The violently gender-equal Nordic welfare states

Full text

page 48
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
48
4
The violently gender- equal Nordic
welfare states
Sofia Strid, Anne Laure Humbert and Jeff Hearn
Introduction
Sexual harassment is recognised as a form of violence against women and as
discrimination on the grounds of sex, gender and/ or sexuality. It includes
non- consensual physical contact, such as grabbing, pinching, slapping, or
rubbing against another person in a sexual way. It also includes non- physical
forms, such as catcalls, sexual comments about a person’s body or appearance,
demands for sexual favours, stalking or non- consensual exposure of sex
organs (UN, 2018). Sexual harassment is a violation of the principle of equal
treatment of women, men and further genders.
Sexual harassment is one of the most common forms of violence
against women (FRA, 2014), although there is a lack of research and
empirical evidence on its prevalence, consequences and how to prevent
it (Latcheva, 2017). This evidence matters, as there is a need for research-
based preventive instruments to tackle sexual harassment (Simonsson,
2020). The dierent forms that sexual harassment takes range widely in
their degree of severity. All forms, however, create a cultural environment
that harms, whether or not it provides an ‘entry point’ to other forms of
violence against women, including embodied acts of sexual or physical
violence. If violence against women is understood as autotelic – meaning
here that dierent forms are interrelated and thus correlated – then sexual
harassment can be taken to be indicative of a broader climate of violence
against women. Thus, in this chapter we focus on empirical measurements
of violence and violence against women, with the understanding that it
nevertheless is informative about the sexual harassment taking place within
the Nordic countries.1
The largest prevalence survey on violence against women, including
sexual harassment, in the EU – conducted by the European Union Agency
of Fundamental Rights (FRA) – ranks the Nordic countries at the top
compared to other EU countries when it comes to disclosed2 levels of
physical violence, psychological violence, sexual violence, and sexual
harassment (FRA, 2014) (see Figures 4.1 and 4.2).This is at odds with

page 49
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
The violently gender-equal Nordic states
49
Figure 4.1 : Disclosed levels of violence against women in the EU (FRA, 2014).
Powered by Bing
© GeoNames, Microsoft, OpenStreetMap, TomTom
20%
21%
24% 25%
26%
27% 28%
28%
30%
31%
32%
33%
34%
35%
36%
39%
44%
44%
45%
46%
47%
52%
19%
22%
20%
21%
24% 25%
26%
27% 28%
28%
30%
31%
32%
33%
34%
35%
36%
39%
44%
44%
45%
46%
47%
52%
Note: Physical and/ or sexual violence by a partner or a non- partner since the age of 15.
Source: https:// fra.eur opa.eu/ en/ publi cati ons- and- resour ces/ data- and- maps/ sur vey- data- explo rer- viole nce- agai nst- women- sur vey

page 50
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
Re-Imagining Sexual Harassment
50
Figure 4.2 : Disclosed levels of sexual harassment against women in the EU (FRA, 2014).
Powered by Bing
© GeoNames, Microsoft, OpenStreetMap, TomTom
24%
80%
71%
75%
73%
81%
35%
6… 51%
60%
53%
43%
50%
4…
42%
48%
51%
35%
47%
32%
32%
32%
49%
68%
68%
35%
6… 51%
60%
53%
43%
50%
4…
42%
48%
51%
35%
47%
32%
32%
32%
49%
24%
80%
71%
75%
73%
81%
Note: Sexual harassment – all forms since the age of 15.
Source: https:// fra.eur opa.eu/ en/ publi cati ons- and- resour ces/ data- and- maps/ sur vey- data- explo rer- viole nce- agai nst- women- sur vey

page 51
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
The violently gender-equal Nordic states
51
the Nordic countries being ranked in various composite indices as the
most gender- equal, or as ‘women- friendly’ (Hernes, 1987) welfare states,
a phenomenon referred to as the ‘Nordic paradox’ (see Figure 4.3) in the
literature (Gracia and Merlo, 2016).
While gender equality and the Nordic welfare state models are widely
debated, mainstream comparative analyses of these welfare models have not
adequately covered gender (Orlo, 2009) or violence (Strid et al, 2021).
Welfare state regimes research, with a very long history in the social sciences
(Titmuss, 1963; Therborn, 1983; Esping- Andersen, 1990) including that
on gender welfare regimes (Lewis, 1992; Duncan, 1995, 2002; Sainsbury,
1999), once indicated that some welfare states were more women- friendly
than others. Women- friendliness, a contested concept originally used by
German- Norwegian political scientist Helga Maria Hernes (1987), views
Figure 4.3 : Gender Equality Index vs levels of disclosed violence against women, 2012.
AT
BE
BG
HR
CY
CZ
DK
EE
FI
FR
DE
EL
HU
IE
IT LV
LT
LU
MT
NL
PL
PT
RO SK
SI
ES
SE
UK
40
50
60
70
80
90
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50
%60%
Gender Equality Index 2012
Disclosed violence against women 2012
Austria AT
Belgium BE
Bulgaria BG
Croatia HR
Cyprus CY
Czech Republic CZ
Denmark DK
Estonia EE
Finland FI
France FR
Germany DE
Greece EL
Hungary HU
Ireland IE
Italy IT
Latvia LV
Lithuania LT
Luxembourg LU
Malta MT
Netherlands NL
Poland PL
Portugal PT
Romania RO
Slovakia SK
Slovenia SI
Spain ES
Sweden SE
United Kingdom UK
Sources: https://fra.europa.eu/en/publications-and-resources/data-and-maps/survey-data-
explorer-violence-against-women-survey and https://eige.europa.eu/gender-equality-index/2015

