To the European Commission, the European Parliament, in particular the Committee on Women’s Rights and Gender Equality (FEMM)

The President of the European Commission announced that a new law to combat violence against women will be proposed by the end of this year. 

The European Sex Workers’ Rights Alliance welcomes’ the Commissions’ initiative to combat violence against women, but we wish to express our concerns with increasing calls for punitive and ‘carceral’ approach to gender based violence.

What we demand:

• We call on the European Commission to reject a 'carceral feminist' framing to gender based violence' which would further strenghten a criminal justice approach to women's rights.

• We call on the European Commission to incite the development of policies that center perspectives of those at the margins of our societies and more at risk of policing and surveillance

• We call on the European Commission to incite the development of policies based on meaningful consultation of structurally vulnerable communities facing intersectional discriminations.

• We call for provisions that require states to critically review policies and laws that discourage victims of gender based violence to report crimes committed against. These include restrictive migration laws or laws against sex work, including those framed as ‘ending demand’ for prostitution through criminalisation of clients and third-parties.

• We urge the European Commission to integrate in its legislative proposal strategies addressing structural harms and discriminations against women and people at the margins on the grounds of race, gender, gender identity, age, sexual characteristics, sexual orientation, disability, class and migration status.

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Why is it important?

We do not believe in the so called ‘Carceral Feminism’ that pushes for increased policing, prosecution and incarceration to end gender based violence. This approach ignores how increased policing and state power leaves certain women more vulnerable to violence, and that greater criminalisation often places these same women at risk of violence.

Women who are marginalised by their identities, such as racialised women, those of lower socio-economic status, of diverse gender identity and expression, those with precarious or irregular migration status, sex workers, or women with disability, often do not fit the rigid standards of what is considered as the ‘ideal victim’. Instead, the punitive approach to gender based violence continues failing them, leaving them behind.