Making Sense of Gender-based Violence Statistics

Before the 2000s, France did not have specific national surveys on interpersonal violence, unlike other countries in Europe or North America. It was at the urging of the 1995 Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing that the French government found the necessary funding for carrying out the first statistical survey on violence against women. Sandrine Dauphin, project director at the French Institute of Demographic Studies (INED) and teacher at Sciences Po, tells us about these surveys. Read the interview.

The first survey on violence against women, called Enveff, was conducted in 2000 under the direction of Maryse Jaspard. Could it serve as a symbol of the agenda setting of gender-based violence in France?

Both scientific and political issues, particularly on domestic violence, accompanied the implementation of this first major scientific investigation. The presentation of the first results at a National Conference on violence against women in February 2001 played a central role in the launch of the first action plan by the then Secretary of State for Women's Rights, Nicole Péry. There is certainly a before and an after Enveff. Since this survey, the indicator of domestic violence, namely that one in ten women is a victim of such violence, has been evoked by politicians in successive bills and action plans. This indicator was constructed taking into account the continuum of violence, thus integrating psychological, economic, sexual and physical violence. The Enveff survey not only showed the scale of this violence that affects women regardless of their social category, but also made it possible to better understand the context within which it occurs. In addition, the survey was published right when relying on numbers was becoming essential to drive public action. Following Enveff, a survey was conducted by the Directorate for Research, Studies, Assessment, and Statistics (DREES) on “Violence and Health”, and the National Institute for Statistics and Economic Studies (Insee) launched an annual “Living Environment and Safety” survey.

Above all, as of 2008, each involved ministry was asked to provide gendered data on conjugal violence and the Ministry of the Interior has to publish gendered data on violent deaths within the couple. That said, it was not Enveff alone that guided the political agenda setting, but rather a broader context of international impulse with the Beijing platform which invited States to take measures, Europe too, and especially later the Spanish law of 2004, known as the Integrated Law against Gender Violence. Associations used it to claim its French equivalent.

French Institute of Demographic Studies’ researchers then designed the “Violence and Gender Relations” survey, called Virage, in 2015. Why create a new statistical survey?

The Virage survey was carried out in 2015 and the reference publication (FR), which deals with these different aspects, has just been published in the Fall 2020 by the INED editions. The first reason is updating data, fifteen years after the Enveff — in order to be able to show any developments. Virage builds on the Enveff experience while seeking to improve what might appear as areas for improvement. The survey is thus carried out by telephone and the questionnaire largely reproduces that of the Enveff.

It is again divided into two major parts to capture the continuum of violence: one that deals with violence suffered in the twelve months prior to the survey in the different spheres of life (couple, work, public spaces), another that looks at violence throughout life in these same spheres, plus in the family and studies. The questionnaire is more detailed as many new questions shed light on health impacts for example. The work component has been developed as well, as was the public spaces component in order to incorporate street harassment. The survey also provides a better understanding of violence during childhood and adolescence to assess the impact of this violence on people’s life courses. But above all, the Virage survey includes men, which makes it possible to carry out gender analyses. The sample is also much larger than Enveff’s: nearly 27,000 people (women and men), which makes very detailed statistical analysis possible. Subjective questions on the perception of the gravity of the facts — the term ‘violence’ is never mentioned — have been added and make it possible, as well, to highlight differences between men and women in order to better qualify the violence.

Can you tell us about the Virage Universities survey?

Virage Universités aims to measure violence suffered during studies, with a questionnaire almost identical to that of Virage. It is a specific component of the survey because this violence can be difficult to apprehend given the low number of students in general population surveys. The survey was carried out with a different protocol: by internet — and not by telephone — in four French universities (University of Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne, Paris Diderot University, the Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris, University of Strasbourg and University of Western Brittany). 20,000 students were invited to fill out the Internet survey, and 6,648 responded. Despite adjustments in results through weightings, the survey was based on voluntary participation. Thus statistics cannot be considered representative of all university students. Nevertheless, reports of violence are relatively high: around a third of women and a quarter of men have declared at least one act of violence. Psychological and sexual violence are the two main types of violence reported with gender differences. Male students are mainly subjected to psychological violence: mockery (6% to 10% of students, depending on the university), insults (5% to 10%, depending on the university), and exclusion (5% to 8%). Female students declare themselves mostly victims of sexual violence. The most frequently encountered act regards sexually explicit comments and attitudes, declared by 10% to 16% of female students, depending on the university. For all surveyed students, perpetrators are mostly peers and the violence suffered has an impact on their academic careers.

In 2018, you contributed to the Virage Overseas survey, conducted in Reunion, Martinique and Guadeloupe. What are the main conclusions of this survey?

As with Enveff in the early 2000s, these French Overseas Territories mobilised to obtain their specific investigation (Enveff Réunion in 2002, Enveff Martinique in 2007). This was the very first time such an investigation took place in Guadeloupe. The questionnaire was adapted: issues of religion, Creole fluency, or migrations take a larger part for example. The investigation was carried out according to the same protocol, by telephone with local Creole-speaking teams. So far, we have only published the results for violence reported by women within the twelve months prior to the survey. In all living spaces, the prevalence of violence is generally higher than in metropolitan France, knowing that metropolitan figures are an average — a comparison by regions, if possible, would reduce these differences. Domestic violence reported by women is thus, on average, three times higher than in mainland France (15% in Reunion, 18% in Martinique and 19% in Guadeloupe) but couple quarrels are also more common. In Martinique, street harassment (14%) and sexual harassment at work (5%) double what is reported in metropolitan France. We must also point out that the differences between territories with different backgrounds and populations, Reunion being, just like during Enveff, closer to the metropolitan average than the French West Indies. However women in the West Indies have more often already spoken about violence in different spheres of life than in Reunion, where it seems speech frees more slowly. In 2020, we obtained a National Agency for Research funding to research gender violence and intersectionality in overseas territories. This will allow us to deepen our analysis in collaboration with local and mainland France universities, through qualitative fields among other things.

20 years after the first major survey on gender violence did the situation change?

The prevalence of violence between Enveff and Virage did not quite change. Which does not mean that things have not changed! The survey provides information on the different forms of violence and the context of their onset but does not allow us to be very precise on the follow-up given to complaints or, more generally, to assess public policy actions aiming to combat sexual and gender-based violence. However since Enveff, women speak more about the violence experienced, generally to relatives, family and friends, but also to doctors. We see the same thing in the overseas territories: they arguably feel more legitimate to do so today than yesterday in the face of societal changes before #MeToo: a much lower social acceptance of sexual and gender-based violence than at the beginning of the 2000s.

More

• Sandrine Dauphin teaches a session on State Feminisme in the Certificat égalité femmes-hommes et politiques publiques
• Sandrine Dauphin is a project director at the French Institute of Demographic Studies