"Data" is the hot topic around violence against women these days

On March 6, the EU Fundamental Rights Agency presented their EU-wide prevalence survey to an audience of an estimated 400 in Brussels, very many of whom represented governments, NGOs, international organisations. I was astonished how many speakers in this well-informed public declared themselves “shocked” by the findings, since the new prevalence figures are not very different from what national surveys have uncovered. Or were they hoping to shock their governments into finally taking the problem seriously?

 Just two weeks later, the European Institute for Gender Equality invited some 50 experts from across the EU to discuss the results of their study on the availability of administrative data on violence against women. Unsurprisingly, since institutions and regulations differ quite a lot among member states, not much of the data is comparable across countries, and of course administrative files only capture violence that is reported to the police, social services, or (much less often) the health care system. As the FRA study showed, less than a third of all victimized women reported even the most serious incident to the police or to some other agency or organization. (A third talked to someone they know, a third had told no-one about it.). 

 What do we need the data for?

 

The interesting thing would be data that told us what statutory agencies DO about the cases they do hear of, for example, what percentage of cases recorded by the police ever goes to court?

In its “victims rights“ Directive (October 2012), the EU – to my great satisfaction – finally defined a victim as someone who has suffered harm irrespective of whether a perpetrator has been identified, charged or convicted, or of whether she makes a criminal complaint. Finally EU policy steps out of the narrow box in which the right to support and protection depends on criminal proceedings. 

But only one step. The Commission takes care to ask member states to train the providers of specialist support services to encourage and facilitate reporting to the police. Services, it seems, are expected to teach victims to trust the police and the criminal justice system. Indeed, we would all like to live in a world like that, and in many countries, the police are making impressive efforts to be worthy of victims’ trust. But it is the mandate of support services, would it even be ethical of them, to try and convince reluctant women to denounce their husbands or partners to the police? 

In how many states can a rape crisis center honestly assure women that they have nothing to fear from being witness in a rape trial? About a year ago, when a prominent rape case was being dragged through the German media, a former national prosecutor declared, in a talk show, that if his daughter were raped, he would strongly advise her not to go to the police, because the defense would inevitably attack her credibility and her character. Yes, when a woman has decided that she wants redress, wants to see her tormenter prosecuted, support her by all means – but encourage?

Do more data make better policy?

But back to data. There seems to be a notion floating around that the modern state ought to be informed about every case or incident of abuse or hurt. Every victim of violence in close relationships, it is said, ought to be “assessed” to decide if she needs special protection measures. (Why is no-one talking about the perpetrator? Surely it is the person posing a danger who needs to be assessed.). In the same Directive, member states are asked to provide administrative data regularly, systematically, and in comparable frameworks. It’s not easy to see what this has to do with victims’ rights.

Do more data make better policy? How, exactly, does that work? Awareness-raising is likely to increase the proportion of incidents that are reported, poor agency responses are likely to decrease that proportion, but the numbers won’t tell us whether awareness has risen or whether the agency responses have improved or deteriorated. 

I’m finding the “hype” about data, and more data questionable, especially since the data are all being collected from the victims, and that is, we might remind ourselves, a very intrusive process. If my handbag is stolen on the train, of course I go to the police (if only because I need the file number to get all those plastic cards we live with replaced), and their questions center on the perpetrator. I don’t have to answer questions about whether I am feeling depressed or whether I am pregnant. 

Seems to me that any institution that wishes to collect data on people who have done nothing wrong, just had the bad luck to be victimized, should be required to justify specifically why the data are needed. A general claim that data collection is “an essential component of effective policy-making” is too little. Numbers don’t make policy.

Carol Hagemann-White 

CEINAV presented to the Slovenian public on 27th February 2014

On February 27th 2014, the CEINAV project was presented to the Slovenian scholar's and wider public.  Vlasta Jalušič, one of the principal investigators of Cultural Encounters in Interventions against Violence at the Peace Institute,  has spoken about the content, methods, results and project partnership. 



 
Three other Slovenian HERA projects were introduced at the event which was organised by the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and attended by the representatives of the Slovenian Ministry of Education, Science   and Sports. The audience, mostly young scholars, has shown most  interest in the  projects development and partnerships. The representatives of the Ministry of Education, Science and Sports have announced the third HERA tender.

Vlasta Jalušič 

Who you gonna call?

For our planned workshops it is very important to invite just the right practitioners. They should have a significant deal of experience and should have come across the situations we will ask about. But maybe they should not be in the job for too long either. They will have to be experienced enough so everybody lets each other talk and respects each other, but if they are too experienced younger practitioners might feel intimidated. We want them to discuss cases, so they better have a comparable background framework in order not to start discussing protocols and procedures instead. On the other hand they should not work in the same networks or even city, because that would stop them from opening up regarding actions that might be against protocol. And there are still more reasons, why we have to pick our participants very carefully. Also we need the contacts, networks and experience of our associate partners for this. Last friday the Osnabrück team met with one of our associate partners in Göttingen, discussed who to invite and developed a first draft of a case story.

Bianca Grafe

Country context papers are on track

The last weeks it became quiet in the research team because one by one went on leave. Everybody is back to the desk now and eight researchers and fellow researchers are working on eight working papers called country context and legal context papers. These two papers per country are supposed to bring everybody on the same page about migration history, laws and prevalence data in each of the countries. In order to do comparatative research, we need to know the background of each country. Did your country have an extensive colonial history? From where are the migrants that migrate to your country? Which rights do they have? And so many more questions to ask. The papers are supposed to be desk research collecting and condensing existent research, but they will be of importance for the data analysis later on. Maybe we will not have final versions of all the papers at the initial deadline, but we hope to have preliminary versions of all of them by the middle or the end of january.