page 52
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
Re-Imagining Sexual Harassment
52
the women- friendly welfare state as an instrument for the empowerment
of women as citizens, workers and mothers, as these welfare states propel
women’s social status closer to that of men – and towards system equilibrium.
In a welfare state regime analysis, the social democratic welfare states, such
as the Nordic welfare states, come out as more women- friendly than those
that are conservative/ corporatist or liberal.3
However, the claim of being a women- friendly welfare state has been
heavily criticised. In the welfare state, as elsewhere, the gender system
operates through gender segregation and hierarchy, positioning women as
both subordinate to and separate from men (Hirdman, 1988).4 Other critics
have suggested a reformulation and contextualisation with gender equality
as the key notion, focusing on which social policies can be considered to
be women- friendly, and for which women (Borschorst and Siim, 2002;
Sainsbury, 2006). Feminist scholars have also challenged the idea of the
women- friendly state by questioning conventional understandings of the
welfare state and women’s relationship to it (for example: MacKinnon, 1989;
Elman, 1996; Weldon, 2002), including for example the relationship between
feminist mobilisation and progressive policy on gender- based violence (Htun
and Weldon, 2012; see also Strid et al, 2021). More recently, the welfare state
regime typology and its notion of women- friendliness have been further
challenged by intersectional perspectives, and criticised in particular for
neglecting diversity, migration, multiculturalism, and ‘race’ (Sainsbury, 2006;
Siim and Borchorst, 2017; Dahlstedt and Neergaard, 2019).
This chapter takes a step further and considers what could be learnt from
placing violence centre stage in debates on gender equality and welfare
states, and the extent to which the Nordic welfare states are women-
friendly. Despite the range of critiques of the women- friendly welfare state,
it is notable that the empirical bases on which welfare regimes typologies
and their critics build when classifying and theorising about the women-
friendly welfare state, with few exceptions, continue to exclude men’s
violence against women as an indicator of women- friendliness or indeed
gender equality. Hence, while there is a long tradition of feminist research
on gender equality and the welfare state, research on men’s violence against
women and the welfare state is less prevalent (see, for example Haavind
and Magnusson, 2005; Tanhua, 2020). Recently however, these themes,
and the tensions between them, have been picked up and explored from a
dierent angle, namely through exploring the so- called ‘Nordic paradox’
(Gracia and Merlo, 2016). The ‘Nordic paradox’ literature departs from the
observed positive correlation between gender equality and disclosed levels
of violence against women in the Nordic countries. A naïve interpretation
of this correlation would suggest that the more gender equality there is in a
country, the more violence against women there is, which of course needs
to be – and has been – further analysed in relation to a range of factors,

page 53
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
The violently gender-equal Nordic states
53
not least attitudes and understandings of gender- based violence as violence
(Humbert et al, 2021).5 This counterintuitive correlation suggests either that
a violence regime is independent of gender equality regimes (Hearn et al,
2020; Strid et al, 2021), and/ or that the Nordic welfare states are not as
women- friendly as once argued. What is clear is that the ‘Nordic paradox’
points towards a complex relationship between gender equality and violence
against women, which needs to be further explored.
In this chapter, we interrogate why formally gender- equal welfare states
such as the Nordic welfare states report comparatively higher levels of
violence against women, including sexual harassment, while at the same
time are ranked as the most gender- equal and women- friendly welfare
states. This primarily conceptual chapter starts by problematising this vision
of the Nordic welfare states as gender- equal and ‘women- friendly’ by
showing that this may not hold true if violence against women – including
sexual harassment – is taken into account. However, before violence can be
incorporated into an assessment of how gender- equal the Nordic countries
are, it is necessary to further discuss the concept of violence: what counts
as violence, violence as a system (Strid and Meier- Arendt, 2020) and how
it relates to (gender) inequalities. The aim is to move towards alternative
conceptualisations of welfare states in relation to gender equality, ones which
fully integrate the problem of violence against women, including sexual
harassment. The chapter discusses what violence is and asks what happens
when we focus primarily on violence as a central question for analysing the
Nordic welfare state(s). It thus contributes to the debate on gender power
relations in the Nordic countries by simultaneously placing violence at the
centre of such relations.
Theoretical perspectives with violence centre stage
The complexity of violence against women and gender equality takes us
back to the question posed earlier in this chapter: ‘Why are formally gender-
equal welfare states substantively unequal?’ There are multiple approaches
to responding to that question. Turning to theory, and to classical feminist
(political) theory, dierent responses, or emphases, are oered. This chapter
relies mainly on a radical feminist analysis and focuses on men’s violence
as a root cause of inequality (Atkinson, 1969; Firestone, 1970). Radical
feminists do not view gender equality as sameness – and hence do not see
gender equality as equal participation in the same practices or in the same
places – and instead locate inequalities in patriarchal gender relations, in
institutions, ideologies, discourses and practices of sex/ intimacy and, more
importantly here, violence against women.
Alternatively, some liberal feminist theories view gender equality in terms
of sameness across gender, sex/ gender role dierence, or rooted in legal

