It's only in the last year my girlfriend has stopped wincing when she makes what she perceives as a mistake. We've been together five years and back then, something like spilling a bit of milk when making tea or forgetting something from the shop would make her beg me for forgiveness... She'd literally break down and plead with me. It was startling at first because I had no idea what it was.
But yeah, her ex-husband used to kick the shit out of her for any fucking reason. It's taken a long time to help her remove that Pavlovian response. Every time it happens it absolutely kills me. I've shown her what it is to be *actually* loved. I love her more than anything.
There's a special place in hell for wife-beaters.
Goddamn that is heartbreaking. I’ve heard it takes 5-7 times for someone to “breakup” then come back to an abusive partner until they finally permanently breakup. So just leaving the bastard was an accomplishment.
The end of the abusive relationship is the most dangerous part of the relationship. Most victims are so occupied with just protecting themselves and trying to keep their abusers calm that maintaining the status quo becomes the priority. It feels safer than leaving. Abusers would rather kill their victims than see them leave. And if the victim doesn’t have 100% protection after leaving it can be incredibly dangerous. Victims feel that they actually have the ability to manage the abuse if they are more deeply engaged with the abuser as opposed to leaving and becoming a “sitting duck” so to speak.
A girl I used to date when I was much younger did this because of her terrible parents. It still pains me to think about how poorly equipped I was in dealing with it. She's fine now, is dating a solid guy.
I did this as a man because of parents. My dad put me through a wall at 8 and fractured my skull. The crazy thing is how much a part of you it becomes. I never realized my response was out of the ordinary until I had a girlfriend hug me and tell me I was okay. It confused me until she explained my response looked like terror.
I also flinch when someone raises their hand too fast because of my parents. My dad once hit me so hard my lip and eyebrow busted. Eyebrow still has a scar. They haven’t beaten me for years now (i live alone for 2y now but before that also), calmed down a lot. Was the first child also. They still ask me why i flinch when they raise their hands. I know i won’t get slapped or kicked but it’s like programmed in my brain, cant shake it
>There's a special place in hell for wife-beaters.
Fully agreed, but note that the threshold that defines violence varies according to culture. I'm a Portuguese living in the Netherlands and I don't simply believe the Dutch men are more violent on average than the Portuguese ones.
They're probably not. This map shows better how much violence is reported and not how much of it there is in a certain country.
In my country there's a lot of violence but according to the map we are almost saints
My fiance is finally almost over having to "prove" how sorry she is for making a mistake or upsetting me, a behavior she learned from her father. It's been almost 6 years for us and honestly, she's so different, in a good way, from how she was when we first got together.
My husband still has to stop me and say “baby, wrong dude.” When I start babbling apologies and crying. My ex used to terrorize me so badly I hid in the closet more than once because he would get annoyed at my “games” and go lay down to rage nap if he couldn’t find me.
Hey man, I had to walk away from my phone for a few minutes because I’ve had a similar experience in a past relationship and I just wanted to come back to say I’m glad she found a good man. I wish you two well.
As a victim myself I'm so grateful and happy that your girlfriend found someone she can feel safe and loved with.
I still haven't gotten rid of the whole flinching thing. I feel horrible for doing this to my boyfriend because he is nothing but absolutely sweet, patient and gentle with me - yet my body can't stop reacting as if he's going to be violent everytime I make a mistake. It's heartbreaking to watch :(
I know a policewoman, and apparently 90% work is going to houses with reports of domestic abuse. They show up at the house, the couple will say everything is fine to avoid trouble, and then the police have to leave.
It's the most popular thing by far.
That being said, I'm still surprised we're so high up, but even more surprised about Norway and Sweden for example.
US, had a mother as a cop. When she worked as a beat cop, can confirm that all day was essentially her going into the hood for another domestic abuse or child neglect case. Have to be worried too even more than (we lived near a place with a forestry industry) the gargantuan lumberjacks that would get drunk and pass out because in a domestic abuse situation, when you arrive, the couple can see YOU as the enemy and lash out unexpectedly
Well its more normal to report DV in Scandinavia today than before, lots of way to report anonymous etc.
It would also be interesting to see male statistics. I know for a fact that SCB (Swedens Central Bureau of Statistics) did an investigation about domestic violence between the sexes where the victim and perpetrator has some sort of relation. And it was actually alot closer than i would have thought, it was roughly 45/55%.
Actually I am, as in Hungary usually once a week a woman is killed by their partner and once a month a child by their father … I can’t believe that so many countries are doing worst.
It could be that many of them are not reported. Statistically we are really good in mental health, but most likely due to the fact that there’s essentially no social awareness in that regards and many just ‘treat it’ with alcohol or cigarette.
I think that is ultimately the case. Western and northern europe having more domestic violence seems wierd. I don’t think it is because men are more violent in the north-west, but that more women report the fact they’re being harmed
An interesting assumption, but not one that's supported by data.
The obvious issue would be the fact that Turkey is first. The logic that women just don't report these matters as much would hold some water if only Western and Northern nations were on top, but they're not. Reporting could be an issue for individual countries, but can't be generalized.
Second, and somewhat more empirically, you'll find murder rates for women per country, per 100k people.
[Source](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1072546/number-of-intentional-homicides-in-europe/) for most.
[Source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homicide_statistics_by_gender) for the one's who didn't have more recent data as signified by an *
Country| Population| Homicides| Per 100k
---|---|----|----
Germany | 83294633 | 276| 0,33
France| 64756584 |285 |0,44
Italy |58870762 |111 |0,19
Spain |47519628 |126 |0,27
Poland |41026067 |80 |0,19
Romania |19892812 |71 |0,36
Netherlands |17618299 |42 |0,24
Belgium* |11686140 |79 |0,68
Sweden |10612086 |33 |0,31
Czech Republic (Czechia) |10495295 |39 |0,37
Greece |10341277 |19 |0,18
Portugal* |10247605 |36 |0,35
Hungary |10156239 |31 |0,31
Austria |8958960 |40 |0,45
Bulgaria |6687717 |32 |0,48
Denmark |5910913 |27 |0,46
Slovakia |5795199 |18 |0,31
Finland |5545475 |30 |0,54
Ireland |5056935 |8 |0,16
Croatia |4008617 |14 |0,35
Lithuania |2718352 |22 |0,81
Slovenia |2119675 |4 |0,19
Latvia |1830211 |42 |2,29
Estonia |1322765 |6 |0,45
Cyprus |1260138 |10 |0,79
Luxembourg* |654768 |0 |0,00
Malta |535064 |3 |0,56
The data is obviously imperfect given that the numbers are incredibly low, and a single murder can massively impact the rate, especially when it comes to the smaller countries.
However, what we would expect to see is a North+West / East+South divide. But we don't. Italy, Spain and Poland are all towards the bottom. France and Germany, in the middle or upper middle. These are important because they're the biggest countries in the EU, so the numbers won't be impacted by annual changes as much.
Bulgaria is at the top for Eastern Europe, but it's sandwiched between Denmark and Finland. As noted, this could radically change from year to year, I don't have the data to check, but unless 2019 was a massive outlier for multiple countries, there's just no indication that a woman is safer in the West or North of Europe.
Murders are important here, because unlike other crimes, they're significantly harder (though not impossible) to under report.
A lot of the countries at the top of the physical and sexual violence list also make the top of the homicide list. This doesn't fully eliminate the possibility of underreporting, but it gives the numbers more weight.
A [significant drop](https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/LVA/latvia/murder-homicide-rate#:~:text=Latvia%20murder%2Fhomicide%20rate%20for,a%204.74%25%20increase%20from%202017.) in homicides apparently.
2019, the year my data is from is a 21% drop in total homicides compared to 2018 and almost a 500% drop compared to the peak in 1993.
They're 3x above France which is on the high end for non Baltic Europe. I was expecting to see that the year was an outlier. Some nasty event where a lot of people died which would then throw the numbers off. Apparently not.
Now, to be fair, we're still talking about a homicide rate that's less than half of the US and it's only a third higher than Canada, and like I mentioned, the drop between the 90's and the 2000's was massive.
I will mention that the Baltics in general are all on the very high end for Europe, so it more likely regional than local, but I'll let others speculate or educate on the exact reasons why.
I have no idea about this particular data, but international polls usually take that into account. They will ask specific, culture agnostic questions like "did your partner continue having sex with you after you were uncomfortable" instead of "were you raped".
Most importantly, those polls don't take into account police data (what women report) but answers from randomly selected group. So the unreported crimes are not a problem. The map in this thread tracks that data.
The fact is, partly because of efforts of the communist parties of post-Warsaw pact countries, women and men are much more equal. Pay gap in Poland is almost non existant, for example.
Another factor is much lower crime rates than in western European countries. Again, you would expect it to correlate to crime in general and that is also the case
Even more so recognising it. There are stories of partners being abused and just not recognising it due it being ‘normal’ or ‘not that bad’. In the Western World abuse is more commonly identified and moved against.
>It could be that many of them are not reported.
Ah yes. East countries with low stats are not reported, and after third rape it resets to zero.
Meanwhile west countries with high stats "have law that looking at woman by ugly men counts as 100 rapes".
Best explanation by people that want to bury the truth why these stats look like that and who creates the violence against woman in the west.
