ABSTRACT

This chapter discusses the actions under way to address violence against women in Sweden. It focuses on the role of the community through crime prevention initiatives to tackle the problem in rural municipalities. Prevention of violence against women occurs in two ways: either by preventing repeated attacks or, in the long run, by changing values and social structures which promote violence. Sweden has a long tradition of gender equality policy. Early on, Sweden criminalized the purchase of prostitution services, enacted measures to combat sexual harassment in the workplace, and successively broadened definitions of sexual violence. The chapter focuses on the urban–rural distribution of women’s shelter in Sweden. The women’s shelter called “Kvinnojouren i Storuman” started in 2004 by local nurses who had experienced many cases of abuse against women. In Sweden, the implementation of community safety schemes based on local partnerships went hand-in-hand with overall decentralization of the police in the mid-1990s.