A large-scale survey on violence against women in the EU found that one in three women in the EU had experienced physical violence – including threats – or sexual violence. These findings, published on Monday, are based on a survey conducted in 27 EU member states in 2020-24 on a sample of more than 114,000 women aged 18 to 74.
As the DPA agency stated in its report, the survey found no improvement over the previous decade. The scale of violence against women was described as staggering and an “invisible epidemic” in the results of the study.
“There are about 229 million women living in Europe,” recalled Sirpa Rautiová, who is the director of the Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) – one of the EU bodies participating in the survey – at a press conference in Brussels on Monday. She added that a third of these women were slapped, beaten, kicked, raped or threatened with such violence. In addition, one in six adult women in the EU has faced sexual violence, including rape.
The scale of violence against women is truly staggering, Rauti noted. She added that “women’s safety still cannot be guaranteed in the EU in 2024.” Rauti considers it a sad reality that the findings of the latest study remained practically unchanged compared to the data published in 2014 in a pan-European survey on violence against women. “Ten years later, we continue to see the same shocking level of violence affecting one in three women,” pointed out Rautiová according to the British newspaper The Guardian.
The authors of the study identified the home and the workplace as places that are often unsafe for women. During the preparation of the study, it was found that physical or sexual violence every fifth woman in the EU faced from her partner, relative or other household member. A third of women were sexually harassed at work. This harassment took various forms – from inappropriate jokes to “staring” to sexual propositions. For women aged 18 to 29, this figure rose to 42 percent of respondents.
The incidence of domestic violence against women is highest in Hungary, where this phenomenon affects 29 percent of adult women, and in Romania (26.8%). The highest rate of sexual harassment at the workplace was found in Sweden (55.4%), Finland (53.7%), Slovakia (53%) and Luxembourg (52.9%). Most incidents of any kind of violence go unreported – with only one in eight victims reporting them to the police, the study found.
In light of this situation, Rauti said that women who decided not to report their case stated how the reason being concern for one’s safety, feelings of shame or lack of trust in the authorities. According to Rauti, this approach shows that “we have an invisible epidemic of violence in Europe”. Director of the European Institute for Gender Equality, Carlien Scheele links low police reporting rates to “shame and self-blame”. She called for the adoption of approaches that would allow women to feel safer in such cases.
Scheele called the study’s findings particularly troubling given the proliferation of misogynistic content on social media. According to her, women are often ridiculed in statuses on social networks and “this anti-gender sentiment is used in society to make changes that worsen the situation in which we live.” She also drew attention to another aspect: violence against women costs the EU an estimated 289 billion euros per year – this amount includes economic losses and the costs of public services, such as legal aid and housing aid. “So in addition to human suffering and violations of human and women’s rights, it also brings enormous economic costs to the European Union,” summarized Scheele.
