Journal articles on the topic 'Women – Violence against – European Union countries'

The Commission proposed to enshrine in the law of the European Union minimum standards to criminalise certain forms of violence against women; protect victims and improve access to justice; support victims and ensure coordination between relevant services; and prevent these types of crimes from happening in the first place. In particular, the Commission’s proposal would make it possible, on the one hand, to surmount the gaps existing in some Member States and, on the other hand, to standardise the various national legislations with a single discipline valid in all the countries of the European Union. This paper focuses on the contents of the European Commission’s proposal by highlighting and reflecting on the key points. Keywords: Violence against women; Domestic violence; Directive proposal; European Commission; Minimum standards

In the European Union, there continues to be a lack of comprehensive and comparable data on violence against women that can serve to inform policy. In response, the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), which undertakes primary data collection across all 28 EU Member States, published the first European Union–wide survey on violence against women in 2014, which interviewed 42,000 respondents. The findings, which show the extent of violence against women—ranging from intimate partner violence through to sexual harassment—can underpin a renewed policy response to violence at the level of the European Union, based on evidence. Having outlined the survey’s approach to data collection, including the methodological challenges of undertaking quantitative survey research across 28 countries, the article briefly describes some of the survey’s main findings and follows this by focusing on the realities of nonreporting to different services, which illustrates how the survey’s data can be usefully employed to inform policy and practical responses to abuse. The article does not adopt a standard academic journal format for reporting and discussing the analysis of data, but instead focuses on the EU policy backdrop that serves to contextualize the survey and its findings, and which underpins other articles in this special issue that draw in detail on FRA’s survey results with respect to specific manifestations of violence against women.

Voices Against Violence, as told to Kate Burry and Connie Grouse: Women living in the Solomon Islands share their stories as survivors of violence and/or participants in the ground-breaking Stages of Change theatre project funded by the European Union. Auckland, Aotearoa/New Zealand: British Council. 2015. English & Bislama dual language edition. 89 pages. ISBN 978-0-473-31329-6 THE SUBJECT of violence against women is one that is prevalent in Pacific countries such as the Solomon Islands. Gender-based violence, particularly violence against women, is an issue that is often treated as a cultural or societal norm.

The article examines the issues of domestic violence of women, psychological and social determinants of this phenomenon. It is indicated that this problem is in the focus of attention of foreign and domestic scientists, as well as public authorities and non-governmental organizations. Attention is drawn to the fact that it is the sexual attribute that causes the woman to be a victim of various types of violence in almost all countries of the world. Lists of programs to prevent and combat violence against children, youth and women, which are funded by the leadership of the European Union, are listed. The factors that determine domestic violence in general and in particular against women are examined in detail. It is noted that violence against women affects the whole family. The main components of the program for the prevention of domestic violence against women are given. Promising areas for the prevention of domestic violence are listed.

The focus of the paper is on domestic violence against immigrant women during the transit and stay in Serbia, on their way from MENA countries1 to the European Union. The objective is to present and analyze the phenomenon. It is contextualized within a theoretical framework of intersections between domestic violence, migration and the crisis and consideration of migration from MENA countries flowing through Serbia, as a part of the Western Balkan?s Route, with an emphasis on immigrant women. This is followed by the scrutinisation of domestic violence against immigrant women in Serbia - its occurrence and reporting, along with the author?s reflections thereof. Main conclusions point to the importance of preventive and empowering strategies directed towards immigrant women. Challenges to that are numerous: some stem from underperformance of services aimed at prevention and empowerment of women who are victims of domestic violence in Serbia in general, and some are related to the factors specific for the situation of immigrant women.

The aim of this article is to identify the key impediments to accessing and sustaining safe and secure accommodation by women with multiple and complex needs within a European context. Women with multiple and complex needs are particularly vulnerable to various forms of violence against them and homelessness is often one of their particular needs. The European context is important because ending violence against women is a key priority of the European Union, yet this particularly vulnerable group has largely been overlooked in key strategy. This research was part of a European Union-funded project and a pragmatic, phenomenological approach was taken to the research, employing interviews with key stakeholders (women and professionals who work with them) from five European countries. Using Maslow’s hierarchy of needs as a framework of analysis, the key findings were that accommodation is a key requirement for women with multiple needs to receive the treatment they need. However, simply providing safe and secure accommodation is not enough; rather, a coordinated, wraparound service is required to ensure that women successfully address their multiple needs and are empowered to sustain their tenancies and, ultimately, become self-actualised.

Abstract This article will focus on the significant differences shown by the data found by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) survey of women who may or may not have suffered physical Intimate Partner Violence against Women (IPVAW). The authors present the model and result of the discriminant function analysis that they carried out separately for the countries from southern Europe (Spain, Italy, Greece, Portugal, Cyprus, and Malta) and Scandinavia (Denmark, Finland, and Sweden). Their hypotheses were that women with less income, lower educational level, who are divorced, who have children, are from rural areas, who are housewives, with bad health, older aged, immigrants, and those who had suffered some physical violence from other people – apart from the partner or ex-partner –, will suffer more violence than the rest of women. One of the most relevant conclusions from their analysis was this: the more often a woman experienced physical violence from someone other than a partner/ex-partner beginning at the age of 15 years old, the more probable it will be that she will suffer IPVAW. The authors discuss this and other significant findings here.

Research on intimate partner violence has suggested that not all violence is the same. This article builds upon earlier research on coercive control—or intimate terrorism—and examines the experiences of women who can be assessed as having experienced coercive controlling violence both in terms of the types of violent incidents they experience and the impact and consequences of the most serious incident of violence by an intimate partner. The article explores differences across the 28 European Union (EU) Member States in terms of coercive control and type of violence used. The results—based on data from the first EU–wide survey on violence against women by the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights—are further considered in terms of their association with gender equality. The results show that, in the EU, violence against women perpetrated under coercive control differs from other forms of violence as it involves more serious forms of violence and has a bigger impact in terms of its varied consequences. Countries where women indicated lower levels of coercive control are shown as scoring higher on a measure of gender equality, in contrast with earlier interpretations of the survey findings concerning the relationship between survey measures of physical and/or sexual violence and gender equality. The analysis supports the need to differentiate between various types of intimate partner violence against women—including violence under coercive control—in the European context, both in terms of research to better understand violence and for interventions to prevent violence.

The Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence opened for signature in 2011 in Istanbul, Türkiye, and has been known as the most comprehensive international agreement advocating the prevention, prosecution, and elimination of violence against women and domestic violence. As of September 2022, 44 CoE member states, including all the EU countries, as well as the European Union itself as an international organization, are signatories to the Convention. The 2017 official signing of the Convention by the EU as a whole testified to the acceptance by Brussels of the former’s role as of an authoritative international legal instrument establishing all-European norms in this area. The degree of Türkiye’s involvement in its instrumentalization naturally derives from the international agreement’s unofficial name – the Istanbul Convention. The Republic of Türkiye was the first country to sign the Convention in 2011 with a unanimous vote of the parliament, and later in 2012 expressed its consent to be bound hereby. The decision of President Erdoğan to denounce the international agreement bearing the name of Türkiye’s largest city, adopted in 2021, has caused surprise and concern amid the international political and human rights community. The European Union was no exception; the move has been interpreted as a negative signal in terms of the state’s commitment to its obligations to ensuring the rights of women and girls, as well as guaranteeing basic human rights, democracy, and the rule of law at large, given Türkiye’s status of EU membership candidate. Meanwhile, the so-called Istanbul Convention has not yet passed the ratification procedure in individual EU countries, as well as within the European Union per se. Likewise, the Convention’s international legal stance remains volatile since most participating states have granted it the status as part of national legislation with a number of reservations. This article addresses the following question: whether Türkiye’s withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention may be considered a demonstrative political message of official Ankara impeding the country’s European integration aspirations.

Domestic violence is perceived as one of the most severe violations of human rights and gender inequality. It has negative psychological, social and economic impact on the victim. In seeking to combat violence of an intimate partner, laws against domestic violence were implemented in many European countries. Two countries, Lithuania and Georgia, are compared in the article. Even if they have different locations and patriarchal traditions, the common past of belonging to Soviet Union unites them.The article compares the political measures and their impact on the solution of the domestic violence problem. Even the laws criminalizing domestic violence were implemented in 2006 in Georgia and in 2011 in Lithuania. The problem of domestic violence remains a top issue in both countries. The amount of reported domestic violence events maintains a high level; however, the investigated cases level remains low. Still, a high level of unreported domestic violence cases remain in both countries. Insufficient shelters for women victims of violence remain a problem in both countries.

BackgroundThe magnitude of intimate partner violence (IPV) in young women is a source of increasing concern. The prevalence of IPV has not been analysed in Europe as a whole. The objective was to assess the prevalence and main characteristics of experiencing physical and/or sexual and psychological-only IPV among young women in the European Union and to identify individual and contextual associated risk factors.MethodsWe analysed a cross-sectional subsample of 5976 ever-partnered women aged 18–29 years from the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights Violence Against Women Survey, 2012. The main outcomes were current physical and/or sexual IPV and lifetime psychological-only IPV. Risk factors were assessed by the prevalence ratio (PR) from multilevel Poisson regression models.ResultsCurrent prevalence of physical and/or sexual IPV was 6.1%, lifetime prevalence of psychological-only IPV was 28.7%. Having suffered physical and/or sexual abuse by an adult before age 15 was the strongest risk factor for IPV (PR: 2.9 for physical and/or sexual IPV, PR: 1.5 for psychological-only IPV). Other individual risk factors were: perceived major difficulties in living within their household income (PR: 2.6), having children (PR: 1.8) and age 18–24 years (PR: 1.5) for physical/sexual IPV and immigration background for psychological-only IPV (PR: 1.4). Living in countries with a higher prevalence of binge drinking or early school dropout was positively associated with IPV.ConclusionsFindings show that the fight against violence in young women should consider individual characteristics, childhood experiences of abuse and also structural interventions including reduction of alcohol consumption and improvement in the education-related indicators.

Intimate partner violence against women (IPVAW) is investigated mostly at the individual level, which ignores the role of macrosocial variables and possible interactions between them. We explored how two ideological gender-related macrosocial factors (traditional gender role beliefs and attitudes toward gender equality) and one structural gender-related macrosocial factor (the economic Gender Equality Index) are associated with physical, psychological, and sexual IPVAW in Europe. We examined their interactions with individual-level factors in predicting IPVAW. Secondary analysis ( N = 30,284 heterosexual women) of the 2015 European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights’ Violence Against Women survey revealed that 26.1% of women in Europe reported at least one act of physical, psychological, or sexual violence. Generalized linear mixed models analysis revealed that individual-level factors (women’s education, childhood victimization, equal say about income, partner’s alcohol consumption, and an aggressive partner) were associated with IPVAW. Adding the Eurobarometer of Gender Equality ( N = 28 countries) and the Gender Equality Index ( N = 28 countries), attitudes more favorable to gender equality were related to lower rates of psychological victimization; more traditional gender role beliefs predicted higher rates of sexual victimization. Ideological gender-related macrofactors played an important role in cross-level interactions with individual-level factors. To reduce the rates of IPVAW victimization, clinicians, educators, and policy makers need to focus on individual predictors and macrofactors to promote societal attitudes toward equality and change traditional gender role socialization. Additional online materials for this article are available on PWQ’s website at http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/0361684319839367

In the midst of the so-called “crisis” of refugees in Europe, it is imperative to identify the particular challenges faced by refugee women and girls, in order to assess the effectiveness of public policies implemented for this social group. Assuming that there is specific violence suffered by refugee women, this article consists in a case study of refugee reception policies by European Union States between 2015 and 2021. Mobilizing Feminist and Decolonial theoretical approaches to International Relations and Subaltern Studies, it is concluded that direct and indirect violence is being perpetrated against refugees in EU countries. Thus, this work argues that public policies for refugees in the EU do not sufficiently reduce this situation of violence. The regional norms for the reception of refugees from the European Union, however, grant wide discretion to the Member States to implement public policies of this nature, which results in dissonances between the reception standards in each State. The reality of insufficiency and inefficiency of reception policies carried out by EU Member States on issues of gender-based violence, consists of a type of institutional silencing and the reproduction of subalternity.

ObjectivesTo ensure the cross-national comparability of the set of questions addressing physical and sexual intimate partner violence against women (IPVAW) included in the European Union (EU) Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) survey. Once the measurement invariance of these measures is established, we aim to make appropriate and valid comparisons of the levels of physical and sexual IPVAW across the EU countries.DesignCross-sectional, population-based study.ParticipantsData were drawn from the survey conducted by the FRA on violence against women, including the responses of 42 002 adult women from the 28 countries of the EU.Main outcome measuresThe set of questions addressing lifetime prevalence of physical and sexual IPVAW used in the FRA survey. The psychometric properties (ie, reliability and validity) of these measures were examined, as well as their latent structure and their measurement invariance across the 28 EU countries.ResultsThe physical and sexual IPVAW measures presented adequate internal consistency and validity evidence based on their relations to other variables in all countries. A latent two-factor structure was supported and scalar invariance was established across countries. Our results showed that the average levels of physical and sexual IPVAW were highest in Denmark, Finland, Sweden and UK compared with the rest of the EU countries. In many of the other countries the levels of these types of violence overlapped, especially in the case of sexual IPVAW.ConclusionsThe findings of this study showed that the set of questions addressing physical and sexual IPVAW included in the FRA survey can be compared across all EU countries, highlighting the importance of testing the measurement equivalence of the instruments used in large sociodemographic surveys in order to make valid cross-national comparisons.

