Returning: Foreign Correspondent

Foreign Correspondent returns for the year on Tuesday, March 15 in its (somewhat controversial) new timeslot of 9.30pm Tuesdays -head to head with Dateline on SBS.

The first episode “Rosie’s Journey” asks: Does gender equality free women from family violence?

Campaigner Rosie Batty and reporter Sally Sara journey to gender equality heartland, Sweden, to find out. What they discover will surprise…

Progressive Sweden has long been a world leader in equality between the sexes.

But while Swedish women enjoy more rights and opportunities than most, there is a dark and shameful side to this story.

Despite all the progress, Sweden has among the highest levels of family violence in Europe. Nearly half of all women in Sweden will face physical or sexual violence by men, usually their current or former partner.

“It’s difficult to realise that in the beauty of these places there is also the real ugliness of the worst of human behavior.”– Rosie Batty, family violence campaigner and 2015 Australian of the Year

To try to understand this paradox – why violence pervades this bastion of gender equality – Foreign Correspondent invited Rosie Batty to Sweden. It was her first big overseas trip since her son Luke was murdered by his father at cricket practice barely two years ago.

“In some ways it seems a long time ago; other times it just seems like yesterday.”– Rosie Batty

For Rosie, this trip is no holiday. From the capital Stockholm to the remote far north where temperatures sink to minus 29, she is trying to understand what lies behind family violence in Sweden.

Foreign Correspondent films Rosie meeting fellow activists – men as well as women – politicians and victims. And for the first time since Luke’s murder, she comes face to face with a perpetrator.

“I don’t feel in the least bit intimidated. After the journey I’ve had with Luke’s father I don’t think I could ever be intimidated in the same way again.”– Rosie Batty to Sally Sara on their way to meet an offender named Emanuel

Remarkably, Rosie finds some rapport with Emanuel, as she and Sally Sara get a step closer to understanding why gender equality is just one part of the solution to family violence.

9.30pm on Tuesday, March 15 on ABC.