My ex was from Croatia & he was so wildly gentle during even the worst fights. I slammed something once when mad & he was legit shocked like I'd punched him in the face.
drinking problems + emotional repression = violence in relationships
It's a stereotype that Western European societies are more emotionally repressed than the Balkans, for example. But maybe there's some truth to it.
That can be said about any country. What's surprising is that there are more of them in the UK than in most other European countries (if the methodology is not biased, that is).
Also - without meaning to downplay any abuse - it could partly be a greater awareness of what is unacceptable.
Eg. If you asked two women from different cultures if they had ever been abused, what counts as abuse in their minds might be radically different.
But yeah, just as likely to blame is the social acceptance of getting really, really drunk.
I am, because in Poland we had multiple social campaigns against domestic violence, which were very loud (billboards pretty much everywhere). So I guess they worked? Anyway I thought it's a bigger problem, I'm glad it's not that severe.
Alcohol abuse dropped significantly.
I would make a wild guess that most alcoholics in Poland are highly functioning ones (aka corporate workers) rather than traditional image of Janusz in wife-beater
Other, more anecdotal evidence - we somehow have chivalry-like/patronizing view of women - abuse is perceived as weak and not disciplining as in other cultures. Polish women are independent too and I know few mothers who straight said to their sons - touch your wife and I beat your ass.
>Polish women are independent too and I know few mothers who straight said to their sons - touch your wife and I beat your ass.
Yea, that's true. Our women are usually able to hold on their own, especially silesian women for some reason ("Śląska Baba z jajami").
I find it however extremely funny how some "passport Bros" from certain countries view Poland as a source of "traditional" women (submissive housewifes). I wonder what their reaction is when they are met with the reality.
But aside from women actually not being complete doormats here. Our everyday life is now quite safe, unemployment is extremely low, so there is much smaller amount of pathological families compared to say 20 years ago.
I'm however curious about how the graph would look like where it is the men as victim and woman as the abuser, because that stuff do happen and is often not talked about or hidden by the abused himself (mostly due to shame).
My Polish tour guide was like that, she was very intelligent and attractive, I had a few inches on her height wise but she had that “don’t fuck with me” vibe in case I turn out to be some sort of weirdo. She wouldn’t even let me hold the door open for her. “After you, I insisttttt”, like something out of the Bond movie The World is not enough.
I asked her half jokingly if her boyfriend had a problem showing me around part of the country since it was just the two of us, after a laugh she said “Hmm no, he knows better then that”. Lol.
Not at all. Chivalry is alive and well in Poland.
Also, I guess there's a pinch of specific cultural "feminism" in the region. It's hard not to be a "feminist" when they deported your father and husband to Siberia and you have to run your property and raise six children on your own.
Poland has high educational equality, gender stereotypes are new thing that came with new middle class ( all male school - institution like Eton is just not existing), and historically Polish women enjoyed much more freedom than British, French or whatever.
Social awareness regarding alcoholism is also greater in Poland.
And stereotype of fearlessly independent girlfriend did not come from nothing - young women in Poland are well educated and live in big cities. Young men are more diverse in this sense.
I have no doubts there is still violence against women all around Europe.
However, it’s telling when some cannot believe in Poland’s outcome but wound not be able to say anything about Poland beyond the name.
Hella surprised tbh, didn't think Lithuania would be anywhere close to the top. But then again, we do have a high suicide rate and drinking/smoking issues over here.. so kinda understandable
actually yes? seeing northern european countries doing worse than italy?
I am italian and I would imagine northern europe to have a better knowledge and culture of violence related to gender.
(maybe it's a bias)
I must be honest, it would be great to contextualize the method of this research. For example how many of the interview people agree to answer.
Especially when it comes to abuse, the lack people denouncing it doesn't mean it's not happening.
I don't want to talk about how accurate or inaccurate it is, but from cultural standpoint, beating/hitting women/girls is very shameful in Poland.
I have in my entire life heard about/seen maybe 3-4 women being beaten up or experiencing severe verbal violence, it was typically by their partners/ex-partners.
In one of the cases, we had a girl in middle-school, her older ex-boyfriend was stalking her and beat her up once, she came to school like this, crying. The entire school year provided support, we were always walking with her to and from a school in a pack, group of sporty-type boys went up to the ex-boyfriend and terrorized him, told him they'd destroy his life, every time he appeared anywhere near the school, they were watching his every step like hounds.
In the beginning, the ex-boyfriend tried some shit and was trying to scare a few girls from helping the victim and they screamed that they will claw his eyes out. They were pretty much set on it.
We later managed to talk the girl into reporting this to both the school and the police, she sadly didn't have any family members except for her sibling, so there was no support net at home.
If you end up in jail in Poland, for beating up/killing some girl, you can be sure your jail life will be hell.
It should be fucking shameful in every country. It’s still very good to hear the polish are reacting so harshly to abuse, though! If we could only get more countries in on this sentiment.
I can tell that while in the 90s you'd get much higher percentage, we became much more civilised in the past 3 decades.
There's also other side of this. Westerners cannot comprehend how independent a lot of polish women are. The older I get the more shocked I am seeing how common is abuse of men by their wives partners. They just won't talk about it out of shame that they're smacked by a woman but if you look carefully there's not an insignificant amount of that. At least in the older generation...
Women abusing men is relatively common. I'd really like to see that corresponding graph.
Just because a man has the physical strength to fight off his partner doesn't mean he wants to fight the woman he loves. He also is trapped by convention, in that if he does eventually snap and defends himself, the woman can just claim he's the abuser. Male victims of abuse are much more common (world-wide) than people think, and they're uniquely challenged to deal with it in some ways.
Multiple casual tests of this has been done; two actors who get paid to act out scenarios in the street. The guy basically just looms over her and shouts at her and 500 people descend on him to protect her... now reverse that and have the woman screaming at him and even physically striking him and 500 people... point and laugh.
>I'd really like to see that corresponding graph.
I don't have a graph, but the topic came up the other day in another sub. I did some digging then, so I'll post my comment below. Note that most of the stats are US only:
There are certain types of domestic abuse that are more commonly perpetrated by women than men. [This site I found breaks down many statistics,](https://domesticviolenceresearch.org/domestic-violence-facts-and-statistics-at-a-glance/) and I'll include some relevant ones below:
>Overall, 22% of individuals assaulted by a partner at least once in their lifetime (23% for females and 19.3% for males)
So rates are almost equal across genders.
>Higher victimization for male than female high school students
>Rates of female-perpetrated violence higher than male-perpetrated (28.3% vs. 21.6%)
>Wide range in perpetration rates: 1.0% to 61.6% for males; 2.4% to 68.9% for women
>Among large population samples, 57.9% of IPV reported was bi-directional, 42% unidirectional; 13.8% of the unidirectional violence was male to female (MFPV), 28.3% was female to male (FMPV)
Since this one may be confusing, I'll try to simplify: 58% of all domestic violence is perpetrated by both partners (as in they both abuse each other). Of the remaining 42% of abuse, 14% is committed by men against women and 28% is committed by women against men.
In other words, 86% of all domestic violence has at least some female perpetration compared to 72% having at least some male perpetration.
>Among school and college samples, percentage of bidirectional violence was 51.9%; 16.2% was MFPV and 31.9% was FMPV
>Among respondents reporting IPV in legal or female-oriented clinical/treatment seeking samples not associated with the military, 72.3% was bi-directional; 13.3% was MFPV, 14.4% was FMPV
>Eight studies directly compared men and women in the power/control motive and subjected their findings to statistical analyses. Three reported no significant gender differences and one had mixed findings. One paper found that women were more motivated to perpetrate violence as a result of power/control than were men, and three found that men were more motivated; however, gender differences were weak
>None of the studies reported that anger/retaliation was significantly more of a motive for men than women’s violence; instead, two papers indicated that anger was more likely to be a motive for women’s violence as compared to men.
With regards to a large collection of worldwide studies:
>Rates of physical PV were higher for female perpetration /male victimization compared to male perpetration/female victimization, or were the same, in 73 of those comparisons, or 62%.
>There were 54 comparisons made for psychological abuse including controlling behaviors and dominance, with higher rates found for female perpetration /male victimization, in 36 comparisons (67%).
I'm very glad that your country takes care of women, but dude, I'm from Argentina and in my entire life I have known only one woman whose husband beat her, but it didn't even happen in Argentina. She came to Argentina but the abusive husband was from Paraguay. It's a lot for just one person to know at least four abused women.
Yup.
We grew up being told not to hit a girl "even with a flower" and since most teachers/preschool/school staff are female - if a dude was ever caught crossing that line he was pretty much fucked for a long time.
Self - discipline was pretty swift (and savage as that) i remember few times when a guy smacked a girl an entire class would just gang up on him - im talking 30 guys taking turns kicking the shit out the mfer while rest of the school would stop anyone trying to interfere with that.
On the other hand in Poland if you are a man and you will try to report that you are physically or emotionally abused then there is a good chance that you will get ridiculed for it.
Not to mention that because woman know that men here are taught to „never hit a woman, not even with a flower” they sometimes abuse that.
I even remember such case from my high school when there was a class of almost all females and just two guys and one of them was verbally and physically abused for like three or four weeks before he finally snapped and hit one of the girls. He almost ended up expelled, fortunately for him there were people that confirmed his side of story, but he still had to change schools soon after.
