WHY GENDER MATTERS

We have been exploring key advocacy directions recently, building on Speaking from Experience: A Framework to Drive Change, launched in 2025. This framework centred the experiences, views, and advice of women with lived experience of the justice system and marked the beginning of WAM's dedicated focus on promoting the voices of those with lived experience and highlighting the experiences and stories they wished to tell. 

Several key issues have continued to come to the forefront - issues that women in the WAM program, and women more broadly who have experienced criminalisation, come up against time and time again. 

Employment after criminalisation 

One of the most consistent barriers is finding employment. Unemployment can lead to financial distress and poverty, reduced self-esteem, and disconnection from community. Most WAM participants have a criminal record and are frequently affected by blanket HR policies that prevent them from being hired, despite their offending rarely being associated with the types of jobs they are applying for. Participants often apply for roles below their education level or outside their expertise and interest just to secure any form of employment, and yet it remains incredibly difficult to find a job. 

WAM has participants with Masters degrees unable to use their expertise, participants unable to return to careers they held for many years, and participants who want to give back to their community but are unable to because criminal records also affect volunteer recruitment. Some women have made it to first and even second interviews only to be told that a company's policies mean they can't be hired. For those who choose to disclose their criminal record, it means sharing the details of often one of the worst days of their lives with a stranger simply to be considered for employment.  

Making justice orders meaningful 

Another issue is the lack of meaningful activities available to participants when completing justice orders, such as being on a CCO or parole. Women tell us they want more opportunities that benefit their future, including further education, therapy and job-readiness skills. They want to use this time effectively: to improve their prospects, work towards goals and achieve better life outcomes. 

They also highlight the importance of trauma-informed communication and care in building trusting and supportive relationships with workers, whether in the community or in custody. 

Community Support Matters 

Unsurprisingly, participants speak about the negative and traumatic impact incarceration can have across their lives. They also recognise that community-based support can be more effective because it allows them to remain connected to their children, friends, work, and culture. Even a brief period of incarceration can disrupt stable housing, income, family relationships and positive progress. 

This is why funding and investment in community-based supports mist be part of the conversation about preventing offending and reducing incarceration.  

Lived Experience must shape change 

Perhaps the most important theme we have identified is the need to embed the voices of those with lived experience into decision-making and practice within the criminal justice system. There is no one with as much expertise about the impacts of systems and support as those who have been criminalised as those who have lived it. 

At WAM, we recognise that our participants, peer group members, and lived experience advocates hold integral knowledge that can lead to positive change, not only within the criminal justice system, but for society as a whole. We need to listen to those who have lived it, recognise their lived experience as expertise, and value the challenging work they do in their own advocacy. This is work that carries real risks of re-traumatisation and criticism, risks they choose to face by speaking about their experience. 

WAM will continue to work alongside our lived experience members to shape the direction of our advocacy work, ensuring that the issues that matter to them are front and centre in the conversation, and that those conversations are led by those with lived experience.