One set of figures looked pretty promising in the latest data from the Personal Safety Survey - and that's the drop in sexual harassment. The ABS says the rate of sexual harassment declined by nearly 25 per cent for women between 2016 and the most recent survey - and by half for men.
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And that makes sense because so much of sexual harassment occurs in the office, says Padma Raman, the CEO of ANROWS, the national research organisation for women's safety.
"People weren't in workplaces and we've had big conversations about sexual harassment and respect at work in the last few years," she says.
But Susan Price, head of employment and discrimination at the ACT Women's Legal Centre, is not convinced by the figures. She says the pandemic changed the way sexual harassment occurred.
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As we moved from boardrooms and office to bedrooms and kitchen tables, the people on the other side of the endless Zoom calls and Teams meetings saw our personal lives. That move from the mostly physical work environment to hybrid work or even completely online work changed the way we were harassed.
"Online didn't necessarily eliminate sexual harassment, there were just different channels and ways to do it," says Price.
Where once you might be able to avoid the handsy bloke who hangs around the tearoom, it now becomes impossible to ignore the messages which pop up on any one of the instant messaging channels our workplaces insist on.
And Price says that in some cases, with employees being located remotely, there was less supervision of what was happening between co-workers.
"People were in their homes and it brought a different dimension. At work, you don't get insight into a colleague's bedroom.
"Instant messaging provides different forums for providing unwelcome sexual comments, pictures and communication. There is a widening of what an employee might unwittingly be disclosing or sharing with their coworkers," she says.
Price says none of these cases has had to proceed past an initial conciliation stage. While such cases were rare in the past, these cases of intrusion into an employee's personal space are becoming more frequent.
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Jenna Price is a Canberra Times columnist and a visiting fellow at the Australian National University.
Jenna Price is a Canberra Times columnist and a visiting fellow at the Australian National University.