This article draws on qualitative research examining domestic violence against women with insecure immigration status in England and Sweden. Empirical data were collected through in-depth semistructured interviews with 31 survivors from 14 non–European Union (EU) countries, and 57 professional stakeholders including 19 support service providers. This article reveals a multilayered process of actualizing women’s right to live free from violence, with survivors required to be formally eligible for services according to their immigration status, having to prove their eligibility, overcome informal barriers including the fear of deportation, and gain access to accurate information about their rights and services.

The author of the article, first of all, draws attention to the current problems of protection and protection of human rights, which unfortunately are traced within the territorial jurisdiction of the European Union. Such problem is quite well demonstrated by Berbel Koffler, as the Commissioner of the Government of the Federal Republic of Germany on human rights and humanitarian aid policy. Indeed, the Ombudsman of Germany has raised a number of deep dilemmas: violence against human rights defenders on the grounds of their professional activity, the relation of human rights institutions with public security and economic development. In fact, these questions, in varying percentages, are equally relevant to many countries in the world. In the outlined context, the case of the European Court of Human Rights “Gabriel Weber and Caesar Richard Saravia v. Germany” of 29.06.06 was analyzed. Actually, this case covers directly the issues of human rights and national security of Germany. Grounds for initiating this case have arisen in connection with the legislative provisions of the Law of Germany on the Restriction of the Secret of Correspondence, Mail and Telecommunications of 13.08.68., ("Law G-10"), taking into account changes made under the Anti-Crime Act of 28.10.94, which extend the powers of the Federal Intelligence Service, within the so-called strategic monitoring. It is about collecting information by listening to telephone conversations in order to identify and prevent serious threats to the Federal Republic of Germany, such as: armed attacks on its territory, international terrorist attacks, other serious crimes. According to the applicants who worked as journalists, strategic monitoring can be used against individuals to prevent effective journalistic investigations. In view of these suspicions, the applicants argued that they had violated the human rights guaranteed by the Convention, such as the right to privacy and correspondence, the violation of press freedom, and the right to an effective remedy. The ECHR Judges, having examined the circumstances of the case, concluded that there were no grounds to satisfy the complaints on the basis of the following arguments: 2) German legislation, as part of strategic monitoring, is endowed with adequate and effective safeguards against abuse by authorized entities. In addition, the article analyzes the multi-vector issue of banning citizens of some European Union countries from wearing hats that completely or partially hide their faces. The fact is that, under such restrictions, in particular, the traditional clothing of women adherents of Islam has fallen. It is a “burqa” and a “niqab”. The presented study is mainly based on the legislative practice of France, Belgium, which provides for administrative as well as criminal penalties for non-compliance with the stated prohibition. In such cases as S.А.С. France, Belkacemi and Oussar v. Belgium, Dakir v. Belgium, the applicants, alleged that they had violated the human rights guaranteed by the Convention, including: the right to respect for their private life; the right to freedom of expression of one's religion or belief; the right to freedom of expression; the right to freedom of association; humiliating treatment and discrimination against the enjoyment of the abovementioned human rights. According to most ECHR judges, who have dealt with the said cases, the disputed prohibition is not necessary in a "democratic society for public safety" but its main task is to preserve the conditions of "cohabitation" as an element of "protection of the rights and freedoms of others." In the context of this debate, attention was paid indirectly to such EU Member States as: Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Germany, Latvia, the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Denmark, Switzerland. Keywords: human rights, legal guarantees, security, privacy.

The current state and promising ways of ensuring gender equality in the defense and security sector of Ukraine is analyzed in the article. The aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine, the violation of territorial integrity, sovereignty as a result, encroachment on Ukraine's independence, brought to the fore the issue of overcoming gender stereotypes, establishing equality, and countering gender-based and sexual violence both in Ukraine and around the world. First of all, in these conditions, the state policy regarding the development of the Armed Forces of Ukraine was revised. The strategic course of Ukraine for the acquisition of full membership of Ukraine in the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, enshrined in paragraph 5, part 1 of art 85 of the Constitution of Ukraine. It defines the priorities of Ukraine's cooperation in the international environment. Standardization in order to achieve the interoperability of the security and defense sectors of Ukraine, as a partner with enhanced capabilities and NATO member states, is currently a priority task for Ukraine to receive the Action Plan for NATO membership, a prerequisite for the restoration of sovereignty and security, and the reintegration of temporarily occupied territories. First of all, in the article during the analysis of the foreign experience of ensuring gender equality in the field of defense, the attention was focused on the experience of the member countries of the Alliance and taking into account the status of Ukraine as a partner of NATO with shared capabilities, as well as the intention to become a member of NATO. However, countries which are not part of NATO, but have some success in the processes of ensuring world order and taking an active part in the peace-building processes were also included in the analysis. Both from the point of view of the achieved results, and regarding promising ways of intensifying the participation of women in the processes of maintaining peace and stability in the world, ensuring the safety of humanity and the international legal order.

Celeste Montoya’s Global to Grassroots: The European Union, Transnational Advocacy, and Combating Violence Against Women addresses a pressing problem—violence against women—by bringing a transnational perspective to EU politics. We have thus decided to seek comments on the book from an Eastern European feminist scholar (Oana Băluţă) and a U.S. feminist scholar (Mary Hawkesworth). —Jeffrey C. Isaac

This contribution deals with European legal documents in the context of domestic violence. It focuses on the most crucial contemporary documents containing requirements addressed to European States. It analyses documents of the European Union and the Council of Europe. It is divided into three sections. The first section introduces the European Union Directive 2012/29/EU on victims of crime (Directive 2012/29/EU establishing the minimum standards on the rights, support and protection of victims of crime), the second section analyses the Directive 2011/99/EU on the European protection order, and the third section briefly focuses on the Council of Europe convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence (Istanbul convention). Many problems occurred. The legal framework exists, but the needs of each victim should be assessed individually. As regards the Directive on victims of crime, no government is willing to monitor it. As regards the European protection order, only a few such protection orders have been applied.

