A Framework for Understanding Violence Against Women in the European Union

Human Rights Research Center
5 hours ago
14 min read

Author: Calvin Mouw, PhD

February 25, 2026

Demonstrators take part in a protest to mark the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women in Madrid, Spain, November 25, 2022 [Image credit: Violeta Santos Moura/Reuters]

Across Europe, sexual violence remains both widespread and obscured, sustained as much by silence as by law. The European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) estimates that one in three women has experienced violence in private, professional, or public settings, yet only a fraction ever report their experiences to authorities.^[1] These patterns are often attributed to entrenched norms, unequal power relations, and institutional practices that reproduce gender inequality.^[2] Workplace harassment, for instance, frequently goes unpunished not because legal provisions are absent, but because hierarchical structures discourage reporting and normalize male authority, reinforcing the imbalance that allows violence to persist.

Structural explanations illuminate why gender-based violence endures, but they leave a central paradox unresolved. They account for persistence, not variation. Why do survivors sometimes break their silence despite hostile environments? Why do similar reforms reshape expectations in one country but not another? Why do credibility gaps endure even where progressive laws are adopted? Survivors do not respond to static structures alone. They react to external events that shift expectations, update their trust in institutions, and influence the perceived risks and benefits of reporting. These dynamic processes help explain why countries with comparable legal frameworks diverge sharply in practice. Strong laws may coexist with fragile engagement, while visible events and credible institutions can generate rising trust and reporting.

Spain’s La Manada case illustrates these dynamics vividly. In 2016, five men filmed themselves assaulting an 18-year-old woman during the San Fermín festival. A lower court’s decision to convict them of sexual abuse rather than rape triggered mass protests and a national reckoning over consent. When the Supreme Court overturned the ruling in 2019, imposing rape convictions and longer sentences, the case became a watershed moment. It catalyzed reforms such as the “Only Yes Means Yes” law, reshaped survivor expectations, and exposed deep fractures in institutional credibility. Yet Spain’s paradox persists. Despite ambitious reforms, reporting remains uneven, and trust in institutions remains fragile.

This tension points to a broader insight. Equilibrium is not given. It emerges from the strategic interactions of survivors deciding whether to report, perpetrators assessing risks, and institutions signaling credibility. These decisions, made under uncertainty, accumulate into patterns that determine whether reforms consolidate trust or collapse into renewed silence. The result is a paradox of formal convergence in law alongside practical divergence in survivor experience across EU Member States. Understanding these dynamics requires evaluating reforms not only by their legal design but by their capacity to shift expectations, alter behavior, and strengthen institutional credibility.

The framework is developed by outlining a theoretical model, specifying how expectations and credibility shape reporting decisions, and examining why similar reforms generate divergent equilibria across Member States. By tracing these mechanisms in comparative perspective, the analysis shows how institutional signals, survivor behavior, and external events interact to produce the patterns that legal statutes alone cannot explain.

The Search for Equilibria

Social scientists look for equilibria because they offer a structured way to explain how stable patterns of behavior emerge and persist. Rather than assuming that laws or individual choices alone determine outcomes, equilibrium analysis highlights how incentives and expectations interact to produce self‑reinforcing dynamics. It clarifies why certain patterns endure, why similar reforms yield different results across contexts, and what conditions are necessary for change. A familiar illustration comes from choosing a restaurant: people often decide where to eat based on what they expect others have done. If a place looks empty, many infer low quality and avoid it, keeping it empty; if it looks busy, they infer high quality and join the crowd, reinforcing the pattern. The outcome is stable because no individual has an incentive to behave differently given their expectations—each person’s choice reproduces the pattern they observe.

Applied to sexual violence, equilibrium emerges from the interaction between survivors’ assessments of whether reporting is worthwhile and institutions’ demonstrated reliability in responding. When survivors expect disbelief or inaction, underreporting becomes a stable outcome; when institutions signal credibility, reporting increases and trust accumulates. These decisions, made under uncertainty, aggregate into broader patterns that either stabilize a persistent low‑response pattern or gradually move the system onto a different trajectory.

