This Report has been prepared by experts of the East European Development Institute, with the support of a grant from the British Council, Ukraine in the year 2003.

Survey on Violence against Women among the Youth

The present research is an analysis of the attitude of the youth based on a survey organized and supported by the British Council in Ukraine. It focuses on broad issues of gender, and also on a very important issue, violence against women and girls. Attitude of the youth on this phenomenon has been measured along 27 statements, constituting a questionnaire. To each of the statements there are two options or answers – Yes or No, estimating their agreement or disagreement with the statement. The age group chosen is from 14-17, for the reasons mentioned in the previous paragraphs.

The children were given no more than five minutes to fill up the questionnaire. This was a test of their immediate reaction, not adulterated by long contemplation and manipulation. The questions covered three major themes: 1. Premises affirming gender based stereotypes and role differentiation of males and females both in family and the society, 2. Acceptability of violence based on the argument that the women are to be blamed and the male therefore is right, and 3. Parity and equality is the basis for harmony and absence of violence. However, the statements were not arranged according to the above-mentioned themes but were spread at random. This also minimized any kind of directing and “orchestrating” of the thought process of the respondent.

In total about 747 schoolchildren were interviewed all over Ukraine. Of them 325 were males and 422 females, constituting 44% and 56% of the total number of respondents. Sites for interview included secondary schools and lyceums in Crimea (Simferopol, Yalta, and Gurzuf), the city of Sebastopol, major cities of Ukraine, such as Donetsk, Izmail, Kharkiv, Komsomolsk, Kyiv, Lviv, and Odessa. Data collection and briefing of the interviewers was done by the British Council, Ukraine in all the above-mentioned places, except for Crimea and the city of Sebastopol, where data collection and briefing was made by experts from the East European Development Institute.

While analyzing the data collected, EEDI experts have the following remarks to make. Firstly, it concerns the groups and the places surveyed. Secondly, it relates to the contents of the questionnaire itself. First of all, this survey does not claim to be a nationwide representative sample of the given age group, as interviews were mostly conducted among schoolchildren in urban areas and cities with population over 50,000 persons. However, geographically, it has covered all the major urban centers across the country’s east, west, south, center and north. Total population of all these cities and sites taken together amounts to 7 million 751 thousand persons (see Annex D). In addition the percentage distribution of respondents is fairly equal in most sites, with the exception of Donetsk (1%), Izmail (3%) and Kyiv (6%).

Download the report: Gender based violence-EEDI survey and report