page 54
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
Re-Imagining Sexual Harassment
54
inequalities and lack of equal opportunities and equal treatment (Okin,
1991), while some other liberal feminists draw on radical feminism to focus
on the examination of the nature of violence (Nussbaum, 1999). Marxist
feminists also vary in their analysis, with many viewing gender equality as
sameness, and locating inequalities in private ownership, individual property
ownership and oppression under capitalist modes of production (Friedan,
1963; Fergusson, 1989), although some also stress questions of sex and
reproduction as fundamental (see Hearn, 1991 and O’Brien, 1981, for
discussions). Finally, socialist feminists address the interconnectedness of
capitalism and patriarchy, and sometimes also imperialism, to explain and
transform the oppression of women (Hartmann, 1979; Ferguson, 1989).
Drawing on an analysis of society informed by radical feminist ideas, this
chapter places men’s violence against women centre stage in the analysis of
gender relations. It understands violence as an expression of power and calls
for a transformation of society where the institutions and norms that uphold
men’s material and discursive privileges are both challenged and transformed.
Such transformation requires an analysis of patriarchy and the welfare state
in which violence and violence against women take centre stage (Atkinson,
1969; Firestone, 1970). Doing so places violence, in its many forms, at the
centre of patriarchy and conceptualises violence as its ‘organising principle’
(Strid and Hearn, 2021). The concept of an organising principle is borrowed
from the natural sciences where it is a/ the core assumption from which
everything else by proximity can derive a classification or a value. Violence is
treated and conceptualised as the central reference point that allows all other
objects to be located, and used, in a conceptual framework. For example,
the idea of the solar system is based on the ‘organising principle’ that the
sun is located at a central point, around which all planets revolve.
Using the thought experiment of an organising principle can help simplify
and get a handle on a particularly complicated field, domain, set of social
relationships, or phenomena. It allows a shift in understanding, particularly
by going beyond heterotelic interpretations of violence, meaning here an
understanding of how violence is used as a means to achieve another goal.
An example is the use of violence to maintain control over women or to
uphold patriarchal institutions – such as via sexual harassment or economic
forms of violence. In this view, violence is complex and understood in line
with a radical feminist analysis of violence as an expression of power, but not
reducible to power; violence is understood as dominance, but it is not reducible
to dominance. While violence is connected to power and dominance, it
is not about power or dominance for their own sake, but transcends these
to achieve another goal. While heterotelic understandings of violence
are useful, the argument here is that they are not enough and should be
combined with autotelic understandings of violence. Violence can be viewed
as autotelic when it is a goal in itself, an activity, process and institution

page 55
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
The violently gender-equal Nordic states
55
that contains its own meaning or purpose (Schinkel, 2004, 2010; Hearn
et al, 2020, 2022). Autotelic violence means that violence is not merely a
tool, it is also self- perpetuating and an end in itself, as can occur with, for
example, organisation(al) violence (Hearn and Parkin, 2001), structural
violence (Galtung, 1969), cultural violence (Galtung, 1990), and epistemic
violence (Spivak, 1988). The approach concerns the ontology of violence
and questions whether violence is always to be explained by something else,
for example, as social exclusion, economic marginalisation or individual
pathology (Strid and Meier- Arendt, 2020; Hearn et al, 2020, 2022).
In the following discussion, the chapter engages with these themes and
tensions. First, it engages with debates on gender equality and (the lack of)
violence in welfare state research. It then discusses the concept of violence,
what counts as violence, and violence as a system (Strid and Meier- Arendt,
2020). The chapter then relies on an analysis of violence regimes, and uses a
recently constructed composite measure of dierent forms of interpersonal
violence including homicide, femicide, physical violence, and sexual violence
and harassment, to show that violence against women in the Nordic welfare
states operates relatively independently from other measures and indicators
of gender equality (Strid et al, 2021). These results are then discussed in
relation to systems of violence and oppression, gender equality and feminist
theory. Finally, the chapter proposes violence as a means of understanding
gender relations in the ‘violently gender- equal’ Nordic countries.6
Welfare regimes
The often- referred- to work of Esping- Andersen (1990), Three Worlds of
Welfare Capitalism, led to an entire industry of research analysing or fitting
welfare states in Europe and beyond into ideal- type categories (Liebfried,
1991; Goodin et al, 1999) and feminist critique thereof (Sainsbury, 1991,
1999; Lewis, 1992; Orlo, 1993). Esping- Andersen was predominantly
occupied with class and commodification (rather than gender and violence).
His well- known distinction between liberal, conservative, and social
democratic regime types moved away from expenditure as the sole criterion
for welfare eorts, and instead replaced it with the notion of the impact of
the decommodification of labour, social stratification and the public- private
mix of social provisions. The liberal US, conservative Germany and social
democratic Sweden typified the ideal models/ types of each welfare state
category. Esping- Andersen was in ‘good company’ when he omitted gender
in his original analysis; most post- war writing on welfare states makes little, if
any, mention of women or gender (for example: Titmuss, 1963; Goodin et al,
1999). The feminist critique of Esping- Andersen stresses the importance of
gender as both an outcome and an explanation of outcome: that is, gender
and gender relations as both independent and dependent variables in social

page 56
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
Re-Imagining Sexual Harassment
56
policy and welfare regime research. In particular, these critiques focus on
notions of the family, unpaid work and care (Lewis, 1992; O’Connor et al,
1999; Sainsbury, 1999) and on women’s dependency on the welfare state,
drawing on earlier feminist work on private and public patriarchies (Siim,
1987). These feminist critiques have further developed the welfare state
regime typology by gendering it. They concluded that a wider range of issues
needed to be included in the theorisation and comparison of forms of gender
regime, violence being one of them (Walby, 2009, 2013). Yet, the gender
regime framework took neither violence nor women’s and men’s relationship
to violence into account, not even ten years later (for example, Sörensen and
Bergqvist, 2002). Any conclusions about how some welfare state regimes are
‘more women- friendly’ than others therefore need to be revisited.
Gender- based violence is an extensive global problem with significant
impacts on individuals, families and societies. It is defined by the EU (EC,
2021), the Council of Europe (2011), the UN (1993) as a cause and a
consequence of gender inequality. It has pandemic proportions: one in three
women has been subjected to some form of physical or sexual violence in
her lifetime (FRA, 2014). More than one in two women in the EU, on
average, have experienced sexual harassment since the age of 15 (FRA, 2014)
(see Figure 4.2). For Denmark, Finland and Sweden – three Nordic welfare
states often labelled the most gender- equal countries in the world (World
Economic Forum, 2001, 2022; EIGE, 2021, 2019) – the disclosed prevalence
of physical and sexual violence against women is even higher: between 52,
47 and 46 per cent respectively) (FRA, 2014; see also Lundgren et al, 2002
and Westerstrand et al, 2022 for Sweden) (see Figure 4.1). To some, the
FRA data point towards a paradox, namely the coexistence of high levels
of gender equality and high levels of violence against women (Gracia and
Merlo, 2016). The growing debates about the ‘Nordic paradox’ examine the
interpretation of these data including: the extent to which questions about
violence, definitions of violence and violent experiences have the same
meanings in dierent national and linguistic contexts (Martín- Fernández et al,
2020); the extent to which violence, or rather dierent kinds of violence, are
accepted and normalised (Gracia and Merlo, 2016); and the extent to which
responses of exposure to violence are aected by social shame (Enander,
2009; Weiss, 2010) and gender equality. Others have explained the apparent
paradox with contextual and situational factors (Humbert et al, 2021) and
pointed to the relative independence of gendered violence from other gender
equality indicators (Strid et al, 2021). Nonetheless, violence seems key to
understanding gender inequality and gender relations, and the relationship
between violence and gender equality remains an interesting topic to explore.
This also raises questions about how to understand violence against women,
and violence more generally in relation to societal context, and poses the
very question of ‘what is violence?’ in an even more fundamental way