Bianca Grafe

You might think you know what you're doing - Meeting on methodology

It's great to have an idea of how things will work. Sometimes, even as a pro, you can miss important details though. Since our project is quite ambitious and our data collection via workshops a crutial part of it, we thought it might be a good idea to check with some experts on methodology. We invited four renown experts to Osnabrück where they met yesterday with the principle investigator from Heidelberg and the Osnabrück team wich includes the project leader. It was a very fruitful meeting with wonderful colleagues and lots of input. The idea to have a moderator moderating the focus groups instead of the principle investigators had already been in our minds, but it became more important when we discussed the possible impact on the focus groups.

 

Also the case stories to be discussed turned out to be even more important than we already asssumed. There were very different points of view regarding how they would have to be constructed. Also we will have to develop guidelines how to construct these case stories, in order to have comparable stories in each of the countries we are researching in, taking into account, that the details will have to differ from country to country (e.g. who is regarded a minority and what is to be considered a "typical" case?).

24 workshops might sound like a lot, which it is, regarding planning, organising and the material we will get. But this divides into six workshops a country, thus two workshop per country per form of violence. This does not allow for experiments with moderator or story, so we found there is a need to pre-test these workshops in advance.

This additional step adds further to our tight time schedule, but we think it is really necessary.

Bianca Grafe

Reflections on the kickoff in Osnabrück

Great weather, no cancellations and no major problems

The kick-off meeting was a great success! Everyone came – not a single cancellation – and the researchers and practitioners had a wonderful experience getting to know their counterparts in other countries and each other. The weather was perfect – mild golden October – and the location ideal for strolling in the Botanical Garden during the breaks.

The meeting was supported by a group of 7 student assistants, most of them volunteers from the master’s program in pedagogy, who met an guided the visitors, made coffee and tea and served lunches, helped with the technology and internet connections, and generally helped to ensure smooth proceedings.

Public event: Botanical Garden, who-is-who and fingerfood

On the first day, 14 researchers from the five partners discussed guidelines for the country context papers as well as theoretical approaches, and shared thoughts about the perspectives of the work. On Monday evening, a public presentation of the project under the theme of “culture-sensitive intervention” was held, with the university vice-president for research and the dean of the faculty as welcoming speakers. Carol Hagemann-White presented the main ideas and aims of the project in German, and then each lead researcher and each representative of the associate partners spoke for five minutes, introducing themselves and their organization. Afterwards there were drinks and snacks, made possible by a contribution from the university society.  A professional photographer recorded the event.

Even more work - second day meeting

On Tuesday the 11 associate partners and the researchers discussed together how the workshops with practitioners might be implemented for each of the three areas of violence covered in the project. The discussion was moderated by Prof. Cornelia Helfferich, Freiburg, a methodologist with research experience in all three areas, who will also be consulting with the project in Germany. A draft memorandum of understanding spelling out the rights of associate partners who contribute to the work was discussed and agreed, including principles of transparency, confidentiality and respect for intellectual property rights, but also inclusion in discussions about concepts and appropriate language. After lunch, the researchers took stock of what had been done , while the visiting practitioners were offered a tour of the town by student guides. All participants whose flights did not leave until the next day met for dinner and wine in a traditional restaurant. 

The Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung was present at the evening event and reported

Bianca Grafe/Carol Hagemann-White

Full team, picture taken by Angela von Brill

 

 

Kickoff event in Osnabrück on 21.10.2013

To start the project officially and get to know each other, we will have a big event on 21st of October.

 All researchers and associate partners will be there, introduce themselves and present the project.

The event is open to the public and will start at 18.00 in Bohnenkamphaus in Osnabrück.

 German press release:

„Kultursensible Gewaltprävention“

ist das Thema der öffentlichen Auftaktveranstaltung, mit der das im September begonnenen CEINAV-Projekt sich der interessierten Öffentlichkeit vorstellt. Am Montag, den 21. Oktober, treffen sich alle Partner aus Wissenschaft und Praxis aus vier Ländern in Osnabrück, um ihre Zusammenarbeit abzustimmen. In der gemeinsam ausgerichteten Abendveranstaltung um 18h im Bohnenkamphaus am Botanischen Garten wird die Projektleiterin, Prof. i.R. Dr. Carol Hagemann-White, Ziele und Anliegen der gemeinsamen Forschung und der Kooperation mit der Praxis in einem Vortrag vorstellen:

“Interkulturelle Begegnungen und Fragen der Ethik im Gewaltschutz für Frauen und Kinder“

Danach stellen die kooperierende Forscherinnen und Forscher sowie die assoziierten Partner aus der Praxis sich selbst und ihre Organisation vor und berichten über ihre Arbeit (in Englischer Sprache). Anschließend gibt es Gelegenheit, bei einem Stehimbiss mit Umtrunk die Kooperationspartner im vertiefenden Gespräch kennenzulernen und über die Gewaltschutzarbeit in anderen Ländern mehr zu erfahren.

Das Bohnenkamp-Haus am Eingang zum Botanischen Garten, Albrechtstraße 29, ist mit dem Bus 21 zu erreichen, Haltestelle: Hochschulen Osnabrück. Parkmöglichkeiten am Universitätsparkplatz an der Barbarastraße.