The Dynamics of Legislative Changes on Gender-Based Violence in EU Member States

This paper provides theoretical rationales for combating gender-based violence (GBV) through the central gender policy of the European Union and the social policies of its member states. The development of the concept of human rights and women's rights created conditions in which it became possible to create gender-based violence problem as a political agenda and to address it at the legislative level of national states. Despite some steps towards central regulation of gender-based violence issues which were made by the EU institutions, it is still not complete. Member States, however, are motivated to implement some elements of the combating GBV in their national legislation. The database was collected based on how criminal laws of the countries of the European Union tackle the problem. Using a hierarchical cluster analysis of data on the length of criminal penalties for crimes that may be characterized as violence against women, two hypotheses were tested. Firstly, due to the fact that due to the multifaceted nature of the social order, there is a difference in the regulation of violence against women among the EU member states. Secondly, that the EU member states can be divided into the Scandinavian, Anglo-Saxon, Continental and Mediterranean groups on the basis of their legislative regulation of GBV. It was confirmed that the penal codes regulates violence against women differently, but similar patterns can be identified for 4 clusters: the central-northern, eastern, western, and special cluster of Italy, Slovakia, and Poland.