The text explores important issues concerning violence against women in the light of the legal regulations of the Istanbul Convention and in the context of difficulties emerging during actions taken by the European Union to implement the Istanbul Convention in the EU legal framework. The European Union, within its competences, has not yet taken specific legal measures to combat crime involving violence against women, i.e. originating in the fact that someone is a woman or, statistically, there is a gross overrepresentation of women among the victims. The article describes the stages of the ratification and legislative processes, thanks to which the issue of counteracting gender-based violence will remain permanently on the agenda of the EU bodies, thereby contributing to a better understanding both of the threats posed by this form of crime for all societies and the need for the integrated fight against it in the common area of freedom, security, and justice.

The Council of Europe Convention on Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence, commonly referred to as ‘the Istanbul Convention,’ came into force in 2014, and is one of the most extensive legal and policy instruments on tackling violence against women (p. 2). However, opposition to the Istanbul Convention has become a focal point of broader opposition to gender equality in the European Union. This book explores the emergence and dynamics of this opposition. It investigates its implications for policies combating violence against women and contributes to scholarship of social movements, particularly their transnational qualities and their interaction with opponents and the state.

Recent referenda and surveys in Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland and Austria show that women are the most determined opponents against the project of an Europoean Political Union. This article deals with the political debate among women in some European countries and identifies the main topics which stand in the center of women's reservations against the Maastricht Treaty. The new EC Information Policy (Le Clercq Report 1993) is presented, which claims to win back the confidence of the European Citizens. This new communication strategy adresses to women in a special way,

Abstract. Attitudes toward intimate partner violence against women (IPVAW) are increasingly recognized as central to understanding of this major social and public health problem, and guide the development of more effective prevention efforts. However, to date this area of research is underdeveloped in western societies, and in particular in the EU. The present study aims to provide a systematic review of quantitative studies addressing attitudes toward IPVAW conducted in the EU. The review was conducted through Web of Science, PsychINFO, Medline, EMBASE, PUBMED, and the Cochrane Library, in accordance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analyses (PRISMA) recommendations. This review aimed to identify empirical studies conducted in the EU, published in English in peer-reviewed journals from 2000 to 2018, and analyzing attitudes toward IPVAW. A total of 62 of 176 eligible articles were selected according to inclusion criteria. Four sets of attitudes toward IPVAW were identified as the main focus of the studies: legitimation, acceptability, attitudes toward intervention, and perceived severity. Four main research themes regarding attitudes toward IPVAW emerged: correlates of attitudes, attitudes as predictors, validation of scales, and attitude change interventions. Although interest in this research area has been growing in recent years, the systematic review revealed important gaps in current knowledge on attitudes toward IPVAW in the EU that limits its potential to inform public policy. The review outlines directions for future study and suggests that to better inform policy making, these future research efforts would benefit from an EU-level perspective.

Sexual harassment is recognized as discrimination on the grounds of sex and as a breach of the principle of equal treatment between men and women. The survey of the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) on violence against women shows, however, that sexual harassment remains a pervasive and common experience for many women in the European Union. Dependent on the type of incident recorded, an estimated 83 to 102 million women (45%-55% of women) in the 28 EU Member States have experienced at least one form of sexual harassment since the age of 15. It also becomes apparent that many women do not talk with anyone about their experiences of sexual harassment, and very few report the most serious incidents to their hierarchy at work or to a responsible authority. Sexual harassment occurs in various settings and uses different means, such as the Internet. The FRA survey results indicate that sexual harassment against women involves a range of different perpetrators and includes the use of “new” technologies. The survey shows that sexual harassment disproportionately affects younger women, and that it is more commonly perceived and experienced by women with a university degree and women in the highest occupational groups. The article outlines key findings from the FRA Violence Against Women Survey with regard to the extent, forms, and consequences of sexual harassment in the European Union. It offers a critical discussion of existing definitions and measurements of sexual harassment, underlines how these significantly influence the reported prevalence rates in official or survey data, and points to relevant factors which explain the observed individual and country differences.

Public helping reactions are essential to reduce a victim’s secondary victimization in intimate partner violence against women (IPVAW) cases. Because gender-related characteristics have been linked widely to IPVAW prevalence, the study aimed to examine individual attitudes and perceptions toward different forms of violence against women, as well as gender-related macrosocial ideological and structural factors, in explaining helping reactions to IPVAW across 28 European countries. We performed multilevel logistic regression analysis, taking measures from the Eurobarometer 2016 (N = 7115) and the European Institute for Gender Equality datasets. Our study revealed a greater individual perceived IPVAW prevalence, positive perception about the appropriateness of a legal response to psychological and sexual violence against women partners, and less VAW-supportive attitudes predicted helping reactions (i.e., formal, informal), but not negative reactions to IPVAW. Moreover, individuals from European countries with a greater perceived IPVAW prevalence and gender equality preferred formal reactions to IPVAW. Otherwise, in the European countries with lesser perceived IPVAW prevalence and negative perceptions about the appropriate legal response to psychological and sexual violence, people were more likely to provide informal reactions to IPVAW. Our results showed the role of gender-related characteristics influenced real reactions toward known victim of IPVAW.

Abstract With all eyes on the recent global COVID-19 pandemic, another pandemic has been growing in the shadows: violence against women. The Council of Europe’s Istanbul Convention creates a legal framework in order to protect women against all forms of violence. Its ratification process, however, has faced considerable challenges, particularly in the Central and Eastern European Member States. This article discusses the basic elements of the Istanbul Convention, reflects on the ratification process in the EU and its Member States, and sets out the main legal issues raised in the European Parliament’s request for an opinion (A-1/19 of 22 November 2019) to the Court of Justice of the European Union. Special focus is put on the choice of the correct EU legal basis and the practices of ‘splitting’ and ‘common accord’. This article argues that the European Parliament’s request for an opinion provides the perfect opportunity for the Court of Justice of the European Union to further clarify the law and the practice of concluding mixed agreements by the EU and its Member States.

Experiences of violence in childhood can affect women’s later exposure to violence and their risk of victimization. Comparable data on the extent of abuse in childhood are still rare. The European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) conducted in 2012 the first comparative European Union (EU)-wide survey on violence against women. This article looks at the extent and effects of childhood experiences of violence reported by women in the FRA violence against women survey in all 28 EU Member States. The article does not examine abuse and violence by children toward other children, as the FRA’s survey—which forms the basis of the analysis in this article—interviewed respondents aged 18 years and above. Women who indicated having experienced violence by an adult perpetrator before the age of 15 years appear to be at greater risk of experiencing physical and sexual abuse in later life. Factors such as the severity and frequency of violence in childhood and the type of perpetrator of childhood abuse have an impact on later victimization of women. The article examines the relation between childhood experiences of violence and later exposure to partner and nonpartner violence, by severity, frequency, and type of perpetrator. The results confirm that already a single incidence of violence in childhood increases the likelihood of revictimization at a later stage in life. The findings also show that sexual and emotional abuse in childhood has particularly strong effects on women’s lifelong experience of violence with respect to both intimate partner and nonpartner violence. The findings are assessed in the light of how to prevent cycles of abuse.