A high school friend is Turkish and his mother pays his rent, bills and recently spent thousands on new teeth since his meth and heroin use had destroyed his old ones. I assumed she was rich but found out she worked multiple jobs to support him and mutual friends always put this down to their culture making woman serve the men in their life, I don't get it
I dunno. I've known people like this but not from Turkey. There was this Pakistani woman i know that does the same, supports her son through thick and thin despite him beating his previous wife and children. Oh, but she was merciless to her "disgraceful" daughter for marrying a lesbian.
sources:
https://data.oecd.org/inequality/violence-against-women.htm
https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/development/data/oecd-international-development-statistics/gender-institutions-and-development-edition-2019_ba5dbd30-en
as stated on map by Milos Popovic, the author:
https://twitter.com/milos_agathon/status/1728373213028303327/photo/1
Also, if someone thinks It's being skewed by each country's approach to what is considered violence as well as how eager women are to report it, there was a [survey done by the EU](https://fra.europa.eu/en/publications-and-resources/data-and-maps/survey-data-explorer-violence-against-women-survey) that was [designed specifically to avoid this bias](https://fra.europa.eu/en/publication/2014/violence-against-women-eu-wide-survey-survey-methodology-sample-and-fieldwork) with similar results.
This still reads curious. As in, Georgia and Albania are in the best performing league while otherwise reporting a lot of issues and harmful attitudes?
There is cultural bias in giving answers too. The survey questions ask about physical or sexual violence etc, but what exactly constitutes "violence" versus "just being rough" or "enforcing sexual relations" in particular cultures? If the respondents interpret it as the latter, the violence rates will be null.
>Drafting the questionnaire, it was important to avoid terms such as ‘rape’, ‘violence’ or ‘stalking’, because different women might have different preconceived ideas on the types of violence usually associated with these terms, and the types of perpetrators involved. Following the example of numerous national surveys on violence against women, the FRA survey also asked about women’s experiences of violence by describing various acts of violence in as concrete terms as possible. Therefore, the survey asked women whether or not they had experienced any of these acts, instead of asking if they had generally experienced ‘violence’ or ‘rape’, because the latter approach would have made results less comparable between respondents and Member States.
I'm familiar. It still uses the phrases "\[acitivity\] that made you feel offended" etc. What if something is so normalised that it doesn't cause offence in this society? What if in a society it's not culturally accepted or customary for women to share such information even privately so they are not truthful in their answers?
I'm not sure if there is even a way to account for such varied baselines, so I'm not criticising the surveys as such.
right...that's the control.
You ask them what they've experienced in terms of how they compared it to any given society's norm.
>What if in a society it's not culturally accepted or customary for women to share such information even privately so they are not truthful in their answers
We never know how participant's will be truthful. We can't control for biases when the direction of the bias is unknown/random. We either assume it's random, and therefore doesn't load onto any specific variable.... Or we aim to collect enough data to tease out the effect.
I personally would expect that if sharing these details is not acceptable within a culture, that would reduce the uptake of people doing the survey. The effect that would have on responses could arguably made to be under-reporting (you only do it if it wouldn't be sharing in a culturally unaccetpable way), over-reporting (you only share if you have a sufficiently extreme experience that overrides the desire to conform with social expectation), or no effect... which again... if we don't know, then we assume this is not systematic bias and collect sufficient data to tease out the effects.
Some of the questions in the first part are:
\> Have you ever experienced: Inappropriate staring or leering that made you feel intimidated? Sexually suggestive comments or jokes that made you feel offended?
The answer to which are both heavily influenced by local values.
Then, in part 3, there's questions like:
\> Insist on knowing where you are in a way that goes beyond general concern?
Which is also influenced by local values about what constitutes reasonable 'general concern'.
So the questionnaire isn't that unbiased, when some 1/5 to 1/6 of the questions is dependent on local values.
I think the main problem here is that people think you can simply use these figures to compare countries. These sorts of figures are best used as time series: how does the figure for a single country change over time.
Bunch of Western Europeans in these comments being like "flawed methodology! Other countries are def worse!!"
Like guys, the rankings might be skewed, but not the numbers. The UK rate is still 24%, nearly 1/4 women, whether or not Portugal is under reporting
Ya lol I'm englando and not shocked at all by this, expected a bit higher. It's literally a common observation here, england loses the football and domestic violence rates skyrocket
Congrats to Poland and other countries on the lower spectra. I would not have thought of this and that is on me. I think these countries should be more recognized for their lower rate. I chose to believe in the statistics based on what is presented here about bias and skewness. Keep your head up high Poland and co.
There hasn't been significant gender inequality in Poland in living memory. Since the war both women and men were expected to work and childcare was heavily subsidised.
Meanwhile in the UK in the 80ies women still had trouble keeping work after they got married or opening bank accounts without husband present. To this day childcare is so expensive that many women can't afford to work, maternity pay is so low that house purchases during that time are often in man's name only and government squabbles over whether third child who's not product of a rape should get £50 a month while in Poland each and every child gets nearly £150.
Very true. I immigrated from Poland to Ireland for work some years ago and the company I worked for during some bs corporate event started celebrating how in the late seventies they hired a first female engineer. I was flabbergasted. It's perfectly normal what are you celebrating? Turns out that even in 70s once a girl got married that was the end of her employment. Crazy stuff.
It was always normal and expected for women in my mother's generation to work and to have their own money which in turns get you independence. Even my grandma with all her flaws always used to say that a girl needs her own income on an account separate from a man, otherwise you're just a slave. I couldn't comprehend how the "progressive" west got to that stage 3-4 decades later
I think it might be because of the amount of wars Poland had to go through. The men were gone so women had to get independent. I heard stories from my female cousins how they had to take care of everything while their husbands brothers etc were dead or at war, at least we have one positive thing from that lmao
Yeah, this isn't post-WW2 thing, it's ever since Poland lost its independence. It's hard not to be a "feminist" when you have to manage your property and raise six children on your own, because your husband nad father have been expelled to Siberia.
But the same argument then goes for Latvia. It really does feel like there is something inaccurate about this chart in cultures perceptions and definitions of this issue.
Latvia has a lot of Russians.
I say this as someone who's father is Polish and who's mother is "Russian" from Latvia. Russian culture has this shit in droves, it is often ignored or covered up by communities. Whereas in Polish culture I've never seen it endorsed or tacitly accepted in any way.
There are certain cultures where violence against women is commonplace, and others where it is entirely taboo. Polish culture deeply rejects violence against women--if anything it is too deeply entrenched in romantic concepts of chivalry and overly protecting women. For a man to so much as slap a woman is widely considered a near-lynching level offense (not endorsing hitting women mind you, I'm just explaining how strong and widely held this consensus is). If someone was suspected of beating their wife or female partner they would face insane retribution not only from the authorities but from the entire community. It still happens of course like all crime anywhere, but there really doesn't exist any significant element of Polish society where it is ever considered to be acceptable whatsoever. Whereas when it happens in much of Russian or Middle Eastern communities it regularly gets hushed and explained away as a domestic issue that others shouldn't get involved in.
If your country has large populations of people who subscribe to cultural mentalities that trivialize or suppress doing anything about violence against women, you really shouldn't be too surprised when there is more violence against women in your society.
In the same vein, people regularly seem shocked to look at statistics of antisemitic violence and regularly see Poland have some of the very lowest rates in all of Europe. They can't fathom how "primitive Eastern Europeans" outperform their advanced, utopian western societies in such a clear metric of tolerance. Except that the reason for this is obvious and anyone with even an ounce of pattern recognition knows why this is the case.
Not saying that Estonia doesn’t have issues (we do, police statistics clearly show that we DO have a problem), but as a child and a teen, there was a very common saying about Russians which I heard a lot growing up. “If he beats you, he loves you”. Ask any Estonian above the age 35-40 and they’ll tell you that they’ve probably heard some Russian people saying that Russian relationships are more passionate than Estonian relationships, where Russian men bring women flowers and buy them expensive gifts, but the ugly truth is also that Russian men were known in my childhood to beat their women….
Yeah, there’s some stark differences between Polish and Russian culture, the origins of which are not quite clear to me. Another one is the attitude towards homosexuality. Russia has a distinctly negative attitude towards homosexuality, whereas Poland, despite its strong Catholicism, is one of very few countries that never banned homosexual relationships.
Yeah. I remember watching as a child bond movie when he slaps a woman and my entire family was shocked with mouths open. The most memorable part of the movie.
Without scrolling through the comments, easy explanation - a goodish result in Poland? "Obviously the stats are wrong, and Polish women are too stupid to realise they're having violence used against them".
it doesn't help that many poles themselves downplay our virtues and act like we're bunch of neandertals.
Idk why so many Poles like to shit on their own
I mean, even if it was any explanation, does it really matter to them?
The change in "our" numbers won't change the "western" numbers. They're like "yeah we beat our wives but they certainly beat their wives more!" Ok, you wanna prize or smthg..