page 57
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
The violently gender-equal Nordic states
57
(Lawrence and Karim, 2007; Ray, 2018). There are multiple contestations
of what violence is, including physical violence, assault, sexual violence,
coercive control, homicide, and genocide, as well as less directly physical
violence, such as cultural, symbolic, epistemic and systemic violence
(Bourdieu, 1998; Žižek, 2008). Violence includes, but is not limited to, state
violence, economic violence, terrorism, gender- based violence, violence
against women, anti- lesbian, gay and transgender violence, intimate partner
violence, gang violence, hate crime, cyberviolence, and stalking. The societal
contextualising of violence and violence against women problematises any
simple definition of violence and its boundaries (Walby et al, 2017; Walby
and Towers, 2017; Bjørnholt and Hjemdal, 2018).
Violence is still often framed and defined in terms of physical violence,
even to the extent that sometimes (physical) sexual violence is separated
from physical violence and not even discussed as part of physical violence,
as we have argued elsewhere (Humbert et al, 2021). Feminist activists and
scholars have long argued that domestic violence, gender- based violence
and intimate partner violence also include non- physical forms of violence
(such as economic, psychological and emotional violence) (Kelly, 1998;
Hearn, 2013). Accordingly, violence and violence against women need to
be understood in relation to societal conditions, broadly based structures of
inequality, governance and welfare state regimes, as well as social movements.
For example, inequalities and entrenched oppressions may mean that the act
or use of violence, especially physical violence, is not necessary to maintain
oppressive or unequal social relations, as long as the potential for and
threat of violence are available (Hearn, 2013), such as in cases of symbolic
violence (Bourdieu, 1998) and structural violence (Galtung, 1969). In these
circumstances, the very act of physical violence is not necessary to control and
dominate – that is, the setting is so unequal that direct or physical violence
as a means of more inequality is not needed. Paradoxically, ‘violence, or at
least direct, interpersonal and physical violence, may not be used as necessary
in some very violating contexts’ (Humbert et al, 2021, p 3). The question
then is, as framed by Hearn and colleagues (2022, p 2), ‘is violence a set of
material bodily actions and eects? A range of discursive constructions? Is
violence more structural in character, as, for example, through institutions
or structural inequalities? Or all of these – all intersectionally gendered?’
Violence and violence regimes
There is a very long tradition of feminist research on violence (Brownmiller,
1975; Kelly, 1988; Hearn, 1998; Hester et al, 2008), although recently it
seems to have fallen out of fashion.7 There is also a very long tradition of
feminist research on violence and the state (MacKinnon, 1989; Elman,
1996; Hearn, 1998), challenging our understandings of the welfare state

page 58
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
Re-Imagining Sexual Harassment
58
and women’s relationship to it. One of the more explicit approaches is
MacKinnon’s (1989), who argues that the state itself is patriarchal through
male dominance and violence. Nonetheless, violence is not as yet fully
addressed by mainstream social theory, with the role of violence as a source
of social stratification within and between welfare states underexplored
(Strid et al, 2021). The importance of violence, from welfare regime
research to contemporary research, is often either underestimated or
rendered invisible, not least in mainstream social sciences and social theory,
but also in contemporary gender studies (Hearn, 2013; Walby, 2013). The
consequences, when considering welfare responses to gendered violence
are, first, that one might miss greater dierences between the same welfare
regimes and gender regimes than commonly assumed (Pringle, 2005; Lister,
2009), and second, that welfare regimes deemed women- friendly may not
turn out to be women- friendly at all.
While there have been movements, both gendered and non- gendered,
towards a more cohesive analysis of the regulation and deployment of
violence, which hint at the potential of the further integration of theories
of violence (Enloe, 2000; Scheper- Hughes and Bourgois, 2004; Gregory,
2004; Roberts, 2008), the separation of the study of dierent forms and
levels of violence in dierent disciplines has led to fragmented theory and
explanations (Lundgren in Norrby, 2012; Walby, 2013; Hearn et al, 2020).
However, some research has indicated extensive similarities across forms of
violence and extensive dierences between countries in the organisation of
violence. Research has further indicated that its many forms – interpersonal
(such as crime, gender- based violence), interstate (war), state- citizen (such
as the use of the death penalty) and group- state (such as terrorism) – may be
connected so that an increase in one form is likely to lead to an increase in
other forms, and a decrease in one is linked to a decrease in others (Walby,
2009). These links, the interconnectedness of dierent forms of violence,
may constitute dierent and distinguishable systems of violence, or ‘violence
regimes’ (Hearn et al, 2020).
Violence regime is a relatively new concept developed to set up a
theoretical framework by which states/ societies can be compared and
contrasted according to how violent they are and how much violence they
produce at micro, meso and macro levels (Hearn et al, 2020; Strid et al,
2017, 2021).8 Violence regime includes the relationship between violence
and the institutions and policy set up/ implemented to counter violence.
Violence as a regime, where violence is approached holistically, addresses
the fragmentation of the study of violence.
An approach to violence that considers the co- variance and interrelationships
between dierent forms of violence and shows how many forms of violence
are interrelated or interconnected can be used to derive dierent systems
of violence. This has been measured empirically through the creation of a