In 2014, the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights ranked Denmark as the European Union country with the highest occurrence of male physical violence and sexual assault against women. This report was described as ‘grotesque’, ‘misguided’ and ‘untrustworthy’ in the Danish mainstream media, which cited a number of prominent political commentators and expert researchers who debunked these findings. Using this case of overt public rejection of violent and white masculinity as a central analytical thread, this article explores how the invisiblization of Danish male violence, as well as the projection of sexual aggression onto minority communities, produces a peculiar politics of denial and denialism in Denmark. The authors argue that the nationalist myth of gender equality branded within the Danish mainstream media and society is a variety of gender exceptionalism; which in turn generates racist, reactionary and suppressive ideologies on violence, racial discrimination and social inequality.

Violence against women and domestic violence has attracted a lot of attention of the scientific community over the last 30 years. During that period, this topic assumed a very important place in all international agendas and was tackled by the most important international organizations and associations. The Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence, i.e. the Istanbul Convention, is one of the basic international documents which has had an influence on numerous legislations of European countries in the field of gender equality and domestic violence. The aim of this paper is to show by a comparative method and through analysis and review of available literature the advantages of the Istanbul Convention and its importance for gender equality through a review of the literature, and also to point out the criticisms attributed to it. Research results have shown that the difference between sex and gender equality is a stumbling block and a serious objection in countries with traditional, nationalist and hard autocratic regimes. Also, most European countries have fully implemented the Istanbul Convention in their legislation and thus significantly contributed to gender equality and protection of women from abuse and domestic violence. The discussion shall focus on the importance of adopting a new convention or resolution at the level of the United Nations (UN), which would cover all contentious issues related to violence against women and domestic violence, and which would be binding on all members.

Stalking was recently criminalised in Spain and other European countries, following the signing of the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence, despite a lack of empirical knowledge of victimisation by this phenomenon. Previous research carried out in the usa and in other European countries on victimisation by stalking with female samples has shown that young women are the most frequently victimised group. Based on those findings, research was conducted in Spain with a sample of 1,162 university students, including women and men. This paper presents the main findings of this research, determining the prevalence of stalking victimisation, the victim and stalker profiles, and the dynamics of this type of victimisation.

