Last Saturday night, a highly-billed charity event in Auckland was disappointingly marred. During an otherwise fabulous night, two top male entertainers from a bygone era, each told a joke. Both jokes were sexually denigrating of women.

At a recent rugby function attended by a mixed-sex audience, a "respected" male speaker "joked" about a husband's attempt to have his wife murdered, while a second speaker's "joke" sexually denigrated women.

Earlier this month Judge Eddie Paul ruled that an entertainer, who indecently assaulted a 16-year-old girl by forcing her face into his genitals, was so important that he discharged the man without conviction, granting him permanent name suppression.

Across our country, thousands of men - from judges to entertainers, from men in boardrooms to sports locker-rooms, as consumers of porn to users of 'gentlemen's clubs' to host business "bondings" - reinforce misogynistic attitudes and beliefs around male superiority and entitlement at the expense of women. Men as subjects, women as objects. Such attitudes and beliefs spew into our ether, to breed and fuel callousness towards women - a callousness that continues to manifest itself in a terrible level of violence against women in this country.

Recently we have witnessed a litany of cases of women callously murdered, some of whom were raped either before or after their death. We think of:

Marie Davis (15, of Christchurch), Jashana Robinson (16, of Titahi Bay) Emma Agnew (20, of Christchurch), Joelene Rangimaria (21, of Titahi Bay, mother of two), Sophie Elliott (22, of Dunedin), Tisha Lowry (28, of Christchurch), An An Liu (28, of Auckland, mother of "Pumpkin"), Rebecca Somerville (35, of Christchurch), Leanne Kingston (39, of Papakura, mother of four), and Helen Meads (42, of Matamata, businesswoman and mother).

We have witnessed a parade of husbands, former partners or boyfriends, neighbours, and strangers - across ethnicities, ages, occupations - some in business suits, charged with acts of violence arising from rage, jealously, possessiveness, sexual obsession and self-obsession.

Yet these ten women, spread across our small country, represent the tip of a dreadful iceberg of many thousands more who, often in their own homes and often at the hands of intimate men in their lives, endure physical and sexual violence, abuse, intimidation and threats.

Today, 25 November, is International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.

Today we call on all men to step up to the mark. Connect the dots - violence does not take place in a vacuum. There are thousands of men deliberately or unwittingly legitimising a callousness that breeds violence by their jokes, their language about women, their consumption of porn, and their choice of venues for their "boys' night out". Denounce such behaviours. Challenge sexist attitudes and beliefs held by your mates, work colleagues, and family members. Stand up for the right of all women to live lives free of violence.