page 59
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
The violently gender-equal Nordic states
59
Violence Regime Index (Strid et al,2021), where the relationship between
deadly violence (homicides, and so on) and damaging violence has been
examined (see Figure 4.4). The interconnectedness of dierent forms of
(autotelic) violence can then be used to derive dierent systems of violence
using violence regimes. This use of regime is analogous to Esping- Andersen’s,
who used the term regime to draw attention to ‘the complex ways in which
welfare states … can both reshape and reproduce inequalities’ (Hudson, 2018,
p 48). As others have shown (Walby, 2009), dierent forms of violence on
interpersonal, intra- state and interstate levels correlate, so that increases on
one form of violence co- vary with increases in other forms of violence,
thus constituting a domain or regime of violence.
As argued elsewhere (Hearn et al, 2020, 2022; Humbert et al, 2021; Strid
et al, 2021), this approach to violence regimes requires outlining what is
Figure 4.4 : Violence Regimes Index: relationship between the scores for ‘deadly
violence’ and ‘damaging violence’
AT
BE
BG
HR
CY
CZ DK
EE
FI
FR
DE
EL
HU
IE
IT
LV
LT
LU
MT
NL
PL
PT RO
SK
SI
ES
SE
UK
0.0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1.0
0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1.
0
Deadly violence
Damaging violence
Austria AT
Belgium BE
Bulgaria BG
Croatia HR
Cyprus CY
Czech Republic CZ
Denmark DK
Estonia EE
Finland FI
France FR
Germany DE
Greece EL
Hungary HU
Ireland IE
Italy IT
Latvia LV
Lithuania LT
Luxembourg LU
Malta MT
Netherlands NL
Poland PL
Portugal PT
Romania RO
Slovakia SK
Slovenia SI
Spain ES
Sweden SE
United Kingdom UK
Note: scores are normalised on a range from 0 to 1, with higher scores associated with higher levels
of violence.
Source: Strid et al., 2021

page 60
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
Re-Imagining Sexual Harassment
60
to be meant by violence, and the problem of what violence is, or could
be, pervades these discussions. In alignment with previous and ongoing
collaborative work,9 we see violence as a form of inequality, beyond the mere
physical and measurable (or indeed ‘countable’, see Myhill and Kelly, 2019).
This approach concerns the ontology of violence, and calls into question
whether violence should always be explained by something else, for example,
as social exclusion, economic marginalisation or individual pathology – or,
as argued here, an inequality, as power and as privilege.
Conclusion
The Nordic countries consistently rank high on dierent gender equality
indices. But they also show higher levels of violence against women and
sexual harassment compared to other EU countries. Does this suggest that
the Nordic countries – formally regarded as gender- equal welfare states
or women- friendly welfare states – have not been capable of reducing or
preventing violence against women and sexual harassment? More importantly
for this chapter, violence against women is not analysed as central to the
welfare state, gender equality or gender relations. If violence were placed
centre stage in theoretical and empirical analyses of gender relations, the
levels of gender equality in the Nordic countries would drop.
The significance of violence in the mainstream social sciences, social
theory and contemporary gender studies is growing, but there is still an
underestimation of its importance in the analysis of gender relations. Sexual
harassment, with higher levels disclosed in the Nordic ‘women- friendly’
welfare states compared to other EU countries, is no exception. This failure
to incorporate violence has led to analyses that are less relevant and nuanced
than they could be, and to policy interventions that could be better evidenced
and substantiated.
The positioning of violence as a central organising principle, and the
analysis of violence regimes, is an attempt to bring violence back into the
analysis, to place it at the centre of the analysis, and to identify the pivot of
unequal gender relations. Furthermore, it calls into question welfare state
regime research, including gendered regimes, which has concluded that
some welfare state regimes are ‘more women- friendly than others’. The
analysis in this chapter, which has built on collaborative and previous work,
challenges this idea and shows how the empirical bases for such conclusions
have not fully, or sometimes not at all, considered violence. Finally, the
exclusion of violence means that welfare state regime research has overlooked
one of the most substantial and deep- rooted causes and consequences of
gender inequality.
Contrary to the body of work challenged here, this chapter argues that
violence regimes operate somewhat independently from gender equality

page 61
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
The violently gender-equal Nordic states
61
regimes and welfare regimes, hence pointing to the autotelic nature of
violence. The implications of taking violence into account in the regime
concept for Nordic countries and developing, both theoretically and
empirically, violence regimes, is that it helps us understand that the ‘Nordic
paradox’ is, in fact, not so much of a paradox.
Notes
1 This chapter builds on previous results, partly published and partly unpublished,
from collaborative work within the Swedish Research Council (VR) funded
project Regimes of Violence (grant number 2017– 01914), including Associate
Professor Sofia Strid (Gothenburg and Örebro Universities, Sweden), Professor
Anne Laure Humbert (Oxford Brookes University, UK), Senior Professor Je
Hearn (Örebro University, Sweden), and Associate Professor Dag Balkmar
(Örebro University, Sweden).
2 This chapter refers to the disclosed prevalence of violence against women to
recognise that survey- based data underestimate actual prevalence as they can only
measure the incidents disclosed by respondents.
3 The ter m ‘regime’ carries dierent meanings. It has been used to capture and denote:
(1) ‘principles, norms, rules, and decision- making procedures around which actor
expectations converge on a given issue- area’ (Krasner, 1982, p 185), explicitly
including informal institutions; (2) modes of rule or management; (3) forms of
government, or the government in power; (4) a period of rule; and/ or (5) a
regulated system. The notion adopted here draws on all five and is a flexible
concept, incorporating macro, meso and micro levels. Hence, our notion of
regime can accommodate both more systemic approaches (Walby, 2009), as well
as more institutional ones (Connell, 1987).
4 Both Helga Maria Hernes and Yvonne Hirdman have had a significant influence
on scholarly and policy debates in this space, particularly in Norway and Sweden.
5 The coexistence of high levels of gender equality and violence against women has
been explained in many ways, from rejecting the evidence due to methodological
issues with the FRA survey (Walby and Olive, 2014), to violence as a backlash
reaction to gender equality. However, this relationship, the apparent paradox,
can also be explained away, and ‘undone’. By using a range of methodological,
demographic and societal factors to contextualise the disclosed levels of violence
in the FRA study (2014), the multilevel analytic approach deployed by Humbert
and colleagues (2021) considers how macro and micro levels contribute to the
prevalence of violence, which makes the ‘Nordic paradox’ disappear. The results
suggest that the ‘Nordic paradox’ cannot be understood independently from a
wider pattern of violence in society, and should be seen as connected and co-
constituted in specific formations, domains or regimes of violence.
6 This formulation is owed to Dr Jenny Westerstrand, President of ROKS, the
National Organisation for Women’s Shelters and Young Women’s Shelters
in Sweden.
7 As an example, of the last four Swedish national gender studies conferences,
none have addressed the modalities of violence. At g14: National Gender Studies
Conference Umeå, Sweden in 2014, there was only one panel organised on
the topic of men’s violence. Two years later, at g16 in Linköping in 2016,
despite ‘sexualised violence’ being a conference keyword, only one panel
addressed violence (‘The intersections of violence’) (see http:// liu.diva- por
tal.org/ smash/ get/ diva2:1064 192/ FUL LTEX T01.pdf). Three years later, at

