Article source: "La difficulté de quitter un conjoint violent à la campagne, «où tout le monde se connaît»", Eloïse Bussy, Slate (France), 19 December 2022.
“It took me weeks to tell people what had happened to me. It can be more difficult to file a complaint when you live in a rural area. One of my former bosses, a woman, had been telling people that I was making things up.” Nolwenn*, 32, lives in a village in the Drôme in the South of France. Nine months ago, after an argument during their break-up, her partner drove his car over her foot. They were together for ten months and she spent almost half of that time in hospital.
It begs the question: is it more difficult for women living in rural areas to speak up about domestic violence? According to the survey published by the French interior ministry’s statistical service on 15 December 2022, in rural villages (those with a population of less than 2000), the level of reported domestic violence in 2021 was 2.1 cases for every 1000 inhabitants (5.8 per 1000 between the ages of 15 and 64).
However these figures are not very high when compared to urban areas: there are more than 3.6 reported cases per 1000 inhabitants in urban areas with a population of more than 50,000, and 2.6 in smaller towns.
There is, however, a notable exception: if we take the 2018 data, the Yonne (a largely rural local authority south east of Paris) was the area of France with the highest reported incidence of domestic violence against women (5.9 cases per 1000 inhabitants), in a region with few local police forces, and where the national gendarmerie handles policing in 98% of the territory.
Isolation and Dependency
Isolation is an important part of the problem for victims. “In rural areas, people often live far apart,” says Martine Berlanas, a social worker in the Yonne gendarmerie who works throughout the region. “Sometimes, we ask local councillors for information on a situation, but they don’t even know the family we are talking about.” To overcome this problem, “neighbourhood contacts” are trained to identify and prevent domestic violence in very small villages in the area of the South of France in which the women’s aid association Paroles de femmes is active.
Financial and material dependency can also be a problem. “Often, no clear line can be drawn between a woman’s personal and professional lives, for example when women live on a working farm,” says Céline Roucolle from Parole de femmes. “Women often have no financial resources of their own, or any professional status, even though they work full-time. Gender stereotypes are also more prevalent in the countryside than in the city.”
“Some women don’t have a car or any other means of transport,” adds Noémie Charpy, a lawyer working for the local authority’s legal advice bureau for woman and families, the CIDFF. “For instance, I remember a woman who had to leave home on foot. A car eventually came across her and picked her up."
* Names have been changed
Translated by Fanny Pisseloup and Julie Rodhon
Editing by Sam Trainor