How Poland and Europe are fighting domestic violence towards women during the pandemic

Abstract

Introduction and objective In parallel to introducing restrictions resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic the subject of domestic violence has arisen among the public regarding how the victims may be handling this new, unfavourable situation. The aim of this study was to analyze the impact of these epidemiological circumstances on the scale of domestic violence towards women in Poland and Europe. Material and methods The study was prepared based on available literature on domestic violence, reports published by the European Union organisations and legal Acts. Results The official police statistics do not indicate a rise in registered cases of domestic violence during the COVID-19 pandemic. Data from individual European countries concerning the number of such incidents during the pandemic are not available. However, testimonies of people engaged in counteracting domestic violence suggest that the issue has escalated, both in Europe and Poland itself, because of new regulations. Conclusions Taking notice of the above issue during the pandemic has exposed flaws in the currently used methods of counteracting and supervising it. Better control of this problem could be accomplished if methods of collecting data on this subject were to be improved, which is proven by latest reports on the scale of domestic violence towards women. Increased engagement of State institutions of each country and their international collaboration would be necessary in order to solve this issue.

Keywords

• domestic violence
• violence towards women
• intimate partner violence
• patriarchy
• counteracting violence
• gender inequality