, disability, sexuality, class, age — these intersect with gender to create compounding experiences of harm and compounding barriers to safety and justice.
This is why primary prevention is sometimes called "too hard" — because it asks us to address systems of oppression, not just individual incidents. Racism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia — these are drivers of violence too. Any prevention approach that doesn't name them will, at best, achieve partial results.
As Our Watch's Change the Story framework makes clear: as practitioners, policymakers, and professionals, we need to design interventions that have direct impact for marginalised and intersecting groups. And as a consequence, this will improve the experiences of all.
What this looks like in practice
Primary prevention in a workplace context might include:
• Reviewing representation in leadership and addressing structural barriers that keep marginalised groups out of power
• Examining whether reward and recognition systems reinforce gendered patterns of labour
• Embedding respectful workplace expectations into job descriptions, performance frameworks, and procurement criteria
• Running campaigns that shift social norms — like Speak Up, Stand With — not just raising awareness, but actively challenging the attitudes that normalise disrespect
• Meeting and exceeding your Positive Duty obligations under the Sex Discrimination Act, which require proactive prevention measures
None of this replaces secondary prevention (early intervention) or tertiary prevention (response). All three are needed. But right now, the prevention ecosystem is top-heavy with response and training, and underinvested in primary prevention.
That needs to change — and it starts with calling the "too hard" framing out for what it is: not a genuine assessment of difficulty, but a resourcing and political choice.
