Jane Caro to discuss new book at Shepparton International Women’s Day event

On average, one woman a week is murdered by her current or former partner in Australia.

Ms Caro said she was inspired to write The Mother after seeing “constant, rolling headlines about horrendous murders of women and their children, usually by the father and sometimes the grandfather”.

As a mother to two daughters and with two grandchildren, Ms Caro wondered what she would do if they faced a similar threat.

“I wanted to communicate how we almost set women and girls up to be vulnerable to this kind of man with the idea of the romantic love,” she said.

“The idea of being ‘swept off your feet’, of the chase, possessing a woman and even the marriage vows: ’til death us do part and to have and to hold.

“It creates a situation where women are groomed to accept terrible behaviour on behalf of her partner because we still see it as a woman’s job to keep her marriage together.”

Ms Caro is a Walkley-award winning journalist, a social commentator and proud feminist, and recently, a senate candidate at the upcoming Federal Election for the Reason Party in NSW.

She has published 12 books including most recently a non-fiction work, Accidental Feminists, about the fate of women over 50, but The Mother is her first novel for adults.

It follows recently widowed Miriam Duffy whose daughter Ally and her young children find themselves in a dangerous situation after a whirlwind romance.

“I’m asking us to look at how we are creating a society which predisposes some people to be in this kind of ghastly, toxic relationship and how hard and dangerous it is for women who decide to escape,” Ms Caro said.

Telling the story through the eyes of the mother, Miriam, was a deliberate choice for Ms Caro, who hasn’t experienced the type of relationship she writes about.

She said she wanted the reader to engage with the characters, rather than sitting on the outer and passing judgment – so often directed at the victim rather than the perpetrator – “Why didn’t she just leave? Why didn’t she call the police? Why was she attracted to him in the first place?”

International Women’s Day is celebrated on March 8 and to Ms Caro, is about women coming together and sharing life experiences; “the reason women are starting to change the world”.

“When we get together and speak honestly to one another, which we were rarely allowed to do for centuries, we find we’re not the only one these things happen to,” she said.

“It is really urgent that women step into their power now, look at the mess men have made of the world and do something about it.”

Friday’s event, presented by The Women’s Collective in partnership with La Trobe University and Collins Booksellers Shepparton with support from the GV Centre Against Sexual Assault and Women’s Health Goulburn North East, is sold out.