Le Monde diplomatiqueJuly 2004
In Europe right now the statistics of male violence against female partners are terrible. For European women aged 16-44 violence in the home is the primary cause of injury and death, more lethal than road accidents and cancer. Between 25% and 50% of women are victims of this violence. In Portugal 52.8% of women say that they have been violently treated by their husbands or partners. In Germany almost 300 women a year - or three women every four days - are killed by men with whom they used to live. In Britain one woman dies in similar circumstances every three days.
In Spain it is one every four days. In France six women die this way every month: 33% of them are knifed, 33% shot, 20% strangled and 10% beaten (1). In the 15 member states of the European Union (before enlargement to 25), more than 600 women die every year because of sexist brutality in the family (2).
The profile of the aggressor is not what you might imagine. There is a public perception that these types of killers tend to be from poor backgrounds and with little education. That is not the case. The death of the actress Marie Trintignant, who was killed on 6 August 2003 by her partner, a famous artist, is an example.
A report from the Council of Europe (3) says that "it is even proved that the incidence of domestic violence seems to increase with income and level of education". It stresses that in the Netherlands "almost half of all those who commit violence against women hold university degrees". In France attackers are usually men whose professional status gives them a degree of power. A sizeable percentage of the attackers are management personnel (67%), health professionals (25%) and officers in the police or army (4).
Another misconception is that violence of this kind is more common in the macho cultures of southern Europe than in northern countries. Here too the image needs adjustment. Romania is the European country with the worst record: every year almost 13 in every million women there are killed by their male partners.
However, next on the dismal honours list come countries where women’s rights are highly respected. In Finland more than eight in every million women are killed in the home every year: the list runs on down through Norway (6.58), Luxembourg (5.56), Denmark (5.42) and Sweden (4.59). Italy, Spain, Portugal and Ireland in fact come at the bottom of the list.
Such violence is worldwide: it happens in all countries, on all continents and in all social, economic, religious and cultural groups. Women of course may also be violent in their relationships with men; we didn’t need the images of women soldiers from the United States torturing detainees in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq to confirm that there are women torturers (5). Homosexual relationships are not exempt from violence, either. But mostly women are the victims of violence.
This violence - to which feminist groups have long drawn government attention (6) - is so virulent globally that we must regard it as a major violation of human rights. It is a major issue of public health: not just the physical attacks, however murderous, but also psychological violence, threats and intimidation, and sexual brutality. In many cases all these forms of violence coincide.
The fact that this violence happens in the home of the victim has always been a pretext for author ities to wash their hands and declare that it is a private domestic matter. Such an attitude is a collective refusal to help people in danger. It is also shocking hypocrisy since by now we have learnt that the private is also political. This kind of violence is a reflection of historically unequal power relations between men and women, the result of the institution of patriarchy, a system based on the idea of a natural inferiority of women and a biological supremacy of men.
This system generates such violence. It needs to be eliminated by appropriate laws. Some may object that this will take time. So why not start immediately, as many feminist organisations have demanded, by setting up a permanent international tribunal on violence against women?
(1) Henrion Report, Ministry of Health, Paris, February 2001.
(2) See: It’s in our hands: Stop violence against women, Amnesty International, London, 2004; Les violences contre les femmes en France: Une enquête nationale, La Documentation française, Paris, June 2002; the World Report on Violence and Health, chapter 4, "Intimate partner violence", World Health Organisation, Geneva, 2002.
(3) Olga Keltosova, Report on Domestic Violence, Council of Europe, Strasbourg, September 2002.
(4) Henrion Report, op cit.
(5) See Gisèle Halimi, "Tortionnaire, nom féminin", Libération, Paris, 18 June 2004.
(6 ) See "Demands to Eliminate Violence Against Women", text presented by the Women’s World March to the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, January 2002.
Translated by Ed Emery
