Women working in shelters for women in Stockholm and St-Petersburg: attitudes towards domestic violence against women and its connection to domestic violence against children

According to figures from the Ministry of the Interior (1994) in Russia every year 14,000 Russian women are killed in their homes (1). However, in Sweden according to the Crime Prevention Council (Brottsförebyggande Rådet (BRÅ)), about 20 women are killed every year by a man they know (2). This means that in Sweden a population of 4.5 million women experience a murder rate of 0,004 per 1000. In contrast, Russia which has a female population of 78,4 million has a murder rate of 0,2 per thousand i.e. 50 times as great. We can not directly compare these figures but they show a general picture.

Every year hundreds of women with children come and stay in shelters for women – victims of domestic violence in Sweden. For example, in 2003 there were 1700 women and 1500 children which had lived there (3). There is not such statistic about Russia.

At the present time there are 2 main women’s organizations concerned with gendered violence in Sweden - Sveriges Kvinnojourers Riksförbund (SKR) and Riksorganisationen för kvinnojourer och tjejjourer i Sverige (ROKS). There are 12 shelters which belong to ROKS (4) and 3 shelters for buttered women which belong to SKR (5). At the present time there is 1 shelter for women in St-Petersburg.

This paper is the part of a doctoral dissertation that analyzes on the work of the shelters for women, victims of domestic violence, in two big cities – Stockholm and St-Petersburg, Russia. The reasons for choosing these two cities are:

- they are urban centres;

- both have high concentration of population;

- both have ethnically mixed population;

- both cities are cultural centres of their respective regions;

- they are places were we would expect these kinds of organizations to be developed.

My research questions are:

The opinion of women - working in shelters for women victims of domestic violence - about why the domestic violence against women takes place and is there connection between domestic violence towards women and domestic violence towards children?

The qualitative data includes expert interviews from Russia and Sweden. The main purpose of the expert interviews is to get the information that is not possible to find as broadly with other methods, for instance, with surveys.

(1) Lynn Attwood. ‘She was asking for it’: rape and domestic violence against women in Post-soviet Women: from the Baltic to Central Asia ed. By Mary Buckley. Cambridge University Press, 1999 p.99

(3) Carina Ohlsson. Förord. In Barn på kvinnojour. En Handbook från SKR. Stockholm. Premiss.2005. P. 2.

(4) Riksorganisationen för kvinnojourer och tjejjourer i Sverige (ROKS). www.roks.se

(5) Sveriges Kvinnojourers Riksförbund (SKR) http://www.kvinnojour.com/