In my postgraduate formation during the last years of the 80’s, we had close to thirty hospital beds in a pavilion called “sépticas” (1). In Colombia, where abortion was completely penalized, the pavilion was mostly filled with women with insecure, complicated abortions. The focus we received was technical: management of intensive care; performance of hysterectomies, colostomies, bowel resection, etc. In those times, some nurses were nuns and limited themselves to interrogating the patients to get them to “confess” what they had done to themselves in order to abort. It always disturbed me that the women who left alive, left without any advice or contraceptive method. Having asked a professor of mine, he responded with disdain: “This is a third level hospital, those things are done by nurses of the first level”. Seeing so much pain and death, I decided to talk to patients, and I began to understand their decision. I still remember so many deaths with sadness, but one case in particular pains me: it was a woman close to being fifty who arrived with a uterine perforation in a state of advanced sepsis. Despite the surgery and the intensive care, she passed away. I had talked to her, and she told me she was a widow, had two adult kids and had aborted because of “embarrassment towards them” because they were going to find out that she had an active sexual life. A few days after her passing, the pathology professor called me, surprised, to tell me that the uterus we had sent for pathological examination showed no pregnancy. She was a woman in a perimenopausal state with a pregnancy exam that gave a false positive due to the high levels of FSH/LH typical of her age. SHE WAS NOT PREGNANT!!! She didn’t have menstruation because she was premenopausal and a false positive led her to an unsafe abortion. Of course, the injuries caused in the attempted abortion caused the fatal conclusion, but the real underlying cause was the social taboo in respect to sexuality. I had to watch many adolescents and young women leave the hospital alive, but without a uterus, sometime without ovaries and with colostomies, to be looked down on by a society that blamed them for deciding to not be mothers. I had to see situation of women that arrived with their intestines protruding from their vaginas because of unsafe abortions. I saw women, who in their despair, self-inflicted injuries attempting to abort with elements such as stick, branches, onion wedges, alum bars and clothing hooks among others. Among so many deaths, it was hard not having at least one woman per day in the morgue due to an unsafe abortion. During those time, healthcare was not handled from the biopsychosocial, but only from the technical (2); nonetheless, in the academic evaluations that were performed, when asked about the definition of health, we had to recite the text from the International Organization of Health that included these three aspects. How contradictory! To give response to the health need of women and guarantee their right when I was already a professor, I began an obstetric contraceptive service in that third level hospital. There was resistance from the directors, but fortunately I was able to acquire international donations for the institution, which facilitated its acceptance. I decided to undertake a teaching career with the hope of being able to sensitize health professionals towards an integral focus of health and illness. When the International Conference of Population and Development (ICPD) was held in Cairo in 1994, I had already spent various years in teaching, and when I read their Action Program, I found a name for what I was working on: Sexual and Reproductive Rights. I began to incorporate the tools given by this document into my professional and teaching life. I was able to sensitize people at my countries Health Ministry, and we worked together moving it to an approach of human rights in areas of sexual and reproductive health (SRH). This new viewpoint, in addition to being integral, sought to give answers to old problems like maternal mortality, adolescent pregnancy, low contraceptive prevalence, unplanned or unwanted pregnancy or violence against women. With other sensitized people, we began with these SRH issues to permeate the Colombian Society of Obstetrics and Gynecology, some universities, and university hospitals. We are still fighting in a country that despite many difficulties has improved its indicators of SRH. With the experience of having labored in all sphere of these topics, we manage to create, with a handful of colleagues and friend at the Universidad El Bosque, a Master’s Program in Sexual and Reproductive Health, open to all professions, in which we broke several paradigms. A program was initiated in which the qualitative and quantitative investigation had the same weight, and some alumni of the program are now in positions of leadership in governmental and international institutions, replicating integral models. In the Latin American Federation of Obstetrics and Gynecology (FLASOG, English acronym) and in the International Federation of Obstetrics and Gynecology (FIGO), I was able to apply my experience for many years in the SRH committees of these association to benefit women and girls in the regional and global environments. When I think of who has inspired me in these fights, I should highlight the great feminist who have taught me and been with me in so many fights. I cannot mention them all, but I have admired the story of the life of Margaret Sanger with her persistence and visionary outlook. She fought throughout her whole life to help the women of the 20th century to be able to obtain the right to decide when and whether or not they wanted to have children (3). Of current feminist, I have had the privilege of sharing experiences with Carmen Barroso, Giselle Carino, Debora Diniz and Alejandra Meglioli, leaders of the International Planned Parenthood Federation – Western Hemisphere Region (IPPF-RHO). From my country, I want to mention my countrywoman Florence Thomas, psychologist, columnist, writer and Colombo-French feminist. She is one of the most influential and important voices in the movement for women rights in Colombia and the region. She arrived from France in the 1960’s, in the years of counterculture, the Beatles, hippies, Simone de Beauvoir, and Jean-Paul Sartre, a time in which capitalism and consumer culture began to be criticized (4). It was then when they began to talk about the female body, female sexuality and when the contraceptive pill arrived like a total revolution for women. Upon its arrival in 1967, she experimented a shock because she had just assisted in a revolution and only found a country of mothers, not women (5). That was the only destiny for a woman, to be quiet and submissive. Then she realized that this could not continue, speaking of “revolutionary vanguards” in such a patriarchal environment. In 1986 with the North American and European feminism waves and with her academic team, they created the group “Mujer y Sociedad de la Universidad Nacional de Colombia”, incubator of great initiatives and achievements for the country (6). She has led great changes with her courage, the strength of her arguments, and a simultaneously passionate and agreeable discourse. Among her multiple books, I highlight “Conversaciones con Violeta” (7), motivated by the disdain towards feminism of some young women. She writes it as a dialogue with an imaginary daughter in which, in an intimate manner, she reconstructs the history of women throughout the centuries and gives new light of the fundamental role of feminism in the life of modern women. Another book that shows her bravery is “Había que decirlo” (8), in which she narrates the experience of her own abortion at age twenty-two in sixty’s France. My work experience in the IPPF-RHO has allowed me to meet leaders of all ages in diverse countries of the region, who with great mysticism and dedication, voluntarily, work to achieve a more equal and just society. I have been particularly impressed by the appropriation of the concept of sexual and reproductive rights by young people, and this has given me great hope for the future of the planet. We continue to have an incomplete agenda of the action plan of the ICPD of Cairo but seeing how the youth bravely confront the challenges motivates me to continue ahead and give my years of experience in an intergenerational work. In their policies and programs, the IPPF-RHO evidences great commitment for the rights and the SRH of adolescent, that are consistent with what the organization promotes, for example, 20% of the places for decision making are in hands of the young. Member organizations, that base their labor on volunteers, are true incubators of youth that will make that unassailable and necessary change of generations. In contrast to what many of us experienced, working in this complicated agenda of sexual and reproductive health without theoretical bases, today we see committed people with a solid formation to replace us. In the college of medicine at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia and the College of Nursing at the Universidad El Bosque, the new generations are more motivated and empowered, with great desire to change the strict underlying structures. Our great worry is the onslaught of the ultra-right, a lot of times better organized than us who do support rights, that supports anti-rights group and are truly pro-life (9). Faced with this scenario, we should organize ourselves better, giving battle to guarantee the rights of women in the local, regional, and global level, aggregating the efforts of all pro-right organizations. We are now committed to the Objectives of Sustainable Development (10), understood as those that satisfy the necessities of the current generation without jeopardizing the capacity of future generations to satisfy their own necessities. This new agenda is based on: - The unfinished work of the Millennium Development Goals - Pending commitments (international environmental conventions) - The emergent topics of the three dimensions of sustainable development: social, economic, and environmental. We now have 17 objectives of sustainable development and 169 goals (11). These goals mention “universal access to reproductive health” many times. In objective 3 of this list is included guaranteeing, before the year 2030, “universal access to sexual and reproductive health services, including those of family planning, information, and education.” Likewise, objective 5, “obtain gender equality and empower all women and girls”, establishes the goal of “assuring the universal access to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights in conformity with the action program of the International Conference on Population and Development, the Action Platform of Beijing”. It cannot be forgotten that the term universal access to sexual and reproductive health includes universal access to abortion and contraception. Currently, 830 women die every day through preventable maternal causes; of these deaths, 99% occur in developing countries, more than half in fragile environments and in humanitarian contexts (12). 216 million women cannot access modern contraception methods and the majority live in the nine poorest countries in the world and in a cultural environment proper to the decades of the seventies (13). This number only includes women from 15 to 49 years in any marital state, that is to say, the number that takes all women into account is much greater. Achieving the proposed objectives would entail preventing 67 million unwanted pregnancies and reducing maternal deaths by two thirds. We currently have a high, unsatisfied demand for modern contraceptives, with extremely low use of reversible, long term methods (intrauterine devices and subdermal implants) which are the most effect ones with best adherence (14). There is not a single objective among the 17 Objectives of Sustainable Development where contraception does not have a prominent role: from the first one that refers to ending poverty, going through the fifth one about gender equality, the tenth of inequality reduction among countries and within the same country, until the sixteenth related with peace and justice. If we want to change the world, we should procure universal access to contraception without myths or barriers. We have the moral obligation of achieving the irradiation of extreme poverty and advancing the construction of more equal, just, and happy societies. In emergency contraception (EC), we are very far from reaching expectations. If in reversible, long-term methods we have low prevalence, in EC the situation gets worse. Not all faculties in the region look at this topic, and where it is looked at, there is no homogeneity in content, not even within the same country. There are still myths about their real action mechanisms. There are countries, like Honduras, where it is prohibited and there is no specific medicine, the same case as in Haiti. Where it is available, access is dismal, particularly among girls, adolescents, youth, migrants, afro-descendent, and indigenous. The multiple barriers for the effective use of emergency contraceptives must be knocked down, and to work toward that we have to destroy myths and erroneous perceptions, taboos and cultural norms; achieve changes in laws and restrictive rules within countries, achieve access without barriers to the EC; work in union with other sectors; train health personnel and the community. It is necessary to transform the attitude of health personal to a service above personal opinion. Reflecting on what has occurred after the ICPD in Cairo, their Action Program changed how we look at the dynamics of population from an emphasis on demographics to a focus on the people and human rights. The governments agreed that, in this new focus, success was the empowerment of women and the possibility of choice through expanded access to education, health, services, and employment among others. Nonetheless, there have been unequal advances and inequality persists in our region, all the goals were not met, the sexual and reproductive goals continue beyond the reach of many women (15). There is a long road ahead until women and girls of the world can claim their rights and liberty of deciding. Globally, maternal deaths have been reduced, there is more qualified assistance of births, more contraception prevalence, integral sexuality education, and access to SRH services for adolescents are now recognized rights with great advances, and additionally there have been concrete gains in terms of more favorable legal frameworks, particularly in our region; nonetheless, although it’s true that the access condition have improved, the restrictive laws of the region expose the most vulnerable women to insecure abortions. There are great challenges for governments to recognize SRH and the DSR as integral parts of health systems, there is an ample agenda against women. In that sense, access to SRH is threatened and oppressed, it requires multi-sector mobilization and litigation strategies, investigation and support for the support of women’s rights as a multi-sector agenda. Looking forward, we must make an effort to work more with youth to advance not only the Action Program of the ICPD, but also all social movements. They are one of the most vulnerable groups, and the biggest catalyzers for change. The young population still faces many challenges, especially women and girls; young girls are in particularly high risk due to lack of friendly and confidential services related with sexual and reproductive health, gender violence, and lack of access to services. In addition, access to abortion must be improved; it is the responsibility of states to guarantee the quality and security of this access. In our region there still exist countries with completely restrictive frameworks. New technologies facilitate self-care (16), which will allow expansion of universal access, but governments cannot detach themselves from their responsibility. Self-care is expanding in the world and can be strategic for reaching the most vulnerable populations. There are new challenges for the same problems, that require a re-interpretation of the measures necessary to guaranty the DSR of all people, in particular women, girls, and in general, marginalized and vulnerable populations. It is necessary to take into account migrations, climate change, the impact of digital media, the resurgence of hate discourse, oppression, violence, xenophobia, homo/transphobia, and other emergent problems, as SRH should be seen within a framework of justice, not isolated. We should demand accountability of the 179 governments that participate in the ICPD 25 years ago and the 193 countries that signed the Sustainable Development Objectives. They should reaffirm their commitments and expand their agenda to topics not considered at that time. Our region has given the world an example with the Agreement of Montevideo, that becomes a blueprint for achieving the action plan of the CIPD and we should not allow retreat. This agreement puts people at the center, especially women, and includes the topic of abortion, inviting the state to consider the possibility of legalizing it, which opens the doors for all governments of the world to recognize that women have the right to choose on maternity. This agreement is much more inclusive: Considering that the gaps in health continue to abound in the region and the average statistics hide the high levels of maternal mortality, of sexually transmitted diseases, of infection by HIV/AIDS, and the unsatisfied demand for contraception in the population that lives in poverty and rural areas, among indigenous communities, and afro-descendants and groups in conditions of vulnerability like women, adolescents and incapacitated people, it is agreed: 33- To promote, protect, and guarantee the health and the sexual and reproductive rights that contribute to the complete fulfillment of people and social justice in a society free of any form of discrimination and violence. 37- Guarantee universal access to quality sexual and reproductive health services, taking into consideration the specific needs of men and women, adolescents and young, LGBT people, older people and people with incapacity, paying particular attention to people in a condition of vulnerability and people who live in rural and remote zone, promoting citizen participation in the completing of these commitments. 42- To guarantee, in cases in which abortion is legal or decriminalized in the national legislation, the existence of safe and quality abortion for non-desired or non-accepted pregnancies and instigate the other States to consider the possibility of modifying public laws, norms, strategies, and public policy on the voluntary interruption of pregnancy to save the life and health of pregnant adolescent women, improving their quality of life and decreasing the number of abortions (17).