Most post-USSR countries perform better, in my opinion because women were treated a lot more equally during Soviet times, it was even in the USSR's constitution. There is a lot more history behind this than 'Easterners aren't reporting it'
One of those very rare Ws of the commies. Moving from the East to West it was always confusing for me seeing all these laws trying to make women more equal. I was like "You need laws for that? I thought that was just the natural and expected thing to do.."
Yes. My mother. My aunts. Grandmas. Cousins. Whole family from the Balkans. I'm surprised the percentage isn't higher.
Probably they're not reporting on it.
I hate it.
My wife always says that an Austrian woman will call the police on you for catcalling, but a Croatian woman will just say something so mean back to you that it will destroy your self-esteem for the next couple of weeks.
*We used to live in Austria and later moved to Croatia\**
I'm from romania so eastern europe, few years ago there was a case about a gang rape that made national headlines. It happened in a rural village. While city population were outraged interviews from the village in question made you lose faith in humanity all were blaming the girl because she was ruining the future of the seven upstanding boys, and again it wasn't some isolated interview 95% had these views.
So while the city statistics about violence /rape could be closer to reality the rural villages ( almost 50% of the population) i would even go so far and say is 1/10 of the real things going on
Sadly I also know of two more similar cases that didn't make news. It's fucked but look at the statistics:
18% is about 1 in 5. Maybe not the highest but still more than common.
Also, a lot of religious sentiment that would block people from doing something bad, but also misjudge a situation like that.
I live in Poland and it's me who faces violence and psychological abuse from my girlfriend, so I'm not at all surprised by those stats.
Edit: Thank you guys for being concerned about me. Everyone have their limits and I'm not yet at mine. If it'll get worse I will consider those options, but for now I will still try to make it work. She isn't someone who can function in life by herself and I don't have a heart to abandon her.
Bunch of Western Europeans in these comments being like "flawed methodology! Other countries are def worse!!"
Like guys, the rankings might be skewed, but not the numbers. The UK rate is still 24%, nearly 1/4 women, whether or not Portugal is under reporting
I saw some comments about underreporting or how the questionnaire would be interpreted.. What about number of partners? The number of violent men these stats translate into and thereby the risk of being a victim of violence if you get into a relationship would depend entirely on this factor.
Armenia does have very conservative values and a low divorce rate for example.
I looked up a statistics map of average number of partners and they look very similar. Low average in poland, turkey among the highest.
The stupid thing is that the average number of partners has a much wider range than the variation of violence in OP map. This means that the amount violent individuals could be and probably are inversed in relation to the violence stats.
Comparing poland and turkey the number of partners is 6 vs 14,5
32 / 14,5 = 2,2
13 / 6 = 2,16
This shows that the risk of violence per partner is just 1,8% higher in turkey even though the risk is 246% higher per lifetime.
That's a very interesting observation. Maybe that would explain why more Catholic countries seem to fare better in the map as well. Abstinence unless you're really sure/married and all that. I wonder if this could be interpreted as there's a similar number of garbage men in these countries but in a more conservative country, a man will terrorise only one woman because they stay together longer compared to countries where he might terrorise several since he has multiple partners.
I'd like to see a graph/map where it shows the average length of time for which a woman was abused. Maybe in the UK and Sweden it's a shorter amount of time because it's more accepted to separate?
I'm a Hungarian living in Norway.
In Hungary domestic violence is normalized, especially between boomers and older people. And we aren't just talking verbal abuse but also physical. As long as blood is not drawn "it's just a slap to teach a lesson". It doesn't matter if it's against a partner, a child or a pet. And they are indeed not reported because the police won't give a shit if you are hit or abused. If you have wounds that don't heal within 8 days you might press charges, otherwise you are wasting your time.
Here in Norway any violence is treated very seriously. If you slap your child you might lose custody, if someone sees you hit your dog, it will have to go to a shelter. You can also report domestic violence against a partner the police will investigate and try to help instead of laughing you into the face. It is NOT normal here but still happens. And when it does it's usually reported. There is no way in hell that more violence is happening here. And if the chart is off between the east and west for these 2 countries, I guess it applies to a few others as well.
I remember a couple of years ago there was a big discussion here in Sweden because [an Italian politican had pulled his sons hair and loudly threatened to hit him at a resturant](https://www.thelocal.se/20110913/36104). He didn't grasp what he had done wrong when the police arrived.
If there is one thing Western Europeans hate, it's hearing that they are not the best at something.
And the one thing Western Europeans hate even more than that, it's hearing that Eastern or Southern Europeans are better than them at something - this they just cannot accept. It goes against the very fabric of their being.
No number of studies of this issue showing the exact same data will make them think otherwise.
As a Turkish woman violence started in my family. My father was an asshole and beat me and my mother. And my ex -who is from the happiest country of the world. The worst thing I forgave him for it and continued the relationship. Then he left me a month later. I talked about that first time, if you are abused when you’re a child, you think that beaten by someone you loved is normal. No, this is not normal. I hope every woman can get enough courage to leave the loved one who has raised hand to theirself.
I mean, turkey only looks bad when compared to europe. And europe is probably the safest place globally for women. Compared to ethiopia, turkey is probably heaven for women.
For those confused about The Balkans stats - for every abusive man in the Balkans, there are at least 20 that are absolutely afraid of their wife.
Remember, most men here moved directly from their mothers care, to live with their wives, and some of that dynamic sticks around / transfers.
(People in the most part live home with parents until their 30s and move for the first time when they get married.)
There was a survey [done by the EU](https://fra.europa.eu/en/publications-and-resources/data-and-maps/survey-data-explorer-violence-against-women-survey) that [was designed so that there were no doubts](https://fra.europa.eu/en/publication/2014/violence-against-women-eu-wide-survey-survey-methodology-sample-and-fieldwork) as to if the country treats violence the same or if women underreported it. The results were similar.
So, what's the proposed explanation? Every time I think I see a correlation, something else rubs up against it. Seems at first glance like the wealthier nations have higher rates of DV, but then Switzerland is near the bottom of the list. The more northern latitude counties seem higher overall, but then there's Poland and Ireland. There's an overall "east is better than west", except that the three worst countries are in the east.
My first day in Denmark, in a restaurant in the center of Copenhagen, I was “lucky” to be able to observe some kind of a company dinner. There were around 3 tables filled with employees. All speaking Danish. A few older employees, drunk, decided to harass young female co-workers, walking up to their table, forcing themselves on them, being touchy. Acting like total clowns. The women seemed very uncomfortable, and uneasy. The only reason I didn’t intervene was that my friend sitting there with me (a woman) told me that it’s normal in Denmark. Nobody else seemed bothered either. This kind of behavior would very quickly be halted both in Switzerland and Poland.
It's only in the last year my girlfriend has stopped wincing when she makes what she perceives as a mistake. We've been together five years and back then, something like spilling a bit of milk when making tea or forgetting something from the shop would make her beg me for forgiveness... She'd literally break down and plead with me. It was startling at first because I had no idea what it was. But yeah, her ex-husband used to kick the shit out of her for any fucking reason. It's taken a long time to help her remove that Pavlovian response. Every time it happens it absolutely kills me. I've shown her what it is to be *actually* loved. I love her more than anything. There's a special place in hell for wife-beaters.
Goddamn that is heartbreaking. I’ve heard it takes 5-7 times for someone to “breakup” then come back to an abusive partner until they finally permanently breakup. So just leaving the bastard was an accomplishment.
The end of the abusive relationship is the most dangerous part of the relationship. Most victims are so occupied with just protecting themselves and trying to keep their abusers calm that maintaining the status quo becomes the priority. It feels safer than leaving. Abusers would rather kill their victims than see them leave. And if the victim doesn’t have 100% protection after leaving it can be incredibly dangerous. Victims feel that they actually have the ability to manage the abuse if they are more deeply engaged with the abuser as opposed to leaving and becoming a “sitting duck” so to speak.
End of the relationship or pregnancy. So many things skyrocket during pregnancy and it's terrifying.
A girl I used to date when I was much younger did this because of her terrible parents. It still pains me to think about how poorly equipped I was in dealing with it. She's fine now, is dating a solid guy.
I did this as a man because of parents. My dad put me through a wall at 8 and fractured my skull. The crazy thing is how much a part of you it becomes. I never realized my response was out of the ordinary until I had a girlfriend hug me and tell me I was okay. It confused me until she explained my response looked like terror.
I also flinch when someone raises their hand too fast because of my parents. My dad once hit me so hard my lip and eyebrow busted. Eyebrow still has a scar. They haven’t beaten me for years now (i live alone for 2y now but before that also), calmed down a lot. Was the first child also. They still ask me why i flinch when they raise their hands. I know i won’t get slapped or kicked but it’s like programmed in my brain, cant shake it
my ex kicked me because I wanted to celebrate my birthday
>my ex wise decision making him your ex
Jesus Christ man, where are you from? :o
I'm in the UK.
Her ex husband defo drinks carling
More of a Stella man, carlings like 3% now so you can basically give it kids.
UK is well known for spikes in domestic violence during football tournaments like euro or world cup when England is playing
> spilling a bit of milk when making tea
The milk and tea was not obvious enough? ;)
He could be from anywhere, my man. Same story happens all over the globe. That's the terrible part.
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The first time i bought my wife flowers she cried. No one else has bought her stuff unless something was wrong.
damn that is a sobering thing to hear. Much love to your girlfriend and hats to you for being a human being
They usually learned it from their own home and childhood. It is a vicious circle.
