Brussels – “A decade after the publication of our first study on gender-based violence (dating back to 2014, ed.), and despite significant progress in legislation and policy, violence against women in the EU remains a pervasive phenomenon.” This is how the commentary note from the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), an independent institution that promotes and protects human rights within the EU, on the new report on gender-based violence in the European context begins.
According to the results of the study published today (3 March), approximately one-third of the 114,000 women interviewed between September 2020 and March 2024 had experienced physical and/or sexual violence. This figure is almost identical to that recorded in 2014. In particular, sexual violence seems to be increasingly the result of the absence of freely given consent rather than the use of physical force. In simpler terms, according to the study by FRA, Eurostat, and EIGE, women are twice as likely to be raped through coercion or inability to refuse than in cases where explicit physical force is used. A phenomenon linked to abuse suffered in adulthood is that of physical and/or sexual violence during childhood: according to the report’s conclusions, women who have suffered such trauma as children (32.9 per cent of the sample) are three to four times more likely to be victims of similar violence in adulthood.
Violence that leaves marks on the body is just one of many forms of abuse. As the report states, “psychological abuse, economic violence, and online violence are all too common, but often represent the least recognised forms” of abuse. 29.9 per cent of respondents reported controlling behaviour, humiliation, intimidation or obsessive jealousy on the part of their partner; for 12.7 per cent, these dynamics were frequent. Economic violence—which includes, for example, being forbidden to work or being deprived of control over family finances—affected 20.3 per cent of the sample. Finally, the new frontier of gender-based violence—online violence—is rapidly expanding: 8.5 per cent of respondents said they had been victims of cyberstalking and 7 per cent said they had been subjected to online harassment. It is not uncommon for technological abuse to occur within relationships: 10.2 per cent of respondents had a partner who monitored or tracked their movements via mobile phone.
The report also analyses the medium- and long-term consequences of gender-based violence. 9.8 per cent of women reported physical injuries as a result of the abuse they suffered, while 9.6 per cent suffered psychological consequences. In many cases, recovery took a long time, leading to absences from work (17.6 per cent) or the need to delegate household chores (30.8 per cent). Falling into the use of prescription drugs (25.8 per cent) or alcohol and drugs (17.1 per cent) is an equally real risk.
The data on reports is also worrying: only 6.1 per cent of women reported physical or sexual abuse by their partner to the police, with the percentage rising to 11.3 per cent when the perpetrator was someone else. “When abuse is normalised, hidden or ignored, this reflects systemic failures in the protection of rights,” said Sirpa Rautio, director of the FRA. She was echoed by Carlien Scheele, head of the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE), who said, “If women cannot trust institutions to protect them, we must ask ourselves what needs to change—not what more women should do.”
It is no coincidence that the report concludes with a series of recommendations to make the EU’s fight against gender-based violence more effective. In addition to the steps already taken, such as the adoption of the Directive on combating violence against women and domestic violence and the ratification at EU level of the Instanbul Convention—it is necessary to “improve victim-sensitive and gender-responsive reporting systems; ensure access to holistic support, including healthcare and specialised services; criminalise sexual violence on the basis of lack of consent; extend legal protection to economic and psychological violence;
strengthen responses to tech-facilitated abuse
; and invest in early prevention, child protection and trauma-informed systems.”
English version by the Translation Service of Withub