Equilibrium theory is therefore useful for explaining why similar legal reforms yield divergent results across countries: reforms change formal rules, but they do not automatically shift the expectations that structure behavior.

The diagram below maps reporting decisions against the strength of institutional response, producing four distinct scenarios. Each represents a situation where strategies reinforce one another, creating patterns of stability.

A positive equilibrium arises when institutions are credible, enforcement is consistent, and survivors expect protection rather than indifference. In such contexts, reporting increases and trust in the system grows.

A negative equilibrium occurs when reforms lack credibility in practice. Survivors anticipate indifference or stigma, and under-reporting persists.

A defiant equilibrium emerges when survivors report, but institutions remain weak. Initial increases in reporting, often encouraged by reforms or campaigns, erode as enforcement fails to reassure survivors or deter perpetrators. The gap between survivor courage and institutional weakness produces disillusionment, resulting in reporting that becomes visible but conditional, and trust that remains precarious. Without stronger credibility, this balance can collapse back into silence.

A passive equilibrium is the stability that emerges when both survivors and institutions internalize non-activation as the rational baseline, producing a self-reinforcing pattern of low engagement without overt conflict. It is not apathy. It is strategic resignation.

Figure layout was created using an AI‑assisted drafting tool; all conceptual content reflects the author’s framework, Google AI, 2026.

The diagram above is a model, not a literal map of reality, and several categories require interpretation. Gender Violence reporting exists in every context. T No population is truly “silent.” The level of activation changes based on these societal differences. In the lower quadrants, victims are not absent from the system. They are simply more likely to remain quiet or to report at much lower rates.

In game theory terms, equilibrium is not a fixed state but the result of repeated interactions between victims and institutions. Each round of reporting or silence reshapes expectations on both sides. When victims report, and institutions respond credibly, trust grows, reinforcing further reporting and stabilizing legitimacy. When victims remain silent, and institutions respond weakly, trust erodes, silence becomes rational, and institutions have little incentive to improve. Over time, this produces a negative trajectory in which low trust and weak enforcement reinforce one another, locking the system into fragility.

The dynamic element is crucial. Equilibrium is sustained through belief updating. Victims adjust expectations based on institutional behavior, while institutions adapt strategies in response to reporting levels. This iterative process makes the equilibrium path dependent. Countries with a history of credible enforcement tend to sustain high trust, while those with weak responses struggle to escape low-trust traps. Breaking out of a vicious cycle requires an external shock or deliberate reform that shifts expectations. For example, specialized gender violence courts or high-profile prosecutions can be signs of a serious interest in intervention on behalf of society. Only when both sides update their strategies toward cooperation does a new equilibrium emerge.

EU Member State Mapping

The empirical application rests on two complementary datasets collected across the European Union in 2024.

The first dimension, trust, is measured through the Eurobarometer Survey on Trust (2024), which provides comparative data on public confidence in law enforcement across all 27 Member States. This dataset works as a proxy for institutional credibility, highlighting whether citizens perceive police as effective and trustworthy actors in responding to violence. Trust levels vary significantly across countries, revealing both high-confidence contexts and areas where skepticism toward institutions persists. ^[3]

The second dimension, reporting, is captured through the EU Gender-Based Violence Survey conducted by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) in 2024. This survey collected detailed data on experiences of physical and sexual violence, harassment, and reporting behavior across all Member States.^[4] Total Violence was defined as the combined measure of reported cases of intimate partner violence and domestic violence. This indicator allows us to assess the extent to which survivors engage with institutions by making their experiences visible.

A correlation scatterplot offers a visual map, making it possible to see how countries fall into distinct equilibrium categories. When points cluster along a diagonal, it suggests that trust and reporting rise together, reinforcing the logic of a positive equilibrium. The scatterplot exposes equilibrium traps and paradoxes that might otherwise remain hidden in narrative accounts.

Thresholds set by author, Microsoft Copilot, 2026

Positive Equilibrium:

AT – Austria, EE – Estonia, LU – Luxembourg, NL – Netherlands, DK – Denmark, SE – Sweden, FI – Finland

A small group of countries show both very high trust in the police and relatively high reporting rates. In these places, institutions are seen as credible, and survivors feel confident enough to come forward. This is the “positive equilibrium,” the rare situation where trust and reporting reinforce each other.

