“A huge part of communication is listening”

When someone asks you what you do, how do you explain it?

I'm the acting CEO of Women with Disabilities Victoria. I work with a fantastic team of people who are all engaged, present, and have expertise in building access and equity for women and gender diverse people with disabilities in Victoria.

We want to ensure that the voices of these women and gender-diverse people—with all their diversity—are included in thinking and decision-making across Victoria as much as possible. Part of my role is inhabiting those spaces where decisions are made and increasing the number of spaces in which women and gender diverse people with disabilities participate and have an active decision-making voice regarding policies, and programs that will make a difference.

I was lucky enough to work closely with some of those women on the Changing the landscape project . It was a career highlight for me being able to work with not only WDV but all the incredible women with disabilities who participated in the project.

I think that is the wonderful thing with WDV, we're a service that is run by and for women and gender diverse people with disabilities, and you see that in our membership, you see that we bring women with disabilities—everyday community members—into all our work. Their voice is centred. That is so important because there isn't one voice, so you can't say, “I speak entirely for this community.” It needs to provide a platform for diversity to be heard.

That's so reflective of the experience. There was a moment with the project advisory group, where there were concerns on the direction that some of the assets were going in. It was really inspiring to see space created for women to bring their lived experience forward in the way that it was. The women were so good at communicating how it should be or why things were not quite right. It feels like WDV has a really strong program for developing advocates within that space.

I think part of that is because when people talk about the word communication, they think of the written word and they think of speaking. They don't think about listening, and a huge part of communication is listening.

Creating those platforms are really important. To listen, and read the words of women and gender diverse people with disabilities and to really think about the process and what it means to have those difficult conversations where people have contradictory ideas.

You can't neatly fit them all in. You have to be able negotiate and have challenging conversations when discussing things that really matter. There can't be a more serious issue than domestic and family violence. No one is going to be flippant. We are talking about the murder and abuse of women and gender diverse people with disabilities. These are hard and challenging conversations.

They definitely are, and I think when you've been part of those conversations, you realise how rewarding it can be. But it can be scary for some people to listen or even just be present for some of those challenging conversations.

What advice would you have for those people?

To not feel that they need to have the solution. Not sit back and relax, but sit back. Don't feel like you need to be in control, allow the conversation to be controlled by others, and see that as a gift, that you don't need to be in control and can really immerse yourself in what's being said so you can process it.

And then I think you should have questions, and to be able to ask those questions, to progress the conversation.

When it goes terribly wrong is when people feel like, “I need to get an outcome in 20 minutes.”

So they listen to respond to progress the conversation. Whilst conversations should always progress—you don't want them going around and around—but if your aim is getting to the end, rather than getting to the right outcome, that’s a big problem.

So sit back, let it happen organically, allow there to be a structure that enables safety, and also let women and gender diverse people with disability guide what that safety looks like.

You can't neatly fit them all in. You have to be able negotiate and have challenging conversations when discussing things that really matter. There can't be a more serious issue than domestic and family violence. No one is going to be flippant. We are talking about the murder and abuse of women and gender diverse people with disabilities. These are hard and challenging conversations.

Julie Kun, Acting CEO of Women with Disabilities Victoria

Why do you what you do?

When I was asked about taking on the Acting CEO role, I needed to think hard, because, I come from a family where every 2nd or 3rd person on one side has dyslexia. I've not been diagnosed, but hey, I have all the hallmarks of everyone else in the family that has been diagnosed.

I nearly didn't go to university, because my teacher said my spelling, grammar, and writing was so poor that I wouldn't be able to make it. They didn't take my intelligence into account. It is only because my father, who was a teacher, said, “My daughter is intelligent enough, regardless of all that, regardless that she can't spell.”

I still get ‘their’ and ‘there’ wrong. My spelling is horrendous. My written word looks like a 6-year-old has written it, and has actually been confused with a 6-year-old. But that doesn't mean I was or am less intelligent.

Women and gender diverse people with disabilities lose access, and we lose opportunities because the world is not equitable, and because there isn't space made to understand how we can contribute.

