In this powerful and accessible exploration of our legal systems, two human rights lawyers break open the big judgments, developments and trends that have and continue to silence and disadvantage women

How many more women have to be raped and abused before we act?
How many more women need to accuse him before we believe her?
How many more women will be failed by the criminal justice system?
How many more women need to speak out before we do something?
How many more women will be sued for defamation for speaking out?
How many more women will be legally silenced?

From two internationally acclaimed lawyers comes a masterful and urgent exploration of the legal response to MeToo in both Australia and around the world.

We are in a crucial moment: wave after wave of women are breaking through the cultural reticence around gender-based and sexual violence. But even as they have grown empowered to speak, a new form of systematic silence has made itself more and more evident: the spike in survivors speaking out has been followed by a spike in legal actions against them - in defamation, in contract, in breach of confidence.

The law is currently being wielded to reinforce the status quo. Our criminal justice system is impeded by a flood of civil cases that act as gag orders. Defamation laws inhibit media from giving platforms to central voices. Binding non-disclosure agreements signed under duress keep the truth submerged.

In How Many More Women?, Jennifer Robinson and Keina Yoshida examine the broken systems and explore the changes needed in order to ensure that women's freedom, including their freedom of speech, is no longer threatened by the laws that are supposed to protect them.