The purpose of the article is to study the economic and legal foundations of ensuring gender equality in Ukraine and the countries of the European Union. In the process of the research, it is established that the strengthening of the processes of globalization and reformatting of the world economic order lead to the need to ensure gender equality in the context of international human rights activities. The problem of equalizing the rights and opportunities of men and women for a long time has been the object of legal regulation, as there are processes of strengthening gender asymmetry, manifested in gender violence, significant gender gaps in the labor market, in terms of wages and pensions, gender segregation, a significant level of gender inequality in the economy and critical in politics, as well as in individual inconsistencies in the legal provision of countries with European norms. It is found that highly developed countries have a better potential to ensure high indicators of gender equality, as evidenced by the high values ​​of the Global Gender Gap Index, while countries with a lower level of development are able to ensure a minimal gender gap in access to education and health care, and in relation to women's participation in economic life and politics, there are significant problems and obstacles. It is found that the current legislation of Ukraine needs improvement in terms of strengthening criminal liability for committing gender-based violence, and at the European level, the need to find and justify effective methods of ensuring gender equality regarding women's access to political life is noted. In order to identify common features of ensuring gender equality in the countries of the European Union and distinguish Ukraine's place among them according to the Global Gender Gap Index, it is proposed to conduct a cluster analysis, the results of which indicate the division of the countries of the European Union into three groups depending on the level of gender equality in them: countries with high level, medium level countries and low-level countries. Indicators of gender equality in Ukraine showed that it belongs to the third group, which indicates the deepening of the problems of gender inequality.

Older adult suicide rates vary widely within Europe, and differential welfare policies might contribute to this. We studied variations in economic indicators and suicide rates of people 65+ across 28 European countries and examined the effects of these indicators on suicide rates, grouping countries according to their socio-political systems and welfare regimes. Suicide data was obtained from the WHO European Mortality Database. The European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions and the European Union Labour Force Survey provided data on economic indicators. Linear mixed models were applied. Suicide rates ranged from 4.22/100,000 (Cyprus) to 36.37/100,000 (Hungary). Material deprivation was related to elevated suicide rates in both genders in the pooled data set and in men but not women in the Continental and Island countries. Higher ratio of median income (65+/under 65) was associated with lower likelihood of suicide in women in the South-Eastern European countries. In the Nordic region, the 65+ employment rate was associated with a decreased likelihood of suicide in men. These factors to some extent show economic insecurity against older people, which influences the likelihood of suicide. Active labor market policies and inclusive social environment may contribute to suicide prevention in this age group.

Lustration was not legislated in Romania to date, but it was discussed by deputies and senators of all ideological persuasions, especially from 2005 to 2007. Declarations delivered in front of the house, interventions during debates of lustration-related draft bills and contributions to a parliament-sponsored public discussion reveal that for Romanian legislators lustration can bring about moral cleansing and a break with the past, provide retributive justice for victims of communism, facilitate elite replacement, prevent future violence, and help countries enjoy the benefits of European Union accession, although it punishes valuable individuals, runs against European values, is impractical and unconstitutional.