Defiant Equilibrium:

CY – Cyprus, RO – Romania, SK – Slovakia, HU – Hungary, T – Italy, EI – Ireland, FR – France

Many countries show high reporting even though trust is only moderate. Survivors are speaking up, but they’re doing so despite weaker confidence in institutions. This “fragile equilibrium” suggests that reporting is being driven by other forces, such as activism or social pressure, rather than strong institutional trust.

Passive Equilibrium:

BG – Bulgaria, MT – Malta, LV – Latvia, SL – Slovenia, HR – Croatia, PL – Poland

Some countries show the opposite paradox. People say they trust the police, but survivors rarely report sexual violence. Institutional strength does not guarantee engagement. Laws and services exist, but stigma, fear of retaliation, and skepticism about justice sustain a harmful equilibrium. Institutions cannot prove effectiveness without survivor participation, while survivors hesitate because trust has not been earned. The Group of Experts on Action against Violence against Women and Domestic Violence’s (GREVIO)monitoring under the Istanbul Convention confirms this dynamic, highlighting how cultural stigma, victim-blaming, and marginalization of migrant, rural, and minority women reinforce disengagement.^[5] The result is a persistent credibility gap where institutions remain formally strong but lack legitimacy in practice.

Negative Equilibrium:

CZ – Czech Republic, DE – Germany, LT – Lithuania, PT – Portugal

Several countries combine low trust with low reporting. This “negative equilibrium” reflects systemic disengagement. Survivors don’t trust institutions, and they don’t report violence. It’s the most troubling pattern, showing how mistrust and silence reinforce each other.

Boundary cases are where equilibrium theory meets lived reality. Countries positioned near the thresholds occupy zones of tension where credibility and survivor behavior are unsettled, and where external events can quickly shift expectations. Since these countries lie within survey margins of error, even small changes in trust or reporting can move them across quadrants, revealing unstable or transitional equilibria. They also represent the points where policy interventions have the greatest leverage, since modest improvements in credibility or responsiveness can shift a country into a more favorable equilibrium.

Equilibria are not fixed categories but dynamic positions shaped by institutional signals, social context, and the shocks that prompt survivors to update their expectations. Spain exemplifies this pattern and is examined in detail below.

Updating Expectations in Spain

Spain is one of the most analytically volatile cases in the entire equilibrium quadrant space. It offers an unusually clear window into dynamic, shock-driven patterns. Reporting has risen sharply over the past decade, yet confidence in the justice system has remained persistently limited. This imbalance of strong behavioral activation paired with only middling institutional legitimacy indicates that survivors are coming forward for reasons largely external to the institutions themselves. In such a configuration, changes in reporting cannot be interpreted as evidence of gradual institutional improvement. They are far more likely to reflect external shocks that reshape norms, expectations, or the perceived costs of disclosure. Spain’s position makes close attention to event markers essential, since social mobilization, media attention, and legal turning points are precisely the kinds of signals capable of moving reporting independently of trust.

Theoretically, survivors update their expectations as new information becomes available, but the source of that information matters. Two mechanisms shape these shifts. Signal-driven effects emerge from social or legal shocks that abruptly change visibility, definitions, or stigma. These moments alter the perceived cost of speaking out and can trigger immediate changes in reporting, often before institutions have time to adjust. Trust-driven effects, by contrast, unfold more slowly. They reflect the credibility institutions build through consistent procedures, transparency, and responsiveness. When signals reinforce expectations, they help generate trust.When signals conflict or stall, they prevent equilibrium from consolidating.

The most consequential changes occur when signals and trust interact. A public shock may expose institutional weaknesses, prompting reforms that themselves become new signals of credibility. Survivors then update their expectations in response to both the shock and the institutional reaction, producing more durable shifts in reporting behavior.

The markers set below identify some of the major signaling and trust-relevant events that structure Spain’s reporting trajectory.

October 2017 #MeToo Movement: A global reduction in stigma created a transnational permission structure for survivors to speak out. In Spain, it primed expectations that were updated before domestic reforms arrived. Reporting rose because norms shifted, not due to institutional change.