page 62
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
Re-Imagining Sexual Harassment
62
g19 in Gothenburg in 2019, there was one panel on gender- based violence.
Finally, at the g22 in Karlstad in 2022, the only panel addressing violence
addresses not its modalities, but its discourses (‘Discourses of #MeToo’) (see
https://www.kau.se/en/centre-gender-studies/date/national-gender-studies-
conference-g22/open-pan els).
8 As acknowledged in our previous work, the concept of violence regimes is not
entirely new. It draws on Weber’s understanding of the modern state, where
Kössler (2003) uses regimes of violence to discuss the state’s monopoly on the
legitimate use of violence after 9/ 11. It also uses Schinkel’s (2013) subsequent
introduction of the idea that a regime of violence describes the relationship
between various forms of violence and that, in their dierent forms, they
constitute a way of governing conduct via the medium of violence. This
conceptualisation of violence regimes is useful and moves the theorisation of
violence forward, but it is dierent from the way violence regimes is developed
here, namely as a framework for comparative state analysis and as a form in which
states themselves are constituted; as the theorising (and ultimately empirical
operationalisation) of autotelic violence; and as a system of interrelated forms,
aspects and manifestations of violence, including institutions, policy and violence
production (Hearn et al, 2022).
9 For example, in the project ‘Regimes of Violence: Theorising and Explaining
Variations in the Production of Violence in Welfare State Regimes’ funded by
Swedish Research Council (grant number 2017– 01914), and the EU H2020
project UniSAFE, funded under grant agreement 101006261.
References
Atkinson, T.G. (1969) Radical Feminism, New York: The Feminists.
Bjørnholt M. and Hjemdal, O.K. (2018) ‘Measuring violence, mainstreaming
gender: Does adding harm make a dierence?’, Journal of Gender- Based
Violence, 2(3): 465– 79.
Borschorst, A. and Siim, B. (2002) ‘The women- friendly welfare states
revisited’, NORA: Nordic Journal of Women’s Studies, 10(2): 90– 8.
Bourdieu, P. (1998) La Domination Masculine, Paris: Seuil.
Brownmiller, S. (1975) Against Our Will. Men, Women, and Rape,
New York: Simon & Schuster.
Connell, R. (1987) Gender and Power, Cambridge: Polity.
Council of Europe (2011) Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence
against Women and Domestic Violence (Council of Europe Treaty Series No
210), Istanbul: Council of Europe.
Dahlstedt, M. and Neergaard, A. (2019) ‘Crisis of solidarity? Changing
welfare and migration regimes in Sweden’, Critical Sociology, 45(1): 121– 35.
Duncan, S. (1995) ‘Theorizing European gender systems’, Journal of European
Social Policy, 5(4): 263– 84.
Duncan, S. (2002) ‘Policy discourses on reconciling work and life in the
EU’, Social Policy and Society, 1(4): 305– 14.

page 63
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
The violently gender-equal Nordic states
63
EC (European Commission) (2021) ‘Gender- based violence by definition’,
Website [retrieved 2 May 2021]: https:// ec.eur opa.eu/ info/ polic ies/ just
ice- and- fund amen tal- rig hts/ gen der- equal ity/ gen der- based- viole nce/
what- gen der- based- viol ence _ en#relat edli nks.
EIGE (2019) Gender Equality Index 2019, Luxembourg: Publications Oce
of the EU.
EIGE (2021) Gender Equality Index 2021, Luxembourg: Publications Oce
of the EU.
Elman, A. (1996) Sexual Subordination and State Intervention: Comparing Sweden
and the United States, Providence, RI: Berghahn.
Enander, V. (2009) ‘“A fool to keep staying”: Battered women labeling
themselves stupid as an expression of gendered shame’, Violence Against
Women, 16(1): 5– 31.
Enloe, C. (2000) Maneuvers, Berkeley: University of California Press.
Esping- Andersen, G. (1990) The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism,
Cambridge: Polity Press.
Ferguson, A. (1989) Blood at the Root, London: Pandora.
Firestone, S. (1970) The Dialectic of Sex, London: Jonathan Cape.
FRA (EU Agency for Fundamental Rights) (2014) Violence Against Women: An
EU Wide Survey – Main Results Report, Luxembourg: Publications Oce
of the EU.
Friedan, B. (1963) The Feminine Mystique, New York: W.W.: Norton.
Galtung, J. (1969) ‘Violence, peace, and peace research’, Journal of Peace
Research, 6(3): 167– 91.
Galtung, J. (1990) ‘Cultural violence’, Journal of Peace Research,
27(3): 291– 305.
Goodin, R.E., Headey, B., Muels, R. and Dirven, H.- J. (1999) The Real
Worlds of Welfare Capitalism, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gracia, E. and Merlo, J. (2016) ‘Intimate partner violence against women
and the Nordic paradox’, Social Science & Medicine, 157: 27– 30.
Gregory, D. (2004) The Colonial Present: Afghanistan, Palestine, Iraq,
Oxford: Blackwell.
Haavind, H. and Magnusson, E. (2005) ‘The Nordic countries. Welfare
paradises for women and children?’ Feminism & Psychology, 15(2): 227– 35.
Hartmann, H. (1979) The unhappy marriage of Marxism and
feminism: Towards a more progressive union, Capital and Class, 8(2): 1– 33.
Hearn, J. (1991) ‘Gender: biology, nature and capitalism’, in T. Carver (ed),
The Cambridge Companion to Marx (pp 222– 45), New York: Cambridge
University Press.
Hearn, J. (1998) The Violences of Men, London: Sage.
Hearn, J. (2013) ‘The sociological significance of domestic violence: Tensions,
paradoxes and implications’, Current Sociology, 61(2): 152– 70.

