Almost one in three women in the European Union has experienced physical violence, threats, or sexual violence since the age of 15. That is roughly 50 million women. These are the findings of the latest EU survey on gender-based violence, based on interviews with more than 114,000 women.
What makes this figure alarming is not only its scale, but its persistence. Ten years earlier, the first EU-wide survey found the same pattern. As the director of the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights put it: “a decade later, we continue to witness the same shocking levels of violence.”
In a recent article in Nature Communications, I examined whether Target 5.2 of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals – which aims to eliminate all forms of violence against women and girls by 2030 – is realistic.
The uncomfortable answer is no, not by 2030, and not at the current pace.
A worsening problem
The EU statistic is strikingly consistent with what we see globally. The World Health Organization describes violence against women as a public health problem of “pandemic proportions”. Its latest estimates, published in 2025, suggest that 30.4% of women worldwide – approximately 840 million women – have experienced physical or sexual violence in their lifetime.
These numbers have remained largely unchanged for more than two decades. The WHO describes recent reductions as minimal, too slow and grossly insufficient. Even this may understate the real scale, as many women do not disclose violence in surveys, and some forms of abuse (psychological violence, coercive control, economic abuse, online harassment) are poorly captured by headline statistics.
The Nordic paradox
Perhaps the most surprising finding is where the highest levels of violence are found. In the 2024 EU survey, prevalence was 57% in Finland, 52% in Sweden and 47% in Denmark – all well above the EU average of 30.7%. These countries are among the most developed in the world and consistently top global rankings for gender equality.
This pattern, often called the “Nordic paradox”, challenges a common assumption: that economic development and gender equality will, by themselves, lead to less violence. These developments are essential, but clearly not enough to prevent violence on their own.
If the most advanced and equal societies in the world cannot reduce violence against women, what are the prospects elsewhere?
Read more:
Improving gender equality will help end violence against women, but it’s only part of the puzzle
Young women are more vulnerable
In the EU, women aged 18 to 29 already report higher levels of violence than the overall average. This pattern was visible a decade ago and has not improved. Younger generations have grown up with more public discussion of gender equality and more awareness campaigns than any before them.
If current prevention measures were working, we would expect to see clear reductions. The data does not show this.
At the same time, violence itself is changing. Digital technology has opened new routes for harassment, control and humiliation: online stalking, threats on social media, sextortion, non-consensual sharing of intimate images and AI-generated sexual deepfakes. While these tools do not cause direct, physical violence, they make abuse easier to commit, harder to escape, and faster to spread.
Read more:
Grok fallout: Tech giants must be held accountable for technology-assisted gender-based violence
The knowledge exists, but responses fall short
The reality of violence against women is deeply concerning. But being realistic does not mean being resigned. On the contrary, the enduring scale of the problem demands a far more ambitious response.
The data does not show that the aim of eliminating all violence against women and girls by 2030 – the UN’s target 5.2 – has failed, nor that it is impossible. What it reveals is the vast gap between the ambition of the goal and the scale, intensity and coherence of current efforts to achieve it.
And we do already have tools to confront it. Research over the past decade has identified prevention strategies with proven effects on reducing violence. The WHO’s RESPECT Women framework, which was recently updated on the basis of global systematic reviews, organises this evidence into seven interconnected strategies. They range from empowering women and transforming harmful gender norms to strengthening services for survivors and reducing poverty.
The framework rates the evidence separately for high-income and low and middle-income countries. This structural feature is telling in itself, as it reveals how unevenly prevention research has developed across different settings.
But no single strategy is enough. Effective prevention means combining approaches across individual, community and societal levels. And the ultimate benchmark, as RESPECT itself stresses, is whether these efforts lead to measurable reductions in the prevalence of violence at the population level. By that standard, current efforts are clearly falling short.
The problem is that proven tools are not being deployed at the necessary scale or duration. Campaigns are launched, but not sustained. Laws are passed, but not properly funded or enforced. The main barrier is not a lack of knowledge. It is a persistent gap between commitments and action, and between the resources available, the political will, and the accountability needed to ensure they are used.
A pandemic-level crisis
The 2030 deadline may already be out of reach, but the goal itself must not be abandoned. A problem that affects millions of women cannot be treated as a secondary policy issue.
When the world faces other major health emergencies, it mobilises science, funding and international cooperation. Violence against women requires comparable ambition: long-term investment, stronger evidence, and public accountability.
What the Nordic paradox shows is that violence against women will not be automatically eliminated as societies become richer or more equal. It will take deliberate, sustained and measurable action, backed by the political will and accountability to match the scale of the crisis. The promise of eliminating violence against women must move from aspiration to reality.
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