Every woman has the right to live a life free from violence – this is not an ambition we can choose to prioritize or not; it is a fundamental human right. But rights do not become reality on their own. They become real only when they are put into practice in people’s everyday lives: in schools, in healthcare, in civil society, and in encounters with public authorities. It is there, at the local level, that the decisive moments occur that determine whether our rights are upheld.
Reaching that point requires a clear shared societal responsibility, political prioritization, and an organization that endures over time. It is not enough with isolated efforts or temporary projects. The work must be based on systematic collaboration between municipalities, regions, and civil society, and it must include protection, support, and preventive measures. In Sweden, the Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions consistently emphasizes that men’s violence against women is not an isolated problem but a central welfare and democratic issue and therefore must be addressed where people actually live their lives.
At the same time, this work requires something more than structure: it requires courage. It is easy to talk about systems, governance, and cooperation in abstract terms. But behind every formulation are real lives. It is the woman living with threats, control, and violence. It is the child who suffers, and the family in which violence continues to escalate, sometimes with fatal consequences. When we lose sight of these stories, we risk losing our direction.
Women’s organizations, women’s shelters, and institutions in Sweden and around the world are clear about one thing: men’s violence against women is not a series of isolated incidents. It is an expression of unequal power structures and norms related to control, entitlement to others’ space, and ideas about masculinity. This also means that the violence is not inevitable. It can be prevented. But only if we treat it as the societal problem it is, and not as an individual deviation explained by, for example, the idea that the man is sick, uneducated, or has personal problems.
This is precisely why municipalities and regions become crucial. In Sweden, it is often there that women first seek help at social services, at the health clinic, in school, through a manager, or via a volunteer-run shelter. That first encounter can be the beginning of a life without violence. But it can also be the reason a woman never seeks help again. Women’s shelters repeatedly highlight how poor treatment, lack of action, or incorrect risk assessments can have devastating consequences, leaving a woman to continue living under threat, but now alone and without hope of help.
And to be honest, it is not only about women. Children who live with violence are also victims of crime, and the consequences follow them throughout life: in health, schooling, and relationships. Many shelters also describe how mothers stay in violent relationships out of fear of losing their children, or because they have been broken down to believe they cannot survive without the perpetrator. Violence is not only about physical acts, but about control, fear, and systematic degradation.
There is also another dimension that is often underestimated: society’s silence. When men’s violence against women is minimized as “just a discussion,” or when the focus shifts to why the woman didn’t leave, responsibility is moved away from the perpetrator. Here, municipalities and regions are not neutral actors. They are norm-setters. How they talk about violence and how they train their staff ultimately shapes the entire local community’s understanding of what is acceptable.
At the same time, there is a fairly consistent picture of what actually works. Experiences from municipalities, women’s shelters, civil society, and organizations around the world working with norm-change show that the work must be broad and long-term. It involves engaging men and boys – not as a side issue, but as a central part of the solution. Norms around masculinity, responsibility, and relationships must be discussed early, especially in schools. The message must be clear: violence is a choice, and responsibility always lies with the person who commits it. A spiral of violence is not good for neither the boys or the men either. A society that accepts violence harms them as well.
It is also about taking the role of women’s shelters seriously. They often function as both the first and last safety net and possess unique knowledge about what violence actually looks like locally. When their work is treated as a complement rather than a central part of society’s protection system, the entire chain is weakened. Long-term cooperation and stable funding are therefore not minor details. They are prerequisites for the work to function. This requires municipalities and regions to actively support women’s shelters and to recognize them as essential partners in the fight against men’s violence against women, ensuring that public institutions work alongside them rather than around them.
Knowledge is another crucial factor. When municipal staff, staff in social services, healthcare, or schools lack the right competence, violence risks being overlooked, explained away, or handled too late. That is why training of municipal staff is crucial and must be continuous and shared, so that there is a common language and a clear readiness to act.
At the same time, it is not enough to focus solely on those exposed to violence. To break the cycle of violence in Sweden, municipalities and regions also work with perpetrators without ever compromising the safety of women and children. Interventions aimed at perpetrators are not an alternative to protection, but a complement that can help ensure the violence actually stops.
In many municipalities, these insights have led to a broader perspective, where the work against men’s violence against women is no longer seen as an isolated issue for social services. Instead, it becomes a municipality-wide responsibility, politically anchored and integrated across multiple sectors. The municipality acts both as a service provider to residents and as an employer, responsible for training its employees and creating structures that make it possible to detect, act, and prevent violence. The Swedish Association of Municipalities and regions supports with tools, methods and peer-peer exchange.
This also means broadening the perspective. Safety is not created only through individual interventions, but also through how we shape our shared environments, our schools, and our workplaces. Ultimately, it is about the kind of society we build together.
The core message is therefore simple to say and write, but far from simple to implement: it requires systematic, long-term work supported by both political leadership and the practitioners who meet people every day and it demands the resources and time necessary for this issue to remain a continuous societal responsibility, not something that only receives attention when a tragedy reaches the headlines.
And it is precisely there, in every municipality, in every service, and in every first meeting that it is decided whether the violence is stopped or allowed to continue.
