Violence against women and girls and gender-based violence is a cause and effect of gender inequality and the power imbalance between women and men, and one of the most widespread violations of human rights. This deeply entrenched phenomenon requires a coordinated and targeted prevention and policy response based on reliable and comparable data and evidence. Over the past years, EU candidate countries and potential candidates from the Western Balkans (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo1, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia) and Türkiye have strengthened their data collection on violence against women (VAW), contributing to a better understanding of patterns and trends and providing much-needed data for evidence-based policymaking.
Femicide is an extreme form of gender-based violence, defined broadly as ‘the killing of a woman or girl because of her gender’. EU and international institutions use various terms to refer to femicide, including ‘gender-related killing of women’ and ‘feminicide’. In 2020, 47 000 women and girls worldwide were killed by their intimate partners or other family members. In 2019, while women accounted for only 19 % of total homicide victims, they comprised:
Intimate partner violence (IPV) is the most common form of violence against women and the most extreme form of gender discrimination. It poses a threat to the fundamental rights to dignity, liberty, security, health and, eventually, the lives of women. EU Member States have not established a common definition for IPV, which means it is understood and measured differently across jurisdictions.
Rape is an unlawful sexual act and a harmful form of sexual violence that disproportionately affects women and girls. Rape occurs in the absence of consent, the voluntary agreement between participants to engage in sexual activity. EIGE recognises the need for systematic data collection on the prevalence and frequency of rape in the EU, the effects of sexual violence on victims and the actions of Member States to prosecute and hold the perpetrators accountable.
Femicide, commonly understood as the killing of a woman or girl because of her gender, is the most extreme form of gender-based violence, deeply rooted in the inequalities between men and women in society. It is estimated that, globally, around 47 000 women and girls were killed by their intimate partners or other family members in 2020, and around 2 600 were killed in Europe (UNODC, 2021a).
Femicide continues to be widespread around the globe. In 2020 the global estimation of femicide shows that 47 000 women were killed by intimate partners or other family members worldwide and around 2 600 in Europe. However, the number of victims is in fact much higher. Orphaned children, bereaved parents and siblings of murdered women are rarely considered as direct victims.
Digital platforms have often been celebrated for allowing equal opportunities for public self-expression, regardless of one’s identity and status. Yet, not everyone is welcome in the cyberspace. The digital arena has become a breeding ground for a range of exclusionary and violent discourses and beliefs, expressed and disseminated in a context of anonymity and impunity. Both women and men can be victims of cyber violence.
Female genital mutilation (FGM) is a severe form of gender-based violence, that violates the human rights of women and girls. The practice entails “all procedures that involve the partial or total removal of the external female genitalia, or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons". Globally, over 200 million women and girls in 31 countries have been subjected to FGM.
The European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) broadly defines femicide as ‘the killing of a woman or girl because of her gender’. EIGE recognises the various forms of femicide committed against women and girls as ‘the most severe manifestation of gender-based violence’. Various terms are used by the European Union (EU) and international institutions to refer to femicide. As the definitions used to describe acts of femicide are either lacking or inconsistent across the EU, methods for researching the prevalence of femicide vary, as does the administrative capacity of Member States to collect this data.
Digital platforms have often been celebrated for allowing equal opportunities for public self-expression, regardless of one’s identity and status. Yet, not everyone is welcome in the cyberspace. The digital arena has become a breeding ground for a range of exclusionary and violent discourses and beliefs, expressed and disseminated in a context of anonymity and impunity. Both women and men can be victims of cyber violence.
This report developed by the research and statistics team of EIGE presents evidence on coercive control and psychological violence against women in EU Member States. The study analyses the causes and consequences of coercive control and psychological violence against women, assesses the criminalisation of psychological violence and coercive control in EU Member States and identifies and analyses promising practices and the main hurdles in preventing coercive control and psychological violence against women in EU Member States.
EIGE's 2021 study on the costs of gender-based violence in the European Union focused on intimate partner violence as a subset of gender-based violence and provided an updated estimate of the costs of gender-based and intimate partner violence in the EU. EIGE calculated the cost of gender-based violence in the EU and in each Member State based on extrapolated data from the United Kingdom.