page 64
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
Re-Imagining Sexual Harassment
64
Hearn, J. and Parkin, W. (2001) Gender, Sexuality and Violence in
Organizations: The Unspoken Forces of Organization Violations, London: Sage.
Hearn, J., Strid, S., Humbert, A.L., Balkmar, D. and Delaunay, M. (2020)
‘From gender regimes to violence regimes: Re- thinking the position of
violence’, Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State & Society, 29(2),
2022: 682– 705.
Hearn, J., Strid., S., Humbert, A.L. and Balkmar, D. (2022) ‘Violence
regimes: A useful concept for social politics, social analysis, and social
theory’, Theory and Society, 51(4): 565– 94.
Hernes, H.M. (1987) Welfare State and Women Power. Essays in State Feminism.
Oslo: Norwegian University Press.
Hester, M., Westmarland, N., Pearce, L. and Williamson, E. (2008) Early
Evaluation of the Domestic Violence, Crime and Victims Act 2004, Ministry of
Justice Research Series, 14/ 08.
Hirdman, Y. (1988) ‘Genussystemet – reflexioner kring kvinnors sociala
underordning’, Tidskrift för genusvetenskap, 3: 49– 63.
Htun, M. and Weldon, L. (2012) ‘The civic origins of progressive policy
change: Combating violence against women in global perspective, 1975–
2005’, American Political Science Review, 106(3): 548– 69.
Hudson, J. (2018) ‘Social justice and social welfare’, in G. Craig (ed),
Handbook on Social Justice (pp 46– 65), Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Publishing.
Humbert, A.L., Strid, S., Hearn, J. and Balkmar, D. (2021) ‘Undoing the
“Nordic Paradox”: Factors aecting rates of disclosed violence against
women across the EU’, PLOS ONE, 16(5).
Kelly, L. (1988) Surviving Sexual Violence, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Kelly, L. (1998) ‘How women define their experiences of violence’, in K.
Yllö and M. Bograd (eds), Feminist Perspectives on Wife Abuse (pp 114– 32),
Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Kössler, R. (2003) ‘The modern nation state and regimes of
violence: Reflections on the current situation’, Ritsumeikan Annual Review
of International Studies, 2: 15– 36.
Krasner, S.D. (1982) ‘Structural causes and regime consequences: Regimes
as intervening variables’, International Organization, 36(2): 185– 205.
Latcheva R. (2017) ‘Sexual harassment in the European Union: A pervasive
but still hidden form of gender- based violence’, Journal of Interpersonal
Violence, 32(12): 1821– 52.
Lawrence, B.B. and Karim, A. (2007) On Violence: A Reader, Durham: Duke
University Press.
Lewis, J. (1992) ‘Gender and the development of welfare regimes’, Journal
of European Social Policy, 2(3): 159– 73.
Liebfried, S. (1991) ‘Towards a European welfare state? On the integration
potentials of poverty regimes in the EC’, Working Paper, Bremen University
Centre for Social Policy.

page 65
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
The violently gender-equal Nordic states
65
Lister, R. (2009) ‘A Nordic nirvana? Gender, citizenship, and social justice
in the Nordic welfare states’, Social Politics: International Studies in Gender,
State & Society, 16(2): 242– 78.
Lundgren, E., Heimer, G., Westerstrand, J. and Kalliokoski, A.- M.
(2002) Captured Queen: Men’s Violence against Women in ‘Equal’ Sweden,
Stockholm: Fritzes Oentliga Publikationer.
MacKinnon, C.A. (1989) Toward a Feminist Theory of the State,
Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Martín- Fernández, M., Gracia, E. and Lila, M. (2020) ‘Ensuring the
comparability of cross- national survey data on intimate partner violence
against women: A cross- sectional, population- based study in the European
Union’, BMJ Open, 10(3).
Myhill, A. and Kelly, L. (2019) ‘Counting with understanding? What is at
stake in debates on researching domestic violence’, Criminology & Criminal
Justice, 21(3): 280– 96.
Norrby, A. (2012) ‘Forskningsfältet som sköts i sank, intervju med Eva
Lundgren, Gun Heimer och Jenny Westerstrand’, Swedish Secretariat for
Gender Research.
Nussbaum, M.C. (1999) Sex and Social Justice, New York: Oxford
University Press.
O’Brien, M. (1981) The Politics of Reproduction, London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul.
O’Connor, J., Orlo, A. and Shaver, S. (1999) States, Markets, Families,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Okin, S.M. (1991) Justice, Gender, and the Family, New York: Basic.
Orlo, A. (1993) ‘Gender and the social rights of citizenship state policies
and gender relations in comparative research’, American Sociological Review,
58(3): 303– 28.
Orlo, A.S. (2009) ‘Gendering the comparative analysis of welfare states: An
unfinished agenda’, Sociological Theory, 27(3): 317– 43.
Pringle, K. (2005) ‘Neglected issues in Swedish child protection policy
and practice: Age, ethnicity and gender’, in M. Eriksson, M. Hester,
S. Keskinen and K. Pringle (eds), Tackling Men’s Violence in Families: Nordic
Issues and Dilemmas (pp 155– 70), Bristol: Policy Press.
Ray, L. (2011/ 2018) Violence and Society, London: Sage.
Roberts, D. (2008) Human Insecurity: Global Structures of Violence,
London: Zed Books.
Sainsbury, D. (1991) ‘Analysing welfare state variations’, Scandinavian Political
Studies, 14(1): 1– 30.
Sainsbury, D. (ed) (1999) Gender and Welfare State Regimes, Oxford: Oxford
University Press.

