Genderneutrality and the Prevention and Treatment of Violence - A Dutch Perspective

One of the important themes in debating violence in the international political fora is ‘violence against women’, which is explicitly emphasized by The Convention of Istanbul. The Netherlands have ratified this important convention but partially due to Dutch influence it was stated that although women do suffer more from violence, that does not mean that there are no male victims of violence and that the state and policy makers should provide for them too. As a consequence, Dutch government aims at ‘gender neutrality’ in their approaches to prevent and treat violence. This approach has dealt with some criticism, some wonder nowadays whether this focus on ‘gender neutrality’ has negative consequences for addressing the hardship that women have to deal with. In our contribution we will try to answer the previous question by looking into three examples: domestic violence, honour-related violence, and the study of prostitution &human trafficking, all in the Netherlands. We will address the following questions: What have we learned about the three examples with regard to the gender of victims and offenders and the specific Dutch policy? How does Dutch government, policies and the criminal justice system deal with these phenomena from a gender perspective?