The Cultural Roots of Violence against Women: Individual and Institutional Gender Norms in 12 Countries

Abstract

To discuss the cultural roots of violence against women (VAW), this study focuses on individual gender norms, prescriptive gender role expectations, moral justification of VAW, and institutional gender norms that define gender cultures, that provide opportunities for VAW, and legitimize roles and behaviors. We used indicators of gender norms related to VAW from different sources to provide an overview of 12 countries (Armenia, Cyprus, Czechia, Germany, Greece, The Netherlands, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Turkey, and Ukraine). The indicators include individual gender role attitudes and justification of wife beating from the World Values Survey; information on national legislation and institutional discrimination from the Social Institution Gender Index from the OECD; and each country’s position on the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence—a transnational platform with relevant transformative power that has been opposed by anti-Europeanists. Although situations vary significantly in the different countries, this explorative study suggests that eradicating the cultural roots of VAW is more difficult in societies in which rigid traditional gender roles and a strongly patriarchal culture in legislation and institutions are supported by moral views legitimizing violence as a form of punishment for challenging prescribed gender roles.

Gender Disparity Index in European Former Communist States: Assessing the Influence of EU Membership

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“…1 For these measures, independent samples t-tests were used to determine differences, equal variances not assumed. 2 Fisher's Exact Test was used to determine differences for these dichotomous measures. The chi-square and −2 log-likelihood coefficients suggested all six models were statistically significant, indicating a good model fit, and Nagelkerke pseudo-R-square indicated the increasing ability of the models to predict the model variance ranging from a low of nine percent in Model One to a high of twenty-nine percent in Model Six.…”

“…* p ≤ 0.05; 1 For these measures, independent samples t-tests were used to determine differences; equal variances not assumed. 2 Fisher's Exact Test was used to determine differences for these dichotomous measures.…”

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