Violence against women - caution when interpreting the figures

Violence against women is abhorrent, it should be outlawed and combated. And yet the form of the annual publication of the figures on intimate partner violence in Germany has problematic features. The federal government and many media used a sharp formulation again this year: "Almost every third day a woman dies at the hands of her current or previous partner," said Federal Women's Minister Lisa Paus (Greens).

A problematic formulation because, in the service of a good cause, it depicts a dangerous situation much more directly than the bare figures would suggest. In a global comparison, Germany has a very low murder rate. The risk of becoming a victim of a fatal crime has fallen drastically since the 1990s and has remained at a low level ever since.

According to the federal government, a total of 113 women fell victim to fatal partner violence last year – in a country with 83 million inhabitants. Against this background, 113 sounds much less threatening than “every third day”.

Especially since it is not at all clear whether many citizens are aware of the dimensions of a homicide without a reference size. Because if a woman is killed by her (ex-)partner every third day, the extent of the violence would theoretically be far higher in a country like Liechtenstein with almost 38,000 inhabitants than in a country like India with 1.4 billion inhabitants.

Now one could object that the plastic embedding of the numbers of violence serves a higher purpose - namely, to point out a terrible social injustice. But what Paus and others are probably forgetting: Even right-wing agitators could fall back on such arguments at any time and postulate: "Every day, statistically, an immigrant commits a crime against life." Which, according to data from the Federal Criminal Police Office, is also true. The total number of offenses (366), on the other hand, sounds far less dramatic. How would one judge such a “framing”?

It becomes even more problematic when Federal Interior Minister Nancy Faeser (SPD) tweets: "We cannot accept that women cannot move freely at night because they are afraid." Faeser thus makes the subjective feeling of threat the basis of her policy. This is not only a problem because the “You can no longer dare to go out on the street at night” has always been a right-wing narrative, but also because it suppresses an important connection: the subjective sense of threat is fed not only from one’s own experiences, but also from messages conveyed by the media and politics.

When local and tabloid media fill their papers and online sites with police reports every day, it influences public perception. Politicians should not amplify this effect, despite their understanding of their social concerns.