April 2018 La Manada (LM) Initial Verdict: The regional court’s decision to classify the assault as “sexual abuse” triggered nationwide protests, exposed judicial blind spots, and eroded trust in courts. Yet reporting increased as survivors sought recognition and solidarity. This became known as Spain’s “local #MeToo moment.”

June 2019 La Manada Supreme Court Ruling: Reclassification of the crime as rape restored some institutional credibility and reinforced the idea that public pressure can reshape justice. Reporting continued to rise, though trust in courts remained cautious.

July 2022 “Only Yes Means Yes” Law: A major positive institutional signal since it expanded definitions and added a consent-based framework. Reporting surged sharply from this point, even as court trust remained flat.

April 2023 Amendment to the Law: Parliament corrected sentencing gaps while preserving the consent standard. The reform signaled responsiveness and recalibration. This became evidence that institutional change evolves through pressure, practice, and negotiation.

Figure 3 offers a visualization of how this looks over time.^[6]

Data: INE – Statistics on Domestic Violence and Gender Violence (SDVGV), annual series (2011–2024). Instituto Nacional de Estadística (INE), Spain. — Data: INE – Statistics on Domestic Violence and Gender Violence (SDVGV), annual series (2011–2024). *Instituto Nacional de Estadística* (INE), Spain.

Though speculative, it appears that each event corresponds to a noticeable shift in the reporting trajectory. MeToo (2017) breaks a long period of stability and initiates a clear upward turn. The LM Verdict (2018) produces an even sharper jump, reflecting the surge in public mobilization and visibility around sexual violence. The Supreme Court ruling (2019) is followed by a brief leveling off, suggesting a temporary correction after the previous spike. The “Only Yes Means Yes” law (2022) triggers another strong rise, consistent with a major legal signal that broadened the definition of consent. The 2023 amendment sustains this elevated level rather than reversing it. Overall, the series of events shows reporting responding in incremental movements to major social and legal shocks rather than evolving gradually over time.

GREVIO, the Council of Europe’s independent expert body responsible for monitoring compliance with the Istanbul Convention, functions as Europe’s closest equivalent to an external audit of how states prevent violence against women, protect victims, and prosecute offenders. In its 2024 thematic report on Spain, GREVIO offers a broadly similar assessment, noting a clear shift from 2021 onward marked by surging reporting levels, strong political commitment, and major legal reforms such as the 2022 consent-based framework.^[7] At the same time, GREVIO highlights persistent weaknesses, including uneven regional implementation, gaps in protection and support services, and ongoing challenges within the justice system. These challenges include delays, inconsistent application of new standards, and insufficient victim-centered practices. Overall, GREVIO characterizes Spain as a high-commitment but unevenly implemented system. One with ambitious laws and high public report salience, yet still struggling with institutional consistency and trust. This aligns directly with the quadrant logic. High reporting is driven by social and legal signaling, while institutional performance and credibility remain mixed.

Dynamic Implications of the Relationship Between Institutional Trust and Reporting

Reporting and institutional trust move according to different temporal logics. Reporting reacts quickly to salience shocks—legal reforms, high‑profile cases, and media attention—producing sharp, short‑term fluctuations. Institutional trust, by contrast, changes slowly, if at all, because it reflects accumulated assessments of credibility and performance. The result is a system in which the two variables interact but do not co‑evolve: reporting can shift rapidly while trust remains largely inert. Figure 4 visualizes this divergence in temporal dynamics.

Figure layout was created using an AI‑assisted drafting tool; all conceptual content reflects the author’s framework, Microsoft Copilot, 2026

The diagram illustrates defiant disequilibrium. A temporal mismatch, specific to a given moment in time, in which reporting behavior spikes sharply while institutional trust remains low and stable. These spikes are typically triggered by external shocks that prompt survivors to report despite lacking confidence in the system. The shaded gap between the reporting curve and the equilibrium line represents this disequilibrium, where activation outpaces credibility. In the context of defiant equilibrium, this pattern reveals a system under strain. Survivors are engaging the system not because they trust it, but because the urgency of their experience overrides institutional skepticism. Unless trust begins to catch up, the system risks backlash or a snapback to disengagement.

