Interview: “Violence against women is a structural problem”

Hanna Welte is a research associate and doctoral candidate at LMU’s Chair of Public International Law and Public Law. She carries out research into regional human rights protection, with a special focus on the rights of women. In our interview, she discusses how Germany deals with gender-based violence, which laws should afford better protections to women, and where the law comes up short.

To mark the UN’s “Orange Day” on 25 November, building façades around the world will be lit up in orange – as a symbolic condemnation of violence against women and girls. How are women in Germany legally protected against violence to which they are subjected explicitly due to their gender?

Hanna Welte: German criminal law is broadly gender-neutral. Bodily injury, homicide, and rape are set out in the German Criminal Code independently of the gender of the victim. Because this system is based on equal treatment, it doesn’t contain any statutory offense that explicitly refers to violence against women. As of recently, however, there have been initial moves to take gender-specific motives into account: Paragraph 46 of the criminal code allows for stronger penalties when a crime is committed for gender-specific reasons. That being said, this takes effect only at the very end of penal proceedings and does not change the fundamental structure of criminal law.

More violent crimes against women in Germany

According to the latest situation report by the Federal Criminal Police Office (Bundeskriminalamt), the number of violent crimes against women is increasing. What does this report record?

The situation report records criminal offenses which – in the context of violence against women – predominantly affect women. This includes bodily injury, intimidation, coercion, stalking, sexual violence, and homicide. The number of these crimes has indeed risen compared to the previous year, especially in the areas of domestic violence and grievous bodily injury.

Data from the Federal Ministry of the Interior, moreover, reveals how unequally men and women are subject to domestic violence: Women are victims of domestic violence much more frequently; they are the victims of sexual crimes almost six times more often than men; and in the digital sphere, more than half of those who experience digital violence are female.

Despite this very clear gender distribution, we lack systematic data on motives. It’s often unclear whether a crime has been committed from a gender-based motive – or whether there were completely different motives at play. Without this information, it’s difficult to pin down gender-based violence in the situation report.

What could explain the rising numbers?

One reason, no doubt, is that fewer victims today are afraid to report violence. Our societies have become more open in dealing with the topic; support systems are more visible; and the inhibition threshold for reporting crimes to the police is falling. As a result, we see more cases in the statistics that would previously have remained hidden – even if the number of unreported cases remains very high and therefore reported cases comprise only a portion of the real total.

At the same time, research and criminal statistics show that violence against women is rooted in underlying social conditions – traditional ideas of gender roles, unequal power relationships, and possessive mentality in relationships – that have scarcely changed and which become more acute in times when society shifts to the right.

Femicides in Germany: 155 in 2023

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You carry out research into femicides. What does this term mean?

It was coined by the American feminist Diana Russell and essentially denotes the killing of a women “because she is a woman” – that is to say, a crime in which her gender is the primary motive. It does not refer to every killing of a woman. It’s about cases in which gender-based denigration, control, or possessiveness are decisive factors. That being said, there is no standard international definition.

In the Spanish-speaking world, the term feminicidio is often used – the little “ni” in the middle of the word additionally emphasizes the failure of the state to protect women. The term acquired global prominence through the extremely high murder rate of women in Mexico in the 1990s and 2000s, and it spread internationally from there.

In Germany, the vast majority of femicides are cases in which men kill their partners or ex-partners. And these crimes have been increasing for years: In 2023, 155 women were killed by their partner or ex-partner; the previous year, there were 133 such cases. In statistical terms, then, there used to be a murder every three days or so, while now there is a murder roughly every two days.

How are femicides punished by law in Germany?

Because there is no statutory offense called “femicide,” such killings are classified either as murder or manslaughter. For a murder conviction, one of the legally defined criteria for murder must be present – such as malice, avarice, or base motives. Precisely this last criterion could apply to many femicides: When a perpetrator acts out of a possessive mentality or the attitude that his partner ‘belongs’ to him, this could be legally interpreted as a base motive.

In practice, however, judges often interpret situations of separation or jealousy more as exceptional emotional states. As a consequence, numerous cases are deemed not to be murder but manslaughter. In individual cases, courts even deem the crime to be less serious if the behavior of the woman was considered ‘provocative’ – through an affair, for instance.

This has a considerable influence on sentencing: While murder is punished with life imprisonment, the minimum punishment for manslaughter is just five years – and in cases deemed less serious, the sentence is even less.

So does Germany need a separate criminal offense for femicide?

The introduction of such an offense would send out a clear signal: The state would be recognizing that it’s not about random individual cases, but about violence that arises from social patterns. However, this would also represent a break with the gender-neutral structures of German criminal law.

Alternatively – and this option is discussed much more frequently in Germany – a new murder criterion could be introduced that explicitly accounts for gender-based motives. This could also send out a strong signal, but without breaching the gender-neutral framework of German criminal law. A gender-sensitive interpretation of the existing criterion of base motives is another possible route. Although this would allow femicides to be appropriately punished, it would lack the explicit signal effect that would be achieved by a separate criminal offense of femicide or a new murder criterion.

Improving protection against violence

How could the law afford better protections to women before they become victims of such violence?

Femicide is almost never a sudden outburst, but comes at the end of a long history of violence – especially when it comes to intimate partner violence: first isolation, then increased control, psychological violence, and initial physical assaults. But criminal justice only comes into play when there’s an actual criminal act – and that comes too late for women.

Particularly important in this context is the German Violence Assistance Act (Gewalthilfegesetz), which entered into force this year. This legislation structurally improves protections against gender-based and domestic violence. It creates, for the first time, a basis in federal law for the widescale expansion of protection, advice, and support services. At the same time, it promotes programs to work with perpetrators and prescribes public awareness campaigns. It follows the provisions of the Council of Europe’s Istanbul Convention, which has committed its signatories to prevent violence against women since 2014. This has been the case in Germany since 2018, when we ratified the treaty.

The expansion of public awareness measures is particularly important, as this does a lot to change patriarchal social structures, which give rise to violence against women. Accordingly, prevention needs to start early – in education, youth work, and awareness campaigns.

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What role can an initiative like Orange Day play here?

A very important one, because it creates visibility. Violence against women is often treated as a private problem affecting individuals, not as a problem for society as a whole. The campaign lifts the topic out of the private sphere. When whole façades are lit up in orange, then they literally cannot be ignored. Such campaigns make it clear that it’s a structural problem which concerns all of us as a society.

What role is played by female violence against men?

It certainly happens, just like violence in same-sex relationships. The research shows very clearly, however, that intimate partner violence is exercised predominantly by men against women. This is confirmed by German crime statistics and international studies alike. Intimate partner violence frequently occurs against the background of power imbalances, possessiveness, and traditional role expectations in relationships. In heterosexual relationships, these causes apply only to violence exercised by men.

What can Germany learn from other countries?

Many Latin American countries have created separate crimes of femicide and systematically embed the topic in their educational work. Spain meanwhile has introduced a particularly effective system of protection: If a woman reports violence by her partner and a court orders protective measures, the perpetrator can be made to wear an ankle monitor. If he approaches her, it triggers an alarm – alerting both the woman and the police. Since the introduction of this system, no woman has been killed in Spain who was connected to the system. In Germany, the federal cabinet has just approved a bill to introduce a similar model.

For more information, see:

End Violence against Women: UN`s Orange Day

Gender-specific crimes against women: publication of the Federal Criminal Police Office (in German)

WHO study: Violence against Women

Research project at LMU:

At the Center for Advanced Studies at LMU, a research group led by Julia Burkhardt, professor of medieval history at LMU, is investigating femicide from a historical-global perspective and using an interdisciplinary approach.