By Blandine Mollard, Julia Ochmann, Davide Barbieri andJolanta Reingardė

This report developed by the research and statistics team of EIGE presents evidence on coercive control and psychological violence against women in EU Member States.

The study analyses the causes and consequences of coercive control and psychological violence against women, assesses the criminalisation of psychological violence and coercive control in EU Member States and identifies and analyses promising practices and the main hurdles in preventing coercive control and psychological violence against women in EU Member States.

Coercive control and psychological violence against women instil fear and insecurity in women's lives and undermine their well-being and dignity. In many cases, violence against women and girls occurs in the family, where violence is often tolerated, goes unreported and is difficult to detect. Even when such violence is reported, there is often a failure to protect victims or punish perpetrators.

The overall objective of this study is to strengthen the institutional capacity to combat coercive control and psychological violence against women in EU Member States.

The specific objectives of the study are to:

analyse the causes and consequences of coercive control and psychological violence against women;

assess the criminalisation of psychological violence and coercive control in EU Member States;

identify and analyse promising practices and the main hurdles in preventing coercive control and psychological violence against women in EU Member States.

This work will serve as a key addition to the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE)'s evidence base for a better understanding of gender-based violence, and will directly inform EIGE's support for the French Presidency of the Council of the European Union to ensure ongoing implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (BPfA; UN Women, 1995). More broadly, this research will contribute to the EU's strategic priority to end gender-based violence in all its forms, as enshrined in the EU gender equality strategy.

Vilnius LITHUANIA : European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE), 2022. 170p.

By Elisabeth Duban,

The OSCE participating States have agreed to several commitments that specifically mandate the Organization’s structures to assist participating States with developing programmes aimed at preventing all forms of gender-based violence, as outlined in the 2004 Action Plan for the Promotion of Gender Equality, and OSCE Ministerial Council decisions from 2005, 2014 and 2018 which emphasize the importance of collecting and disseminating reliable, disaggregated data on violence against women, alongside efforts to criminalize gender-based violence. Femicide, the gender-related killing of women and girls, is a global phenomenon and represents the most extreme manifestation of violence against women. This report aims to assess the response to femicide across the 57 OSCE participating States, focusing on three key areas: the criminal justice response, the collection of comparable data, and the reporting and analysis of femicide.

Prague: The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), 2025. 50p.

By Sara De Vido

Violence against women is characterised by its universality, the multiplicity of its forms, and the intersectionality of diverse kinds of discrimination against women. Great emphasis in legal analysis has been placed on sex-based discrimination; however, in investigations of violence, one aspect has been overlooked: violence may severely affect women's health and access to reproductive health, and State health policies might be a cause of violence against women. Exploring the relationship between violence against women and women's rights to health and reproductive health, Sara De Vido theorises the new concept of violence against women's health in international law using the Hippocratic paradigm, enriching human rights-based approaches to women's autonomy and reflecting on the pervasiveness of patterns of discrimination. At the core of the book are two dimensions of violence: horizontal 'interpersonal', and vertical 'state policies'. Investigating these dimensions through decisions made by domestic, regional and international judicial or quasi-judicial bodies, De Vido reconceptualises States' obligations and eventually asks whether international law itself is the ultimate cause of violence against women's health.

Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press,  2020. 273p.

Edited byAnna Triandafyllidou

This open access book discusses the socio-political context of the COVID-19 crisis and questions the management of the pandemic emergency with special reference to how this affected the governance of migration and asylum. The book offers critical insights on the impact of the pandemic on migrant workers in different world regions including North America, Europe and Asia. The book addresses several categories of migrants including medical staff, farm labourers, construction workers, care and domestic workers and international students. It looks at border closures for non-citizens, disruption for temporary migrants as well as at special arrangements made for essential (migrant) workers such as doctors or nurses as well as farmworkers, ‘shipped’ to destination with special flights to make sure emergency wards are staffed, and harvests are picked up and the food processing chain continues to function. The book illustrates how the pandemic forces us to rethink notions like membership, citizenship, belonging, but also solidarity, human rights, community, essential services or ‘essential’ workers alongside an intersectional perspective including ethnicity, gender and race.

IMISCOE Research Series. Cham: Springer, 2022. 264p.

By Cesraéa Rumpf

Recovering Identity examines a critical tension in criminalized women’s identity work. Through in-depth qualitative and photo-elicitation interviews, Cesraéa Rumpf shows how formerly incarcerated women engaged recovery and faith-based discourses to craft rehabilitated identities, defined in opposition to past identities as “criminal-addicts.” While these discourses made it possible for women to carve out spaces of personal protection, growth, and joy, they also promoted individualistic understandings of criminalization and the violence and dehumanization that followed. Honoring criminalized women’s stories of personal transformation, Rumpf nevertheless strongly critiques institutions’ promotion of narratives that impose lifelong moral judgment while detracting attention from the structural forces of racism, sexism, and poverty that contribute to women’s vulnerability to violence.

Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2023. 234p

Edited by Nikki Marczak and Kirril Shields  

Genocide Perspectives VI grapples with two core themes: the personal toll of genocide, and processes that facilitate the crime. From political choices governments and leaders make, through to denialism and impunity, the crime of genocide recurs again and again, across the globe. At what cost to individuals and communities? What might the legacy of this criminality be? This collection of essays examines the personal sacrifice genocide takes from those who live through the trauma, and the generations that follow. Contributors speak to the way visual art and literature attempt to represent genocide, hoping to make sense of problematic histories while also offering a means of reflection after years of “slow violence” or silenced memories. Some authors generously allow us into their own histories, or contemplate how they may have experienced genocide had they been born in another time or place. What facets contribute to the processes that lead to, or enable the crime of genocide? This collection explores those processes through a variety of case studies and lenses. How do nurses, whose role is inherently linked to care and compassion, become mass killers? How do restrictions on religious freedom play a role in advancing genocidal policies, and why do perpetrators of genocide often target religious leaders? Why is it so important for Australia and other nations with histories of colonial genocide to acknowledge their past? Among the essays published in this volume, we have the privilege and the sorrow of publishing the very last essay Professor Colin Tatz wrote before his passing in 2019. His contribution reveals, yet again, the enormous influence of both his research and his original ideas on genocide. He reflects on continuing legacies for Indigenous Australian communities, with whom he worked for many decades, and adds nuance to contemporary understanding of the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust, two other cases to which he was deeply committed.

Sydney;  NSW: University of Technology Sydney, 2020. 217p.

Edited by Ravi K. Thiara, Stephanie A. Condon and Monika Schröttle

This book draws together both: theory and practice on minority/migrant women and gendered violence. The interplay of gender, ethnicity, religion, class, generation and sexuality in shaping the lives, experiences and choices of minority/migrant women affected by violence has not always been adequately theorised within much of the existing writing on violence against women. Feminist theory, especially the insights provided by the concept of intersectionality, are central to the editors’ conceptual frameworks.

Leverkusen-Opladen,Verlag Barbara Budrich,  2011. 426p.