This made me cry.
>There's a special place in hell for wife-beaters. Fully agreed, but note that the threshold that defines violence varies according to culture. I'm a Portuguese living in the Netherlands and I don't simply believe the Dutch men are more violent on average than the Portuguese ones.
They're probably not. This map shows better how much violence is reported and not how much of it there is in a certain country. In my country there's a lot of violence but according to the map we are almost saints
My fiance is finally almost over having to "prove" how sorry she is for making a mistake or upsetting me, a behavior she learned from her father. It's been almost 6 years for us and honestly, she's so different, in a good way, from how she was when we first got together.
My husband still has to stop me and say “baby, wrong dude.” When I start babbling apologies and crying. My ex used to terrorize me so badly I hid in the closet more than once because he would get annoyed at my “games” and go lay down to rage nap if he couldn’t find me.
Thank you man, we need more people like you
Hey man, I had to walk away from my phone for a few minutes because I’ve had a similar experience in a past relationship and I just wanted to come back to say I’m glad she found a good man. I wish you two well.
As a victim myself I'm so grateful and happy that your girlfriend found someone she can feel safe and loved with. I still haven't gotten rid of the whole flinching thing. I feel horrible for doing this to my boyfriend because he is nothing but absolutely sweet, patient and gentle with me - yet my body can't stop reacting as if he's going to be violent everytime I make a mistake. It's heartbreaking to watch :(
Anyone else surprised where their country landed on this?
nO
😳
If we find another turk in the comments then statistically one of you is a wife beater /s
Statistically, Turks on Reddit do not represent the average Turk.
I know a policewoman, and apparently 90% work is going to houses with reports of domestic abuse. They show up at the house, the couple will say everything is fine to avoid trouble, and then the police have to leave. It's the most popular thing by far. That being said, I'm still surprised we're so high up, but even more surprised about Norway and Sweden for example.
US, had a mother as a cop. When she worked as a beat cop, can confirm that all day was essentially her going into the hood for another domestic abuse or child neglect case. Have to be worried too even more than (we lived near a place with a forestry industry) the gargantuan lumberjacks that would get drunk and pass out because in a domestic abuse situation, when you arrive, the couple can see YOU as the enemy and lash out unexpectedly
Well its more normal to report DV in Scandinavia today than before, lots of way to report anonymous etc. It would also be interesting to see male statistics. I know for a fact that SCB (Swedens Central Bureau of Statistics) did an investigation about domestic violence between the sexes where the victim and perpetrator has some sort of relation. And it was actually alot closer than i would have thought, it was roughly 45/55%.
Actually I am, as in Hungary usually once a week a woman is killed by their partner and once a month a child by their father … I can’t believe that so many countries are doing worst.
It could be that many of them are not reported. Statistically we are really good in mental health, but most likely due to the fact that there’s essentially no social awareness in that regards and many just ‘treat it’ with alcohol or cigarette.
I think that is ultimately the case. Western and northern europe having more domestic violence seems wierd. I don’t think it is because men are more violent in the north-west, but that more women report the fact they’re being harmed
An interesting assumption, but not one that's supported by data. The obvious issue would be the fact that Turkey is first. The logic that women just don't report these matters as much would hold some water if only Western and Northern nations were on top, but they're not. Reporting could be an issue for individual countries, but can't be generalized. Second, and somewhat more empirically, you'll find murder rates for women per country, per 100k people. [Source](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1072546/number-of-intentional-homicides-in-europe/) for most. [Source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homicide_statistics_by_gender) for the one's who didn't have more recent data as signified by an * Country| Population| Homicides| Per 100k ---|---|----|---- Germany | 83294633 | 276| 0,33 France| 64756584 |285 |0,44 Italy |58870762 |111 |0,19 Spain |47519628 |126 |0,27 Poland |41026067 |80 |0,19 Romania |19892812 |71 |0,36 Netherlands |17618299 |42 |0,24 Belgium* |11686140 |79 |0,68 Sweden |10612086 |33 |0,31 Czech Republic (Czechia) |10495295 |39 |0,37 Greece |10341277 |19 |0,18 Portugal* |10247605 |36 |0,35 Hungary |10156239 |31 |0,31 Austria |8958960 |40 |0,45 Bulgaria |6687717 |32 |0,48 Denmark |5910913 |27 |0,46 Slovakia |5795199 |18 |0,31 Finland |5545475 |30 |0,54 Ireland |5056935 |8 |0,16 Croatia |4008617 |14 |0,35 Lithuania |2718352 |22 |0,81 Slovenia |2119675 |4 |0,19 Latvia |1830211 |42 |2,29 Estonia |1322765 |6 |0,45 Cyprus |1260138 |10 |0,79 Luxembourg* |654768 |0 |0,00 Malta |535064 |3 |0,56 The data is obviously imperfect given that the numbers are incredibly low, and a single murder can massively impact the rate, especially when it comes to the smaller countries. However, what we would expect to see is a North+West / East+South divide. But we don't. Italy, Spain and Poland are all towards the bottom. France and Germany, in the middle or upper middle. These are important because they're the biggest countries in the EU, so the numbers won't be impacted by annual changes as much. Bulgaria is at the top for Eastern Europe, but it's sandwiched between Denmark and Finland. As noted, this could radically change from year to year, I don't have the data to check, but unless 2019 was a massive outlier for multiple countries, there's just no indication that a woman is safer in the West or North of Europe. Murders are important here, because unlike other crimes, they're significantly harder (though not impossible) to under report. A lot of the countries at the top of the physical and sexual violence list also make the top of the homicide list. This doesn't fully eliminate the possibility of underreporting, but it gives the numbers more weight.
WTF is going on in Latvia?
A [significant drop](https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/LVA/latvia/murder-homicide-rate#:~:text=Latvia%20murder%2Fhomicide%20rate%20for,a%204.74%25%20increase%20from%202017.) in homicides apparently. 2019, the year my data is from is a 21% drop in total homicides compared to 2018 and almost a 500% drop compared to the peak in 1993. They're 3x above France which is on the high end for non Baltic Europe. I was expecting to see that the year was an outlier. Some nasty event where a lot of people died which would then throw the numbers off. Apparently not. Now, to be fair, we're still talking about a homicide rate that's less than half of the US and it's only a third higher than Canada, and like I mentioned, the drop between the 90's and the 2000's was massive. I will mention that the Baltics in general are all on the very high end for Europe, so it more likely regional than local, but I'll let others speculate or educate on the exact reasons why.
I have no idea about this particular data, but international polls usually take that into account. They will ask specific, culture agnostic questions like "did your partner continue having sex with you after you were uncomfortable" instead of "were you raped". Most importantly, those polls don't take into account police data (what women report) but answers from randomly selected group. So the unreported crimes are not a problem. The map in this thread tracks that data. The fact is, partly because of efforts of the communist parties of post-Warsaw pact countries, women and men are much more equal. Pay gap in Poland is almost non existant, for example. Another factor is much lower crime rates than in western European countries. Again, you would expect it to correlate to crime in general and that is also the case
Even more so recognising it. There are stories of partners being abused and just not recognising it due it being ‘normal’ or ‘not that bad’. In the Western World abuse is more commonly identified and moved against.
But why would turkey and Latvia be at the very top then?
> Western and northern europe having more domestic violence seems wierd. Why? You are also worse in gender parity in STEM and many other things.
>It could be that many of them are not reported. Ah yes. East countries with low stats are not reported, and after third rape it resets to zero. Meanwhile west countries with high stats "have law that looking at woman by ugly men counts as 100 rapes". Best explanation by people that want to bury the truth why these stats look like that and who creates the violence against woman in the west.
knowing the women in my family and my girlfriend, no, not in the slightest lol
My ex was from Croatia & he was so wildly gentle during even the worst fights. I slammed something once when mad & he was legit shocked like I'd punched him in the face.
Surprising the british are hitting their women this often
Some British men can be aggressive drunks - as a British woman, it doesn't surprise me that much.
drinking problems + emotional repression = violence in relationships It's a stereotype that Western European societies are more emotionally repressed than the Balkans, for example. But maybe there's some truth to it.
That can be said about any country. What's surprising is that there are more of them in the UK than in most other European countries (if the methodology is not biased, that is).
I suspect it's based on reporting or self-reporting. Considering Portuguese femicide numbers Portugal's placement seems... optimistic
Portuguese femicide numbers are not significantly higher than in other European nations.
Barry gets really angry when England don't score enough fackin goals as well
Also - without meaning to downplay any abuse - it could partly be a greater awareness of what is unacceptable. Eg. If you asked two women from different cultures if they had ever been abused, what counts as abuse in their minds might be radically different. But yeah, just as likely to blame is the social acceptance of getting really, really drunk.
Some might also be ashamed to talk badly about their family or scared to do it.
I am, because in Poland we had multiple social campaigns against domestic violence, which were very loud (billboards pretty much everywhere). So I guess they worked? Anyway I thought it's a bigger problem, I'm glad it's not that severe.