Spain is the standout case where reporting levels are unusually high relative to institutional trust, driven by social mobilization, feminist activism, and repeated high-profile cases rather than confidence in police or courts. Trust moves slowly and remains middling, but reporting has surged in sharp, event-driven waves.^[8]

Spain’s trust pattern is both stable and uneven, and that creates a built-in lag. Reporting can jump quickly even when trust stays flat, putting sudden pressure on institutions to meet rising expectations. This lag has two major effects. First, it produces an imbalance where high reporting sits alongside only partial institutional legitimacy. Spain shows this clearly where social and legal signals push survivors to come forward faster than institutions can adapt. Second, the mismatch creates feedback pressure. If institutions can’t deliver for the growing number of survivors, trust stalls or even drops, reinforcing the pattern of high reporting but low satisfaction. If they do respond effectively, trust can rise later, allowing the system to settle into a more stable, higher-trust equilibrium.

The broader implication is that reporting moves first and trust follows. Visibility campaigns, legal reforms, or public debate can shift reporting almost immediately, but trust only rises when institutions show sustained, credible improvement. The relationship is therefore path-dependent rather than linear. Early gaps between rising reporting and slow institutional adaptation can lock systems into unstable equilibria, while coordinated, consistent reforms can gradually bring trust back into line with survivor behavior.

Glossary

Asymmetric Equilibrium – a game-theory concept where players settle into different strategies rather than behaving the same, creating a stable but uneven pattern of action.
Belief Updating – explains how survivors adjust their expectations of institutions after exposure to new signals, whether legal reforms, media coverage, or personal experience.
Cross-National Survey – a research design that uses identical questions in many countries, allowing clean comparisons of attitudes, behaviors, or institutions across contexts.
Dynamics – the patterns of change a system goes through over time; studying these shifts often reveals insights that a single snapshot can’t show.
Equilibrium Analysis – the study of how a system settles into a stable balance shaped by competing forces.
Eurobarometer Series – a program of regular cross-sectional public opinion surveys conducted on behalf of the European Commission, European Parliament, and other EU institutions.
European Commission – the executive branch of the European Union; it proposes legislation, implements policy, and administers the budget
Event Markers – time-points added to a time series to flag major events, often treated as shocks or disturbances that help explain sudden changes in the data.
Feedback Pressures – forces created when a system’s outputs loop back into it, helping stabilize or reshape how it behaves over time.
Fragile Equilibrium – a balance that holds for now but can be easily disrupted by even small shocks.
Game Theory – the study of strategic decision-making, using mathematical tools to understand how individuals or groups interact when each one’s choices affect the others.
Gender-Based Violence – defined by EIGE “as violence that stems from structural gender inequality and disproportionately affects women, encompassing physical, emotional, financial, sexual, and reproductive harm across public, private, and digital spaces.” https://eige.europa.eu/gender-based-violence/what-is-gender-based-violence?language_content_entity=en
GREVIO – GREVIO stands for the Group of Experts on Action against Violence against Women and Domestic Violence. It is an independent body of the Council of Europe that monitors countries' implementation of the Istanbul Convention, a human rights treaty that fights violence against women.
Lagging Indicator – indicators, variables, factors that assess the current state of affairs in a system
Leading Indicator – the strong-signal indicators that drive and help us to understand future activity in a system
Linear Relationship – is a structural principle that appears across mathematics, modeling, and theory-building. In that broader frame, or theoretical context, linearity isn’t just about straight lines. It’s about systems whose behavior is governed by proportionality and constant marginal effects.
Istanbul Convention – A human rights treaty of the Council of Europe focused specifically on violence against women and domesticviolence. Opened for signature in May 2011, and effective August 2014.
Path Dependent Relationship – when early steps shape later outcomes by creating self-reinforcing dynamics, so the same starting point can lead to different results depending on the sequence of events.
Structural Lag – when social institutions and systems adjust more slowly than the rapid changes occurring in people’s lives.
Temporal Logic - refers to the pace at which different variables change over time; does it respond quickly to new information, or slowly based on repeated patterns of behavior