BRUSSELS — Since the age of 15, 33 percent of women in the EU have experienced physical or sexual violence. Forty-three percent have experienced some form of psychological abuse by either a current or a previous partner, such as public humiliation, being locked up or forbidden from leaving the house, and threats of violence. Five percent have been raped.
The results of the latest study — the world’s largest-ever survey on violence against women — by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) were published on March 5, revealing shocking levels of violence against women across the European Union.
For the survey, 42,000 women throughout the EU were interviewed about their experiences with physical, sexual and psychological violence. Their responses reflect widespread abuse of women at home, at work and in public.
“Far too high,” commented Morten Kjaerum, director of the FRA. “Even in countries with the lowest prevalence of physical or sexual violence, we still see that one in five women is suffering from abuse. That is 20 percent. This is simply unacceptable.”
According to Kjaerum, the enormity of the problem is proof that the impact of violence against women affects not just a few women, but society, as a whole. Measures to fight and prevent violence against women are therefore urgently needed at both the EU and national levels.
“We can see: it’s time to act. Too many women throughout Europe are suffering violence in one or more forms, in the overwhelming majority of cases the perpetrator is a man. What does this say about equality in our societies? What does it say about us?” he asked.
One figure is particularly telling: three-quarters of women in a professional capacity or in top management jobs have experienced sexual harassment, including 32 percent who said the perpetrator was a boss, colleague or customer.
The FRA’s survey also clearly demonstrates that violence against women is a problem that pervades every part of life — not just work. Women are not safe at work. Women are not safe on the street. Women are not even safe at home.
Under-reporting of abuse
The FRA survey illustrates another major problem: widespread under-reporting of violence against women. It seems that the majority of women who are victims of violence do not report their experiences to police, and they do not feel encouraged to do so by systems that are often seen as unsupportive.
“Overwhelmingly, what we see is that the majority of women are visiting a doctor or health care center or other health care provider or a hospital,” Joanna Gooday, head of the Freedoms and Justice Department of the FRA, said during a presentation conference in Brussels.
As a result, official figures from law enforcement do not even come close to revealing the true extent of the problem. For this reason, the Agency for Fundamental Rights believes that encouraging women to report abuse is of the utmost importance.
But this alone is not enough, Kjaerum noted. “We have to work harder to prevent women from becoming victims in the first place. We need to counter the normalization of violence and harassment in our culture.”
One of the victims of domestic violence that the FRA spoke to said, “Young men need to realize that hitting a woman is not acceptable under any circumstance. The idea that it is macho and that women like it is just one big misunderstanding.”
Though violence against women seems to have always existed, it has only been in the last two decades or so that the international community has started to highlight and define the problem. The first internationally agreed-upon definition of violence against women was introduced in the 1993 U.N. Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women.
Article I of that declaration states: “‘Violence against women’ means any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of liberty, whether occurring in public or in private life.”
Until recently, a number of acts of violence against women – especially in the family and in intimate relationships – were not considered criminal. This situation has changed in recent years. EU member states have increased the criminalization of different forms of violence against women, and in parallel, there has been growing recognition of violence against women as a human rights violation.
The EU’s approach has been to focus attention on specific forms of violence that have an impact on women, such as trafficking and female genital mutilation. The level of policy activity in these fields has not been matched by a similar reaction with respect to some other forms of violence against women, thereby creating the false impression that these other forms of violence are not as important.
No comprehensive legislation
This situation shows how political and policy attention is focused on certain forms of violence, such as organized crime, of which human trafficking is one element. As a consequence, there is no specific comprehensive legislation addressing violence against women at the EU level.
European NGOs, such as the European Women’s Lobby, have criticized the European Union for its lack of a specific strategy to address violence against women. The European Parliament — notably, the Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality — has also challenged the European Commission about the need for targeted legislation on violence against women.
The most recent and all-encompassing European instrument to address violence against women is the Council of Europe’s ‘Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence,’ also called the Istanbul Convention, which was adopted in April 2011. This convention obliges signatory countries to criminalize psychological violence, stalking, physical violence, sexual violence, including rape, and sexual harassment.
Additionally, according to Kjaerum, the FRA director, the Istanbul Convention has a number of very practical provisions that can help to change the current climate. For example, it obliges countries to develop victim-centered policies for combating violence against women, provide and strengthen training for professionals who work with both victims and perpetrators of violence against women, set up easily accessible shelters for victims, and establish round-the-clock phone helplines for victims or witnesses of any form of violence against women.
At the beginning of 2014, only eight members of the Council of Europe had ratified the convention, including just three EU member states. A total of 10 ratifications is needed for the convention to enter into force, hence the FRA’s call to more countries to ratify it.
Legal instruments such as the Istanbul Convention are useful in drawing people’s attention to the extent of the problem, but their usefulness may be limited as long as violence against women is considered normal or part of the prevailing culture. And no amount of legislation is enough to change attitudes or mentalities — that is the purpose of education and raising awareness.