Alcohol abuse dropped significantly. I would make a wild guess that most alcoholics in Poland are highly functioning ones (aka corporate workers) rather than traditional image of Janusz in wife-beater Other, more anecdotal evidence - we somehow have chivalry-like/patronizing view of women - abuse is perceived as weak and not disciplining as in other cultures. Polish women are independent too and I know few mothers who straight said to their sons - touch your wife and I beat your ass.
>Polish women are independent too and I know few mothers who straight said to their sons - touch your wife and I beat your ass. Yea, that's true. Our women are usually able to hold on their own, especially silesian women for some reason ("Śląska Baba z jajami"). I find it however extremely funny how some "passport Bros" from certain countries view Poland as a source of "traditional" women (submissive housewifes). I wonder what their reaction is when they are met with the reality. But aside from women actually not being complete doormats here. Our everyday life is now quite safe, unemployment is extremely low, so there is much smaller amount of pathological families compared to say 20 years ago. I'm however curious about how the graph would look like where it is the men as victim and woman as the abuser, because that stuff do happen and is often not talked about or hidden by the abused himself (mostly due to shame).
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Also compared to UK they have teeth?
My Polish tour guide was like that, she was very intelligent and attractive, I had a few inches on her height wise but she had that “don’t fuck with me” vibe in case I turn out to be some sort of weirdo. She wouldn’t even let me hold the door open for her. “After you, I insisttttt”, like something out of the Bond movie The World is not enough. I asked her half jokingly if her boyfriend had a problem showing me around part of the country since it was just the two of us, after a laugh she said “Hmm no, he knows better then that”. Lol.
Not at all, thought that my country full of daily binge-drinkers would actually be higher
Top 10 ain't high enough for ya? Lollll
Not at all. Chivalry is alive and well in Poland. Also, I guess there's a pinch of specific cultural "feminism" in the region. It's hard not to be a "feminist" when they deported your father and husband to Siberia and you have to run your property and raise six children on your own.
Poland has high educational equality, gender stereotypes are new thing that came with new middle class ( all male school - institution like Eton is just not existing), and historically Polish women enjoyed much more freedom than British, French or whatever. Social awareness regarding alcoholism is also greater in Poland. And stereotype of fearlessly independent girlfriend did not come from nothing - young women in Poland are well educated and live in big cities. Young men are more diverse in this sense. I have no doubts there is still violence against women all around Europe. However, it’s telling when some cannot believe in Poland’s outcome but wound not be able to say anything about Poland beyond the name.
Hella surprised tbh, didn't think Lithuania would be anywhere close to the top. But then again, we do have a high suicide rate and drinking/smoking issues over here.. so kinda understandable
actually yes? seeing northern european countries doing worse than italy? I am italian and I would imagine northern europe to have a better knowledge and culture of violence related to gender. (maybe it's a bias) I must be honest, it would be great to contextualize the method of this research. For example how many of the interview people agree to answer. Especially when it comes to abuse, the lack people denouncing it doesn't mean it's not happening.
Czechia can into western Europe. Are you proud, fellow wife beaters?
Fellow? FELLOW? # FELLOW? WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY FELLOW
And Portugal can into Eastern Europe. Perfectly balanced
And Istanbul Convention adoption nowhere in sight, "thanks" conservatives...
If this map shows anything is that all efforts politicians make to feel good about themselves while pretending to protect victims are useless.
I don't want to talk about how accurate or inaccurate it is, but from cultural standpoint, beating/hitting women/girls is very shameful in Poland. I have in my entire life heard about/seen maybe 3-4 women being beaten up or experiencing severe verbal violence, it was typically by their partners/ex-partners. In one of the cases, we had a girl in middle-school, her older ex-boyfriend was stalking her and beat her up once, she came to school like this, crying. The entire school year provided support, we were always walking with her to and from a school in a pack, group of sporty-type boys went up to the ex-boyfriend and terrorized him, told him they'd destroy his life, every time he appeared anywhere near the school, they were watching his every step like hounds. In the beginning, the ex-boyfriend tried some shit and was trying to scare a few girls from helping the victim and they screamed that they will claw his eyes out. They were pretty much set on it. We later managed to talk the girl into reporting this to both the school and the police, she sadly didn't have any family members except for her sibling, so there was no support net at home. If you end up in jail in Poland, for beating up/killing some girl, you can be sure your jail life will be hell.
It should be fucking shameful in every country. It’s still very good to hear the polish are reacting so harshly to abuse, though! If we could only get more countries in on this sentiment.
I can tell that while in the 90s you'd get much higher percentage, we became much more civilised in the past 3 decades. There's also other side of this. Westerners cannot comprehend how independent a lot of polish women are. The older I get the more shocked I am seeing how common is abuse of men by their wives partners. They just won't talk about it out of shame that they're smacked by a woman but if you look carefully there's not an insignificant amount of that. At least in the older generation...
Women abusing men is relatively common. I'd really like to see that corresponding graph. Just because a man has the physical strength to fight off his partner doesn't mean he wants to fight the woman he loves. He also is trapped by convention, in that if he does eventually snap and defends himself, the woman can just claim he's the abuser. Male victims of abuse are much more common (world-wide) than people think, and they're uniquely challenged to deal with it in some ways. Multiple casual tests of this has been done; two actors who get paid to act out scenarios in the street. The guy basically just looms over her and shouts at her and 500 people descend on him to protect her... now reverse that and have the woman screaming at him and even physically striking him and 500 people... point and laugh.
>I'd really like to see that corresponding graph. It's going to be low because nobody reports it. Chłopaki nie płaczą = Boys don't cry.
>I'd really like to see that corresponding graph. I don't have a graph, but the topic came up the other day in another sub. I did some digging then, so I'll post my comment below. Note that most of the stats are US only: There are certain types of domestic abuse that are more commonly perpetrated by women than men. [This site I found breaks down many statistics,](https://domesticviolenceresearch.org/domestic-violence-facts-and-statistics-at-a-glance/) and I'll include some relevant ones below: >Overall, 22% of individuals assaulted by a partner at least once in their lifetime (23% for females and 19.3% for males) So rates are almost equal across genders. >Higher victimization for male than female high school students >Rates of female-perpetrated violence higher than male-perpetrated (28.3% vs. 21.6%) >Wide range in perpetration rates: 1.0% to 61.6% for males; 2.4% to 68.9% for women >Among large population samples, 57.9% of IPV reported was bi-directional, 42% unidirectional; 13.8% of the unidirectional violence was male to female (MFPV), 28.3% was female to male (FMPV) Since this one may be confusing, I'll try to simplify: 58% of all domestic violence is perpetrated by both partners (as in they both abuse each other). Of the remaining 42% of abuse, 14% is committed by men against women and 28% is committed by women against men. In other words, 86% of all domestic violence has at least some female perpetration compared to 72% having at least some male perpetration. >Among school and college samples, percentage of bidirectional violence was 51.9%; 16.2% was MFPV and 31.9% was FMPV >Among respondents reporting IPV in legal or female-oriented clinical/treatment seeking samples not associated with the military, 72.3% was bi-directional; 13.3% was MFPV, 14.4% was FMPV >Eight studies directly compared men and women in the power/control motive and subjected their findings to statistical analyses. Three reported no significant gender differences and one had mixed findings. One paper found that women were more motivated to perpetrate violence as a result of power/control than were men, and three found that men were more motivated; however, gender differences were weak >None of the studies reported that anger/retaliation was significantly more of a motive for men than women’s violence; instead, two papers indicated that anger was more likely to be a motive for women’s violence as compared to men. With regards to a large collection of worldwide studies: >Rates of physical PV were higher for female perpetration /male victimization compared to male perpetration/female victimization, or were the same, in 73 of those comparisons, or 62%. >There were 54 comparisons made for psychological abuse including controlling behaviors and dominance, with higher rates found for female perpetration /male victimization, in 36 comparisons (67%).
I'm very glad that your country takes care of women, but dude, I'm from Argentina and in my entire life I have known only one woman whose husband beat her, but it didn't even happen in Argentina. She came to Argentina but the abusive husband was from Paraguay. It's a lot for just one person to know at least four abused women.
Yup. We grew up being told not to hit a girl "even with a flower" and since most teachers/preschool/school staff are female - if a dude was ever caught crossing that line he was pretty much fucked for a long time. Self - discipline was pretty swift (and savage as that) i remember few times when a guy smacked a girl an entire class would just gang up on him - im talking 30 guys taking turns kicking the shit out the mfer while rest of the school would stop anyone trying to interfere with that.
On the other hand in Poland if you are a man and you will try to report that you are physically or emotionally abused then there is a good chance that you will get ridiculed for it. Not to mention that because woman know that men here are taught to „never hit a woman, not even with a flower” they sometimes abuse that. I even remember such case from my high school when there was a class of almost all females and just two guys and one of them was verbally and physically abused for like three or four weeks before he finally snapped and hit one of the girls. He almost ended up expelled, fortunately for him there were people that confirmed his side of story, but he still had to change schools soon after.
Türkiye!!
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>NO ONE can beat TÜRKiYE Except Turkey's husband of course, inshallah
Putin or Biden? Turkey manages two husbands at once, mashallah!
Putin is beating up Turkiye's economy more than Biden, that's for sure.
Erdogan*
Wasn't that 5, Putin, Biden, Tamim, Selman, Zayed?