And again, looking at myself; as technology has changed I've become less disabled. In my second paid job as an adult, all my colleagues got together and they bought me something called a Spellmaster, which was prior to spell check and was a handheld device that helped you spell words because they all recognised how bad my spelling was. It cost something like $150 which was quite a lot then. And then we got spell check on computers, and it became easier to spell.

And now we have tools like Grammarly and AI that can assist with grammar. Every time we advance like that, I become less disabled.

So if you think about that across the diversity of disability, it just reinforces how much of disability is culture and systems that make people disabled, rather than people ‘being’ disabled.

If there weren't stairs and everywhere had ramps or had a lift that was wide enough to take a mobility device, how many less people would be considered to have mobility issues? What a difference it would make.

Thinking about the Changing the landscape resources, what impact do you think they will have?

It's really interesting because before I became the Acting CEO at WDV I was doing another project on economic abuse, and the minute Changing the landscape was launched, I included it into my knowledge paper and thought, “This is groundbreaking work.”

It brought together a whole lot of information. It wasn't that it was unknown. But it wasn't in the public arena or the decision-making arena, so it wasn't informing primary prevention in the way that it will now.

Now that I’m at WDV I am hearing people say all the time, “We are now incorporating Changing the landscape into how we understand primary prevention and the way that we need to bring drivers like gender and abelism into our understanding.”

The other benefit is it enables a broadening of thought. Well, if it's gender, and if it's ableism, it's probably also racism, it’s probably also transphobia and homophobia. It allows a more robust understanding of the drivers of family violence.

The more we understand those drivers, the more we can take meaningful action to stop the violence before it starts.

The other brilliant thing about Changing the landscape is that at every step in the process, it included the contribution of women and gender diverse people with disabilities who had experienced violence.

It brings credibility, authenticity, insight and expertise when you centre lived experience, and that is what Changing the landscape has done.

Can you tell us about something you're working on at the moment?

WDV is embarking on another bit of really interesting work on pleasure and consent, which is looking at women and gender diverse people with disabilities and their right to enjoy sex and all sexual activity. But also the right to consent, and to be in control of what they want and what they are comfortable with.

That is a project where, again, we're going to be working with lived experience experts and putting together videos that are for women and gender diverse people with disabilities, but they're also for people that might be having sexual relationships with women with disabilities and health care workers.

We know that women and gender diverse people with disabilities are more vulnerable to sexual assault and rape because of the discrimination and prejudice that they experience where their humanity is degraded. They have been subjected to bullying and a whole range of things from when they were young girls—which diminishes their sense of self and can create vulnerability. So this work is just so important.

... how much of disability is culture and systems that make people disabled, rather than people ‘being’ disabled.

Julie Kun, Acting CEO of Women with Disabilities Victoria

What's your dream opportunity for creating positive impact in the world?

For me, compassion is really important. When I say the word compassion, I mean its literal definition of ending suffering. And what I mean by suffering is structural oppression and ableism. Suffering needs to be replaced by thriving and thriving is about empowerment and opportunity.

We can only do that by having an understanding of what is happening, wanting to do something about it, and then taking action.

So the opportunity that I would love to see is to be able to go out there to the community, build that compassion, and then, from that compassion, take action that enables more equity, inclusivity, respect, and dignity to occur in all places.

It does feel like the key to unlocking empathy and unlocking action, doesn't it?

And compassion goes one more than empathy, so empathy is to understand someone's situation and to want to change that, but you don't actually need to act to have empathy.

And in fact, I've come across a lot of people that have said, “I'm immobilised by what I feel about other people's position.” So they don't take any action, and they don't move to being compassionate.

To be compassionate, you must take action. Now that action doesn't need to change the world. Very few people will be able to say their actions have changed the world, but we can all do little things that create the stirrings that change the world.

And that’s what we want to see. Everyone doing their bit to build an inclusive and accessible world where women and gender diverse people with disabilities have the same opportunities, and are provided with the same respect as everyone else.

Everyone should have respect, dignity, access, inclusion and opportunity.

To be compassionate, you must take action. Now that action doesn't need to change the world. Very few people will be able to say their actions have changed the world, but we can all do little things that create the stirrings that change the world.

Julie Kun, Acting CEO of Women with Disabilities Victoria