FHK expert information: What does security cost? Financing the support system for women affected by violence and their children | No. 02/2024

How much is women's safety worth to us? The current FHK expert information explores this question. A sober look at the current situation in Germany suggests: Not much. Every four minutes, the police register a victim of domestic violence. Almost every other day, a man kills his (ex-)partner. Although this is well known, there is a nationwide shortage of over 14.000 places in women's shelters, and this has remained almost unchanged for years.

Cover page of the FHK expert information: "What does security cost? Financing the support system for women and their children affected by violence." Illustration of a house partially standing on a stack of coins. Next to it, a jar of coins.

How and under what conditions a person affected by violence receives support in Germany depends significantly on their life situation and where they live. This is because each federal state and each municipality still decides for themselves whether and how much to invest in the protection of women and children affected by violence. The financing of support facilities is therefore a vast – and leaky – patchwork: voluntary services here, subsidies from the state there, women's social security benefits there, plus donations and self-funding. One in four women pays for their stay in a women's shelter themselves. The system is patchy, overburdened, and highly complex – too complex to ensure straightforward protection.

It has long been clear that the situation does not meet the legal obligations to which the Federal Republic is subject, including those imposed by the Istanbul Convention and the EU Directive on combating violence against women and domestic violence. Nevertheless, comprehensive measures have so far failed to materialize. The proposed Act on Assistance to Violence threatens to collapse with the end of the traffic light coalition.

In Germany, the right to a self-determined life in safety all too often takes a back seat to debates about budgetary constraints. But this doesn't add up: By avoiding comprehensive investments in protection against gender-based violence, we don't reduce costs. We only postpone and exacerbate them. Because, yes, investing in violence protection and prevention costs money. But not investing costs us more: socially in the form of human lives. But also financially in the form of exorbitant follow-up costs of domestic violence, for which taxpayers, municipalities, states, and the federal government, as well as those affected themselves, pay dearly every year.

The central question behind all discussions about violence statistics and gaps in protection, about a lack of places in women's shelters and political responsibility should not be what security and self-determination should cost us – but what they should be worth to us.

Contents of this issue

We break down the complex funding landscape. We speak with staff at women's shelters about the heterogeneous and precarious reality of their work: What does the "patchwork of violence protection" mean in practice for them, but especially for women seeking protection and their children? How do violence and financial disadvantage for women intersect in violence protection? And what can we hope for from the announced Violence Assistance Act?

Contributors to this issue include