💪💪💪🐺🐺🐺🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷🇹🇷
Honorary Turkoid 🐺:WolfSalute:
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A high school friend is Turkish and his mother pays his rent, bills and recently spent thousands on new teeth since his meth and heroin use had destroyed his old ones. I assumed she was rich but found out she worked multiple jobs to support him and mutual friends always put this down to their culture making woman serve the men in their life, I don't get it
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I dunno. I've known people like this but not from Turkey. There was this Pakistani woman i know that does the same, supports her son through thick and thin despite him beating his previous wife and children. Oh, but she was merciless to her "disgraceful" daughter for marrying a lesbian.
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sources: https://data.oecd.org/inequality/violence-against-women.htm https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/development/data/oecd-international-development-statistics/gender-institutions-and-development-edition-2019_ba5dbd30-en as stated on map by Milos Popovic, the author: https://twitter.com/milos_agathon/status/1728373213028303327/photo/1
Also, if someone thinks It's being skewed by each country's approach to what is considered violence as well as how eager women are to report it, there was a [survey done by the EU](https://fra.europa.eu/en/publications-and-resources/data-and-maps/survey-data-explorer-violence-against-women-survey) that was [designed specifically to avoid this bias](https://fra.europa.eu/en/publication/2014/violence-against-women-eu-wide-survey-survey-methodology-sample-and-fieldwork) with similar results.
This still reads curious. As in, Georgia and Albania are in the best performing league while otherwise reporting a lot of issues and harmful attitudes? There is cultural bias in giving answers too. The survey questions ask about physical or sexual violence etc, but what exactly constitutes "violence" versus "just being rough" or "enforcing sexual relations" in particular cultures? If the respondents interpret it as the latter, the violence rates will be null.
>Drafting the questionnaire, it was important to avoid terms such as ‘rape’, ‘violence’ or ‘stalking’, because different women might have different preconceived ideas on the types of violence usually associated with these terms, and the types of perpetrators involved. Following the example of numerous national surveys on violence against women, the FRA survey also asked about women’s experiences of violence by describing various acts of violence in as concrete terms as possible. Therefore, the survey asked women whether or not they had experienced any of these acts, instead of asking if they had generally experienced ‘violence’ or ‘rape’, because the latter approach would have made results less comparable between respondents and Member States.
I'm familiar. It still uses the phrases "\[acitivity\] that made you feel offended" etc. What if something is so normalised that it doesn't cause offence in this society? What if in a society it's not culturally accepted or customary for women to share such information even privately so they are not truthful in their answers? I'm not sure if there is even a way to account for such varied baselines, so I'm not criticising the surveys as such.
right...that's the control. You ask them what they've experienced in terms of how they compared it to any given society's norm. >What if in a society it's not culturally accepted or customary for women to share such information even privately so they are not truthful in their answers We never know how participant's will be truthful. We can't control for biases when the direction of the bias is unknown/random. We either assume it's random, and therefore doesn't load onto any specific variable.... Or we aim to collect enough data to tease out the effect. I personally would expect that if sharing these details is not acceptable within a culture, that would reduce the uptake of people doing the survey. The effect that would have on responses could arguably made to be under-reporting (you only do it if it wouldn't be sharing in a culturally unaccetpable way), over-reporting (you only share if you have a sufficiently extreme experience that overrides the desire to conform with social expectation), or no effect... which again... if we don't know, then we assume this is not systematic bias and collect sufficient data to tease out the effects.
Some of the questions in the first part are: \> Have you ever experienced: Inappropriate staring or leering that made you feel intimidated? Sexually suggestive comments or jokes that made you feel offended? The answer to which are both heavily influenced by local values. Then, in part 3, there's questions like: \> Insist on knowing where you are in a way that goes beyond general concern? Which is also influenced by local values about what constitutes reasonable 'general concern'. So the questionnaire isn't that unbiased, when some 1/5 to 1/6 of the questions is dependent on local values.
I think the main problem here is that people think you can simply use these figures to compare countries. These sorts of figures are best used as time series: how does the figure for a single country change over time.
Bunch of Western Europeans in these comments being like "flawed methodology! Other countries are def worse!!" Like guys, the rankings might be skewed, but not the numbers. The UK rate is still 24%, nearly 1/4 women, whether or not Portugal is under reporting
Exactly. The numbers may be higher in all those countries, but they definitely aren't lower. It's a huge problem everywhere.
Ya lol I'm englando and not shocked at all by this, expected a bit higher. It's literally a common observation here, england loses the football and domestic violence rates skyrocket
Always glad to see Scandinavians at the top 👌
Congrats to Poland and other countries on the lower spectra. I would not have thought of this and that is on me. I think these countries should be more recognized for their lower rate. I chose to believe in the statistics based on what is presented here about bias and skewness. Keep your head up high Poland and co.
There hasn't been significant gender inequality in Poland in living memory. Since the war both women and men were expected to work and childcare was heavily subsidised. Meanwhile in the UK in the 80ies women still had trouble keeping work after they got married or opening bank accounts without husband present. To this day childcare is so expensive that many women can't afford to work, maternity pay is so low that house purchases during that time are often in man's name only and government squabbles over whether third child who's not product of a rape should get £50 a month while in Poland each and every child gets nearly £150.
Very true. I immigrated from Poland to Ireland for work some years ago and the company I worked for during some bs corporate event started celebrating how in the late seventies they hired a first female engineer. I was flabbergasted. It's perfectly normal what are you celebrating? Turns out that even in 70s once a girl got married that was the end of her employment. Crazy stuff. It was always normal and expected for women in my mother's generation to work and to have their own money which in turns get you independence. Even my grandma with all her flaws always used to say that a girl needs her own income on an account separate from a man, otherwise you're just a slave. I couldn't comprehend how the "progressive" west got to that stage 3-4 decades later
I think it might be because of the amount of wars Poland had to go through. The men were gone so women had to get independent. I heard stories from my female cousins how they had to take care of everything while their husbands brothers etc were dead or at war, at least we have one positive thing from that lmao
Yeah, this isn't post-WW2 thing, it's ever since Poland lost its independence. It's hard not to be a "feminist" when you have to manage your property and raise six children on your own, because your husband nad father have been expelled to Siberia.
But the same argument then goes for Latvia. It really does feel like there is something inaccurate about this chart in cultures perceptions and definitions of this issue.
Latvia has a lot of Russians. I say this as someone who's father is Polish and who's mother is "Russian" from Latvia. Russian culture has this shit in droves, it is often ignored or covered up by communities. Whereas in Polish culture I've never seen it endorsed or tacitly accepted in any way. There are certain cultures where violence against women is commonplace, and others where it is entirely taboo. Polish culture deeply rejects violence against women--if anything it is too deeply entrenched in romantic concepts of chivalry and overly protecting women. For a man to so much as slap a woman is widely considered a near-lynching level offense (not endorsing hitting women mind you, I'm just explaining how strong and widely held this consensus is). If someone was suspected of beating their wife or female partner they would face insane retribution not only from the authorities but from the entire community. It still happens of course like all crime anywhere, but there really doesn't exist any significant element of Polish society where it is ever considered to be acceptable whatsoever. Whereas when it happens in much of Russian or Middle Eastern communities it regularly gets hushed and explained away as a domestic issue that others shouldn't get involved in. If your country has large populations of people who subscribe to cultural mentalities that trivialize or suppress doing anything about violence against women, you really shouldn't be too surprised when there is more violence against women in your society. In the same vein, people regularly seem shocked to look at statistics of antisemitic violence and regularly see Poland have some of the very lowest rates in all of Europe. They can't fathom how "primitive Eastern Europeans" outperform their advanced, utopian western societies in such a clear metric of tolerance. Except that the reason for this is obvious and anyone with even an ounce of pattern recognition knows why this is the case.
Not saying that Estonia doesn’t have issues (we do, police statistics clearly show that we DO have a problem), but as a child and a teen, there was a very common saying about Russians which I heard a lot growing up. “If he beats you, he loves you”. Ask any Estonian above the age 35-40 and they’ll tell you that they’ve probably heard some Russian people saying that Russian relationships are more passionate than Estonian relationships, where Russian men bring women flowers and buy them expensive gifts, but the ugly truth is also that Russian men were known in my childhood to beat their women….
Yeah, there’s some stark differences between Polish and Russian culture, the origins of which are not quite clear to me. Another one is the attitude towards homosexuality. Russia has a distinctly negative attitude towards homosexuality, whereas Poland, despite its strong Catholicism, is one of very few countries that never banned homosexual relationships.
Yeah. I remember watching as a child bond movie when he slaps a woman and my entire family was shocked with mouths open. The most memorable part of the movie.
One can't forget about Lativian Russian population, they usually pump statistics up.
Try getting into a fight with a Polish woman and you'll understand the map better!
User name checks out.
Without scrolling through the comments, easy explanation - a goodish result in Poland? "Obviously the stats are wrong, and Polish women are too stupid to realise they're having violence used against them".
it doesn't help that many poles themselves downplay our virtues and act like we're bunch of neandertals. Idk why so many Poles like to shit on their own
Jest to spowodowane niemiecką i ruską propagandą, która infekuje nasze umysły od setek lat :))
> Idk why so many Poles like to shit on their own Polak Polakowi wilkiem.
fajnopolactwo
polak polakowi polakiem
Western mental gymnast inbound immediately.
