Early exposure, lasting harm: how childhood shapes the risk of violence against women

Early exposure causes lasting harm. It's a finding that runs through a growing body of violence prevention research – and in this episode, we bring together three researchers who are mapping exactly how that works, and why our responses haven't kept pace.

Phil Doan Pham is a PhD candidate at CEVAW whose research uses historical data from the Vietnam War to trace a striking pattern: women exposed to intense bombing during childhood were significantly more likely, decades later, to justify intimate partner violence against themselves.

Dr Revathi Krishna is a CEVAW research fellow at Monash University's School of Public Health. Her longitudinal study follows young people in Fiji and Vietnam – before many of them have experienced intimate partner violence – to understand how early experiences accumulate into risk or resilience across the life course.

With Professor Cameron Parsell from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Children and Families over the Life Course, we ask the harder question: if violence against women is a long-term, structural problem that begins in childhood and echoes across decades, why haven't our responses matched what the evidence demands? His answer is honest – ending domestic and family violence would require fundamental changes to how society is organised around gender, employment, and power. Not everyone agrees those changes should happen. And when things go wrong, we tend to blame an underfunded sector rather than confront that structural reality.

Phil's research looks back. Revathi's looks forward. Cameron asks why we're still not doing enough with what we know. Together, they make a case for responses that are more ambitious, more structural, and go further than anything we've built so far.

Phil Doan Pham – PhD Candidate, CEVAW, Curtin University

Dr Revathi Krishna – Research Fellow, CEVAW, Monash University

Professor Cameron Parsell – Chief Investigator, Life Course Centre, University of Queensland

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National Alcohol and Other Drug Hotline 1800 250 015

Doan-Pham, P., Mavisakalyan, A., & True, J. (2026). The long-term relationship between war and attitudes toward domestic violence: Evidence from Vietnam. Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, 122, 102567. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socec.2026.102567

Kuskoff, E., Mols, H., & Parsell, C. (2026). Examining risk and victim agency in bystander interventions in intimate partner violence. Journal of Interpersonal Violence. https://doi.org/10.1177/08862605251408135

Kuskoff, E., & Parsell, C. (2024). Global expectations for bystander intervention in domestic violence: A scoping review of governmental policies and community resources in eight countries. Journal of Family Violence, 41(2), 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10896-024-00759-z

Kuskoff, E., & Parsell, C. (2023). Bystander intervention in intimate partner violence: A scoping review of experiences and outcomes. Trauma, Violence and Abuse, 25(3), 1793–1813. https://doi.org/10.1177/15248380231195886