When it comes to preventing violence against women, Australia has made history in the last few weeks.

For many years experts have stressed the need to tackle gender inequality as the key driver of violence against women, but until recently, there has been only limited support for dealing with this elephant in the room.

Instead, myths and misconceptions – that it is uncontrollable jealousy that drives men’s violence against women for example – are regularly bandied around.

Some focus on a single factor – often alcohol – to explain the problem. And while alcohol does sometimes play a part, it is not the cause of the epidemic of men’s violence against women in this country.

Harmful alcohol consumption is certainly a huge problem in Australia. But it is not only men who drink in harmful ways, and even for those who do, many or most are never violent. It is also true that alcohol may sometimes trigger or exacerbate acts of violence, but it still doesn’t explain why the pattern of violence in Australia is so overwhelmingly gendered.

For many people, violence seems like an individual problem – perpetrated by only a few “bad” men whose behaviour is way outside the social norm. The suggestion that disrespectful attitudes towards women actually underpin many popular, dominant and socially “normal” understandings of masculinity in our culture has been too confronting for many.

But now, finally, Australians from all walks of life – including many of our politicians – are taking a more-clear eyed look at the social and cultural context in which this violence arises.

Collectively, we are making the links between the broader conditions of gender inequality – evident in attitudes, behaviours and social structures, and the alarming levels of violence against women in this country. In fact, a new $30m campaign will be launched by commonwealth, state and territory governments this weekend to do just this.

Of course we must adequately resource those services responding to current violence. In fact, such services will increasingly need more funding because higher awareness of the issue means more women feel confident to seek help. However, what is now being recognised is that we will never stem the tide of violence against women in this country if we don’t intervene upstream and address the socially entrenched drivers of this violence.

On 30 March, the Victorian royal commission into family violence recommended that the Victorian government adopt a prevention strategy, in addition to but separate from response efforts, with dedicated funding and performance measures, making prevention a priority component of a statewide family violence action plan.

Last Wednesday, this was followed by the announcement of $572m in funding from the 2016/17 Victorian budget to deliver 65 of the royal commission’s most urgent recommendations over the next two years.

Of this, $61.6m will go directly into upstream prevention measures, including rolling out respectful relationships education in every government school in Victoria from prep to year 12, introducing Victoria’s first Gender Equality Strategy, and helping local communities play their part in preventing violence.

Also in the last two weeks, the final Council of Australian Governments (Coag) Advisory Panel on Reducing Violence against Women and their Children report was released. The panel, headed by former Victorian police chief Ken Lay and Rosie Batty, recommended that all commonwealth, state and territory governments commit to a long-term national prevention strategy.

As the report states, “a new mindset is needed” to achieve generational and lasting change – an approach that focuses on empowering women, driving change among men, challenging pervasive violence supportive community attitudes, and improving gender equality.

The government ad campaign that kicks off this weekend supports this new mindset by encouraging parents, family members, teachers, coaches, and employers to look at their own attitudes and behaviours around how gender equality and respectful relationships are inadvertently influencing the attitudes of young people.

All of the above strongly echoes the current evidence outlined in Change the Story: a shared national framework for the primary prevention of violence against women and their children released last year by Our Watch with VicHealth and Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety (ANROWS). Further demonstrating the spread of this new kind of thinking, the South Australian parliamentary committee report is the third in less than a month to acknowledge the critical importance of addressing gender inequality to end violence against women.

The elephant in the room is no longer being ignored. The research is consistent and the message is now loud and clear – we cannot stop Australia’s scourge of violence against women without squarely tackling gender inequality.

Of course, any challenge to the status quo generates resistance. This is especially true when we are shining a light on something as deeply entrenched as ideas and social norms about gender, about masculinity, and about the place, status and role of men and women in society.

But when we are living with such extreme levels of violence, something has got to change. Yes, confronting gender inequality is personally and politically challenging, but the time has come to acknowledge that we cannot avoid it any longer.