It was the final straw for Kateryna Khaneva. Her husband had just threatened her and their two young children with a knife.
Soon after, she took the kids and left him. Her youngest was only three months old.
Khaneva is now a coordinator at Slavic Heart, a charitable foundation in eastern Ukraine that provides humanitarian aid in the region and support for women facing gender-based violence.
And her experiences with gender-based violence didn’t begin with her husband. She says she was subject to emotional and physical abuse by her parents at a young age, and it remained a common thread throughout her two successive romantic relationships.
“I thought it was normal to be humiliated, insulted or assaulted,” she told the Kyiv Post.
She wasn’t alone in that belief. In fact, domestic violence was not even criminalized in Ukraine until 2019.
“Societies often fail to see violence against women for what it really is – a disease of epidemic proportions,” says Caspar Peek, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) representative in Ukraine.
“If every year we had hundreds of thousands of cases of polio, HIV, or pneumonia in this country – as we have for gender-based violence – everyone would be screaming ‘epidemic’ and it would be declared a Category I public health threat.”
A silent epidemic
According to the UNFPA, 1.1 million women are exposed to “physical, sexual, or emotional violence in their families” in Ukraine every year, and only one in 10 seeks help.
Cases of gender-based violence in Ukraine overwhelmingly affect women. According to the United Nations Development Program, at least 22 percent of women aged 15 to 49 have experienced “at least one form of physical or sexual violence in their lifetime.”
An estimated 600 Ukrainian women die from gender-based violence annually — a figure several times higher than deaths from the war in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region.
According to Peek, gender-based violence in Ukraine goes largely unnoticed.
“Why is that? Perhaps because women suffer in silence? Or because it’s not a sexy subject to raise? Or because 89 percent of parliamentarians are men and do not see violence against women as a problem worthy of legislation?” he told the Kyiv Post.
Although violence against women is so widespread, it is rare for women to seek help.
Oksana Pokalchuk, head of Amnesty International Ukraine, attributes women’s reluctance to report cases of violence to several factors. She believes that traditional gender roles normalize domestic violence in Ukrainian society, while having a husband — even an abusive one — is seen as necessary to maintain a “normal” family.
“After the Second World War, there were no men at all,” she says. “There was a period, and it was quite a long period, where the narrative was that we should protect men, no matter what he’s like – if he’s addicted to alcohol, if he hits you, anything.”
“I think that this way of thinking had such an impact on the country that, even now, especially in areas where it’s difficult for information to circulate, people still live in this narrative. No matter what he’s like, it’s better to have a husband than to be alone.”
Even if women do decide to come forward, their battle is far from over.
Yuliia Anosova, a lawyer at the Ukrainian non-profit La Strada, told the Kyiv Post that, in some cases, women may not know that what they are experiencing is domestic violence. Even if they do, they don’t always know where to go.
Khaneva says that, at the time, she hadn’t been educated about or exposed to information on domestic violence. Physical violence is more obvious, she says, but emotional abuse is less apparent – and that’s usually how abusive relationships start.
Appealing to family, friends, or law enforcement may also serve to aggravate a woman’s situation, potentially causing the abuse to escalate. Separating from her partner might even spell economic ruin for her and her family.
When Khaneva first told her parents about her situation, they placed the blame on her. They said the abuse was warranted, claiming she could not fulfill her role as a patient and supportive wife.
“There is a general tendency, and not only in Ukraine, to not believe women when they say they have been victims of violence. She either looked for it, or dressed provocatively, or she meant ‘yes,’ even when she said no,” says Peek.
A long way to go
Even when victims report their abusers to law enforcement, the police do not always respond.
“In 2015, the number of investigations opened into domestic violence cases was about 3,000,” says La Strada’s Anosova. “The number of cases that resulted in criminal convictions was around 338 – so something like one in ten.”
The conviction statistics for other forms of gender-based violence, such as rape, are even bleaker.
A survey by La Strada found that 39 percent of criminal justice practitioners “believe domestic violence is a private affair,” and 60 percent “believe that victims can be blamed for provoking the violence against themselves.”
“While, on the one hand, (the police) are becoming more aware and taking the issue more seriously, the police are a very masculine organization,” says Pokalchuk.
“But judges, police, social workers – they’re all just people with different points of view. I think that, year by year, as we have more information through the media, they will change their minds too.”
In 2017, Ukraine adopted the law “On Preventing and Counteracting Domestic Violence.” In early 2019, it finally criminalized domestic violence.
The 2017 document presents “an integrated approach to combating domestic violence,” as well as a framework for developing tools to combat domestic violence, bringing legislation “in line with European standards…”
“The adoption of this law is a big signal for the people (of Ukraine) that domestic violence is not okay, and that there will be criminal charges,” says Pokalchuk.
Ukraine, however, still has a long way to go, experts say.
It needs to keep striving to achieve European standards, to strengthen its stance on violence against women, to spread awareness about domestic violence to more women and to society as a whole, and to increase government-funded services for victims of gender-based violence.
“We hope that the new government and the new parliament will take all issues related to advancing gender equality with the seriousness it deserves,” says Peek.
“Gender equality is not a luxury – it brings real value to the national economy; to justice, resilience and stability; and ultimately to people’s dignity and happiness. Hopefully, the new parliament and Cabinet will have full gender parity,” he added.
“God knows that there are enough qualified women in Ukraine, so if parity is not reached it will not be for want of talent.”
Kyiv Post staff writer Toma Istomina contributed to this story.
Services:
National hotline for the prevention of domestic violence, human trafficking, and gender discrimination (24/7, anonymous):
116 123 (free for mobile phones), or 0 800 500 335 (free from landlines)