page 66
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
Re-Imagining Sexual Harassment
66
Sainsbury, D. (2006) ‘“Immigrants” social rights in comparative
perspective: Welfare regimes, forms in immigration and immigration policy
regimes’, Journal of European Social Policy, 16(3): 229– 44.
Scheper- Hughes, N. and Bourgois, P. (eds) (2004) Violence in Peace and War,
Malden: Blackwell.
Schinkel W. (2004) ‘The will to violence’, Theoretical Criminology,
8(1): 5– 31.
Schinkel W. (2010) Aspects of Violence: A Critical Theory, Basingstoke:
Palgrave Macmillan.
Schinkel, W. (2013) ‘Regimes of violence and the Trias Violentiae’, The
European Journal of Social Theory, 16(3): 310– 25.
Siim, B. (1987) ‘The Scandinavian welfare states’, Acta Sociologica, 30(3/
4): 255– 70.
Siim, B. and Borchorst, A. (2017) ‘Gendering European welfare states and
citizenship: Revisioning inequalities’, in P. Kennett and N. Lendvai- Bainton
(eds), Handbook of European Social Policy (pp 99– 127), Cheltenham: Edward
Elgar Publishing.
Simonsson, A. (2020) Förebyggande arbete mot sexuella trakasserier i
svenskt och nordiskt arbetsliv 2020:1, Göteborg: Nationella sekretariatet
för genusforskning.
Sörensen, K. and Bergqvist, C. (2002) Gender and the Social Democratic Welfare
Regime, Arbetslivsinstitutet.
Spivak, G.C. (1988) ‘Can the subaltern speak?’, in C. Nelson and
L. Grossberg (eds), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (pp 271– 313),
Urbana- Champaign: University of Illinois Press.
Strid, S., Balkmar, D., Hearn, J. and Humbert, A.L. (2017) Regimes of
violence: Theorising and explaining variations in the production of violence
in welfare state regimes. Research Project funded by the Swedish Research
Council, Grant 2017– 01914.
Strid, S. and Meier- Arendt, D. (2020) ‘Våld som system: Våld, maskulinitet
och förändring’, Socialmedicinsk Tidskrift, 97(2), 235– 47.
Strid, S. and Hearn, J. (2021) ‘Violence and patriarchy’, in Kurtz, L. (ed),
Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace, and Conflict, Academic Press.
Strid, S., Humbert, A.L., Hearn, J. and Balkmar, D. (2021) ‘States of
violence: Exploring welfare state regimes as violence regimes by developing
a violence regimes index’, Journal of European Social Policy, 31(3): 321– 36.
Tanhua, I. (2020) Gender Equality and Nordic Welfare Societies, Norden 2020.
https:// stm.fi/ docume nts/ 1271 139/ 8492 720/ Rep ort+ Gen der+ equal ity+
and+ Nor dic+ welf are+ societ ies.pdf/ 60fcb f91- 669b- 4d10- 9b16- 01a51 657e
b58/ Rep ort+ Gen der+ equal ity+ and+ Nor dic+ welf are+ societ ies.pdf?t=
152785 4184 000
Therborn, G. (1983) ‘Why some classes are more successful than others’,
New Left Review, 138: 37– 55.

page 67
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
The violently gender-equal Nordic states
67
Titmuss, R.M. (1963) Essays on the Welfare State, London: Allen and Unwin.
UN (1993) Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women,
New York: United Nations.
UN (2018) Towards an End to Sexual Harassment: The Urgency and Nature
of Change in the Era of #MeeToo, New York: Oce of the Executive
Coordinator and Spokesperson on Addressing Sexual Harassment and
Discrimination at UN Women.
Walby, S. (2009) Globalisation and Inequalities, London: Sage.
Walby, S. (2013) ‘Violence and society’, Current Sociology, 61(2): 95– 111.
Walby, S. and Olive, P. (2014) Estimating the Cost of Gender- based Violence in
the EU, Luxembourg: Publications Oce of the European Union.
Walby S. and Towers, J. (2017) ‘Measuring violence to end violence:
Mainstreaming gender’, Journal of Gender- Based Violence, 1(1): 11– 31.
Walby, S., Towers, J., Francis, B. and Strid, S. (2017) The Concept and
Measurement of Violence against Women and Men, Bristol: Policy Press.
Weiss, K.G. (2010) Too ashamed to report, Feminist Criminology,
5(3): 286– 310.
Weldon, S. L. (2002) Protest, Policy and the Problem of Violence Against Women: A
Cross- National Comparison, Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.
Westerstrand, J., Strid, S., Carsbring, A. and Ekbrand, H. (2022) Kvinnors
trygghet. Ett jämställt samhälle fyllt av våld, Stockholm: Roks.
World Economic Forum (2021) Global Gender Gap Report 2021, Geneva: WEF.
World Economic Forum (2022) Global Gender Gap Report 2022, Geneva: WEF.
Žižek, S. (2008) Violence, London: Profile.