Domestic violence, not only in the Republic of Serbia but in other legal systems as well, is a dangerous criminal offence amongst crime violence which is going on between close relatives. Therefore, in addition to the system of criminal sanctions, various measures of preventive characters are applied more and more often against persons committing violence, in prevention of this dangerous social evil. Their goal is to prevent domestic violence in general or its recommission. Similar situation is in the Republic of Serbia where a special law has been applied since 2016.With the aim of taking organized and systematic activities of different social subjects, especially state organs to prevent and combat (repress) domestic violence or violence in relationships in the Republic of Serbia, the Government of the Republic of Serbia adopted in 2011 a “National strategy to prevent and combat violence over women in families and relationships”. This strategy is an expression of the RS Government’s resoluteness to protect women from domestic violence and relationships in advance, complying with international standards and acts on the protection of fundamental human rights - by providing support to all the subjects in their activities to prevent and combat these forms of violence. This way, the Strategy encourages application of international and domestic legal norms and standards protecting human rights, promoting gender equality and prohibiting any form of domestic or relationship violence against women, as form of violence which mostly affects women. This Strategy confirms inclusion of the Republic of Serbia into joint activities of the Council of Europe and the European Union, having the aim to raise social consciousness about the problem of domestic violence against women and forming of realistic assumptions for efficient prevention of these forms of violence. The essence of this Strategy are conclusions reached at the National Conference on combat against violence against women, held in 2007 as part of the Council of Europe’s campaign for the combating against all forms of violence against women, including domestic violence.The Strategy of the Republic of Serbia pays special attention to the group of women who are exposed (or potentially might be exposed) to multiple discrimination, as vulnerable groups of women, like women with disabilities, Roma women, mothers of disabled children, handicapped women or women with chronical diseases, women from the villages, older women, refugees or displaced women etc. This Strategy especially took into account a Recommendation of the Council of Europe 1905 (2010) on the necessity to protect children who witness domestic violence, adopted in March 2010, which leans on the Declaration of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe 1714 (2010) on Children who witness domestic violence.

In recent years, there has been a tendency in cases of violence against women and sexual offences to prosecute them, regardless of whether the victim files their complaint. This article investigates the recent changes in European criminal law in this respect. The results indicate a variety of approaches under European Union (EU) law, Council of Europe (CoE) law and domestic approaches. Furthermore, existing EU and CoE law has not suggested an ‘in-between’ approach, which exists in some national legal systems such as that of Germany. On that basis, this article suggests a number of amendments to current EU and CoE law.

Both within and outside Europe, the number of women sitting on corporate boards is very low. In spite of the rising number of women earning post-graduate degrees in law, business and administration, only a minority of them ends up sitting on companies’ corporate boards. Against this context, the aim of this article is to study the Italian approach to this problem, and to set it against the framework of the solutions adopted in Europe. The articles starts by analyzing the initiatives carried out by the European Union with the goal of promoting equal treatment between genders on corporate boards. After the survey of the soft and hard measures undertaken by some European countries to tackle gender imbalance on boards, the paper will analyze the legislative reform recently adopted by the Italian Parliament. The conclusion will focus on the effectiveness of European positive actions to tackle gender inequality in corporate boards

Background:Violence against women perpetrated by intimate partners (IPV) is a sufficiently serious social issue in the countries of the former Soviet Union to warrant focused attention and sociological research. In spite of recent advances in the understanding of the prevalence and detrimental consequences of IPV worldwide, little is known about IPV in transitional countries, where very few studies have been carried out. Investigating IPV against women in different societies and analyzing micro- and macro-level factors (i.e., social, economic, psychological, etc.) that contribute to IPV is important for social scientists in order to understand the nature of IPV and to combat it.Objectives:The aims of the study were to examine the prevalence of physical IPV in Tajikistan and discuss the risk factors for IPV in this country of the former Soviet Union.Method:This research is based on the data from the Tajik Demographic and Health Surveys conducted in 2012. SPSS 21.0 and STATA 13 were used for statistical analysis, which involved a multistep process and included a series of statistical methods such as a univariate descriptive analysis of IPV predictor and outcome variables and a multilevel regression model for survey data to estimate the effect of individual- and community-level characteristics and to take into consideration the multilevel nature of IPV. The analyses rely upon binomial and ordered logistic regression models.Results:The results of this study demonstrate that physical IPV is not a rare phenomenon in Tajikistan where 18% of women in this region have experienced IPV at some point of their lives, and the rate of lifetime occurrence of IPV is 17.5%. While women’s older age and living in rural area are protective factors against IPV in Tajikistan, risk factors for physical IPV include higher number of children, household wealth, women’s employment, partner’s alcohol consumptions, witnessing IPV in women’s family of origin, justification of IPV by women, and partner’s controlling behavior.Conclusion:The current study provides evidence that a significant number of women are physically abused by their intimate partners in Tajikistan. In the context of the significant structural changes and the strengthening of patriarchal ideology resulted by the collapse if the Soviet Union, an examination of the risk factors of IPV in this region is well-timed and important for the understanding of gender relations and gender-based violence.

The paper investigates the impact of the selected factors on the healthy life years of men and women in the EU countries. The multiple quantile spatial autoregression models are used in order to account for substantial differences in the healthy life years and life quality across the EU members. Quantile regression allows studying dependencies between variables in different quantiles of the response distribution. Moreover, this statistical tool is robust against violations of the classical regression assumption about the distribution of the error term. Parameters of the models were estimated using instrumental variable method (Kim, Muller 2004), whereas the confidence intervals and p-values were bootstrapped.

BackgroundIntimate partner violence (IPV) is a complex phenomenon and some research suggests that there are qualitatively distinct IPV types. However, little is known about the risk factors associated with different IPV types.MethodsData from Violence against women: an European Union (EU)-wide survey, conducted by the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights was used. Latent class analysis (LCA) was employed to identify distinct IPV patterns based on the intensity of eight forms of violence by current partners (n=30 675). Multilevel multinomial logistic regression was used to examine individual and country-level risk factors associated with the outcome IPV patterns.ResultsA five-class solution was selected based on the LCA results. Two classes encompassed severe coercive IPV: the intimate terrorism class (1.5%) also comprised extensive physical violence whereas the high coercive control class (2.0%) did not. The partner’s alcohol abuse, violent behaviour outside the relationship and the woman’s abuse in childhood were the main individual factors positively associated with IPV. The country’s gender equality levels were negatively associated with the odds of experiencing intimate terrorism (adjusted OR, aOR 0.35, 95% CI 0.21 to 0.56) and high coercive control (aOR 0.63, 95% CI 0.47 to 0.85) versus no IPV. Although the effects of most individual risk factors were found universally for all IPV patterns, the strongest associations were typically revealed for the intimate terrorism pattern.ConclusionThe results support the importance of coercive control as a factor differentiating between IPV types and also highlight the need to consider IPV typologies in research. Policy implications of the findings are discussed.