Preventing violence against women

In principle, ‘violence against women’ is considered to be an important topic in German politics in general and in the education sector in particular. German legislation covers a great variety of aspects concerning violence against women. But many provisions are of a more general nature not specifically addressing the gender aspect in the relevant wording. It is for the practice to make the provisions work effectively for the protection of women against violence.

On request of Education International (EI) – Pan-European Structure the GEW collected information concerning the important topic of ‘Violence against women’ in Germany. A GEW report was published in November 2010, that describes the legal situation and asks to which extent there is an implementation in practice. In this respect it is particularly interesting to refer to the critical ‘Concluding observations’ the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) published in February 2009.

The two main approaches to tackle the sometimes very difficult situation are based on the direct connection with safety and health at the workplace on the one side and anti-discrimination on the other side. They offer different possibilities in particular concerning all activities which are aimed at preventing such situations. The report also describes examples of trade union activities, such as a GEW publication “Violence and gender at school” (available only in German) and the regularly published ‘Newsletter’ which also contains information about the subject.