Support to battered women in Sweden

The issue of violence against women in Sweden was long considered to be a private matter. Until the eighties, violence against women was not seen as a societal problem. Once the non-interventionist attitude towards violence against women was abandoned, other tensions followed. This chapter explores some of these tensions as they have played out in the context of support to battered women, with a view to discussing them in relation to the Istanbul Convention’s Article 23, which obliges State Parties to provide for easily accessible shelters. The main tensions surrounding the issue of violence against women in Sweden have concerned the conceptualisation of violence against women and the different ways of organising society’s response to such violence. In this chapter, we explore these tensions by revisiting the development of the Swedish women’s shelter movement and by examining legislative material, in particular major reforms on victim support. The Istanbul Convention places violence against women in the context of gender inequality. It requires that a contracting State take interest in and actively work against violence against women and acknowledge this violence as a problem, which public authorities are responsible to combat. The Swedish case illustrates that increased public responsibility may sometimes entail dilemmas for feminist goals and perspectives.