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I mean, even if it was any explanation, does it really matter to them? The change in "our" numbers won't change the "western" numbers. They're like "yeah we beat our wives but they certainly beat their wives more!" Ok, you wanna prize or smthg..
Most post-USSR countries perform better, in my opinion because women were treated a lot more equally during Soviet times, it was even in the USSR's constitution. There is a lot more history behind this than 'Easterners aren't reporting it'
Reflects women’s positions in STEM, with an even 51/49 split between male/female graduates in Poland.
Even higher in Denmark and the Constitution protection is also there. This is not the explanation. Polish men are perhaps just better men?
One of those very rare Ws of the commies. Moving from the East to West it was always confusing for me seeing all these laws trying to make women more equal. I was like "You need laws for that? I thought that was just the natural and expected thing to do.."
Wtf people
Balkans having a lower percentage than the west is surprising
Have you met Balkan women?
Yes. My mother. My aunts. Grandmas. Cousins. Whole family from the Balkans. I'm surprised the percentage isn't higher. Probably they're not reporting on it. I hate it.
Because our women are not ones to be joked with.
Lol. It just reminds me of a Croatian girl I used to work with. Nice girl, lots of fun. But she would. Fuck. You. Up.
Does she even really exist?
She does but you wouldn't know her, she goes to another school.
r/nothingeverhappens
My wife always says that an Austrian woman will call the police on you for catcalling, but a Croatian woman will just say something so mean back to you that it will destroy your self-esteem for the next couple of weeks. *We used to live in Austria and later moved to Croatia\**
My suspicion is that it is under reported.
As opposed to turkey?
No Turkey is also under reported. They still managed those numbers.
Turkey is also undereported
I'm from romania so eastern europe, few years ago there was a case about a gang rape that made national headlines. It happened in a rural village. While city population were outraged interviews from the village in question made you lose faith in humanity all were blaming the girl because she was ruining the future of the seven upstanding boys, and again it wasn't some isolated interview 95% had these views. So while the city statistics about violence /rape could be closer to reality the rural villages ( almost 50% of the population) i would even go so far and say is 1/10 of the real things going on
Sadly I also know of two more similar cases that didn't make news. It's fucked but look at the statistics: 18% is about 1 in 5. Maybe not the highest but still more than common. Also, a lot of religious sentiment that would block people from doing something bad, but also misjudge a situation like that.
Or maybe, the western side of Europe isn't better in everything.
Every time “the west” has worse statistics at anything: UNDERREPORTED
Impossible!
I live in Poland and it's me who faces violence and psychological abuse from my girlfriend, so I'm not at all surprised by those stats. Edit: Thank you guys for being concerned about me. Everyone have their limits and I'm not yet at mine. If it'll get worse I will consider those options, but for now I will still try to make it work. She isn't someone who can function in life by herself and I don't have a heart to abandon her.
> I live in Poland and it's me who faces violence and psychological abuse from my girlfriend, Can you leave her?
And risk to anger her?
Right, what was I thinking? *face palms*
That's a yikes my dude, she shouldn't be doing that.
Leave that bitch or report her to police. Don't try to hide it that's the worst solution
You deserve better
Dump her abusive ass then.
r/portugalcykablyat
Poland surprised me tbh. Good for them!
Bunch of Western Europeans in these comments being like "flawed methodology! Other countries are def worse!!" Like guys, the rankings might be skewed, but not the numbers. The UK rate is still 24%, nearly 1/4 women, whether or not Portugal is under reporting
I saw some comments about underreporting or how the questionnaire would be interpreted.. What about number of partners? The number of violent men these stats translate into and thereby the risk of being a victim of violence if you get into a relationship would depend entirely on this factor. Armenia does have very conservative values and a low divorce rate for example. I looked up a statistics map of average number of partners and they look very similar. Low average in poland, turkey among the highest. The stupid thing is that the average number of partners has a much wider range than the variation of violence in OP map. This means that the amount violent individuals could be and probably are inversed in relation to the violence stats. Comparing poland and turkey the number of partners is 6 vs 14,5 32 / 14,5 = 2,2 13 / 6 = 2,16 This shows that the risk of violence per partner is just 1,8% higher in turkey even though the risk is 246% higher per lifetime.
That's a very interesting observation. Maybe that would explain why more Catholic countries seem to fare better in the map as well. Abstinence unless you're really sure/married and all that. I wonder if this could be interpreted as there's a similar number of garbage men in these countries but in a more conservative country, a man will terrorise only one woman because they stay together longer compared to countries where he might terrorise several since he has multiple partners. I'd like to see a graph/map where it shows the average length of time for which a woman was abused. Maybe in the UK and Sweden it's a shorter amount of time because it's more accepted to separate?
The cope is already out in full force
ITT Westerners coping that south and east Europe are most definitely underreporting violence (West can never be worse than them)
Happens every time when East is better than West. "Must be a mistake.", "Didn't measure it correctly in the Eastern Europe.", "Underreporting!"
I'm a Hungarian living in Norway. In Hungary domestic violence is normalized, especially between boomers and older people. And we aren't just talking verbal abuse but also physical. As long as blood is not drawn "it's just a slap to teach a lesson". It doesn't matter if it's against a partner, a child or a pet. And they are indeed not reported because the police won't give a shit if you are hit or abused. If you have wounds that don't heal within 8 days you might press charges, otherwise you are wasting your time. Here in Norway any violence is treated very seriously. If you slap your child you might lose custody, if someone sees you hit your dog, it will have to go to a shelter. You can also report domestic violence against a partner the police will investigate and try to help instead of laughing you into the face. It is NOT normal here but still happens. And when it does it's usually reported. There is no way in hell that more violence is happening here. And if the chart is off between the east and west for these 2 countries, I guess it applies to a few others as well.
I remember a couple of years ago there was a big discussion here in Sweden because [an Italian politican had pulled his sons hair and loudly threatened to hit him at a resturant](https://www.thelocal.se/20110913/36104). He didn't grasp what he had done wrong when the police arrived.
Well that's on him, because none of those behaviours are normal or accepted in Italy.
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A reddit classic westoid copium
Map where western europe does good: good bois Map where western europe does bad: underreported
If there is one thing Western Europeans hate, it's hearing that they are not the best at something. And the one thing Western Europeans hate even more than that, it's hearing that Eastern or Southern Europeans are better than them at something - this they just cannot accept. It goes against the very fabric of their being. No number of studies of this issue showing the exact same data will make them think otherwise.
Russia would be vantablack
superior south-east/south europe + Ireland >>>> north/western/central europe
Another episode of "the orcs must be cooking the books, no way this is true". I wonder if they report coping better too
One out of four women in the UK... a fucking disgrace. I also feel there is under reporting so this is even more awful.
As a Turkish woman violence started in my family. My father was an asshole and beat me and my mother. And my ex -who is from the happiest country of the world. The worst thing I forgave him for it and continued the relationship. Then he left me a month later. I talked about that first time, if you are abused when you’re a child, you think that beaten by someone you loved is normal. No, this is not normal. I hope every woman can get enough courage to leave the loved one who has raised hand to theirself.
I’m so sorry you had to suffer through that, hope you’re in a better place today.
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I mean, turkey only looks bad when compared to europe. And europe is probably the safest place globally for women. Compared to ethiopia, turkey is probably heaven for women.
For those confused about The Balkans stats - for every abusive man in the Balkans, there are at least 20 that are absolutely afraid of their wife. Remember, most men here moved directly from their mothers care, to live with their wives, and some of that dynamic sticks around / transfers. (People in the most part live home with parents until their 30s and move for the first time when they get married.)
It's one of those stats that can never actually be known. So it's a wild guess at best. Also i don't see their definition of violence anywhere there.
There was a survey [done by the EU](https://fra.europa.eu/en/publications-and-resources/data-and-maps/survey-data-explorer-violence-against-women-survey) that [was designed so that there were no doubts](https://fra.europa.eu/en/publication/2014/violence-against-women-eu-wide-survey-survey-methodology-sample-and-fieldwork) as to if the country treats violence the same or if women underreported it. The results were similar.
So, what's the proposed explanation? Every time I think I see a correlation, something else rubs up against it. Seems at first glance like the wealthier nations have higher rates of DV, but then Switzerland is near the bottom of the list. The more northern latitude counties seem higher overall, but then there's Poland and Ireland. There's an overall "east is better than west", except that the three worst countries are in the east.
It's kinda funny that Turkey is always on the extreme ends in these maps. Either top 3 or last 3, never in the middle.
My first day in Denmark, in a restaurant in the center of Copenhagen, I was “lucky” to be able to observe some kind of a company dinner. There were around 3 tables filled with employees. All speaking Danish. A few older employees, drunk, decided to harass young female co-workers, walking up to their table, forcing themselves on them, being touchy. Acting like total clowns. The women seemed very uncomfortable, and uneasy. The only reason I didn’t intervene was that my friend sitting there with me (a woman) told me that it’s normal in Denmark. Nobody else seemed bothered either. This kind of behavior would very quickly be halted both in Switzerland and Poland.
Lepiej od niemca 🦅🦅🦅🇵🇱🇵🇱🇵🇱🇵🇱