On Sunday 23 February 2025, Germany will elect a new government following Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s defeat in a no-confidence vote. It has left the country at a crossroads, as four contending candidates with conflicting political visions, want to usher in different futures. This current watershed moment in German politics prompts a lot of crucial questions: How will the next government tackle inflation, address the ongoing budget constraints, navigate the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, or confront the climate crisis?

However, one issue that has been silently neglected in political discourse is violence against women and girls. Despite Germany having one of the highest femicide rates in Europe, with 155 women killed by partners or ex-partners in 2023, none of the current frontrunners for leadership have made tackling gender-based violence a priority in their campaigns.

For this reason, SCREENSHOT reached out to experts and the German Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth, to uncover the extent of this crisis.

“We are seeing an increase in all areas of gender-specific crimes committed against women. In addition, we must assume that there is still a large dark field and that the actual figures, especially in the areas of domestic and digital violence, are much higher,” a spokesperson for the Ministry shared with me.

In 2023, a reported 938 women and girls were victims of attempted or successful homicides in the country. Of these cases, 360 resulted in the death of the victim, meaning that there was a femicide almost every day in Germany during that year, according to a gender-specific crime against women report from November 2024. This marks a significant increase from just 133 femicides recorded in 2022.

Naturally, the stark jump in numbers raises the question of whether the reporting standards for misogynically-motivated crimes have improved, or if more victims are simply coming forward to report these incidents.

For answers, SCREENSHOT reached out to the German Institute for Human Rights. Experts of their National Rapporteur Mechanism on gender-based violence got back to me.

“As neither the reporting standard nor the lack of a legal definition of femicide has changed, the only thing that can be said for the time being is that there has been an increase in the killing of women,” representatives of the Rapporteur concluded.

Their experts highlighted how the current reporting standards for femicides are abysmal: at the moment, there is no national legal definition for the crime, next to a lack of basic understanding of gender-based violence in general. Further, there aren’t sufficient records about the motivation for crimes against women, which makes it difficult to assess the reasons why violence against women is escalating. The only clear fact is that women are increasingly being killed.

“There is an urgent need for a standardized national definition of femicide or other measures such as taking into account the motivation for the offence, recording the previous history in order to sharpen the data situation and to be able to answer questions […] more precisely,” the Rapporteur told SCREENSHOT.

Of course, violence against women doesn’t occur in a societal vacuum. It is brooded and fostered in a societal climate that normalises and condones misogyny with horrific consequences.

In June 2023, a study by children’s charity Plan International Germany found that out of a group of 1,000 men and 1,000 women aged 18 to 35, 34 per cent of men admitted to having been violent with their partner. 33 per cent of these men also responded that they felt it was “acceptable” if their “hand slipped” occasionally during an argument.

This violence is unsurprisingly founded on a lot of sexist ideology that reflects itself in the way these men view their relationship with women. The study also found that expectations within a relationship differed greatly between genders. Roughly 52 per cent of the surveyed men wanted a traditional relationship in the form of a “breadwinner-housewife model.” They wanted to work and earn most of the money while their partner stayed at home and took care of the household chores and children.

Yet, over two-thirds of the women interviewed disagreed, wanting equal partnerships and shared decision-making.

“One possible explanation for the origin of this violence lies in the rejection of equal rights and equality of the sexes. Equality can be seen as a threat to traditional role models, as the emancipation of women can pose a threat to the perceived ‘natural order’,” the spokesperson for the German Federal Ministry weighed. “Raising public awareness of gender equality, greater visibility of women in all their diversity and potential, role models for strong women and support for women among themselves are also important soft factors in making it clear that there is no turning back in our German society when it comes to women’s rights. They are human rights.”

It is clear that many young men in Germany (and beyond for that matter) feel confused and threatened by changing societal dynamics and the evolving definition of what it means to be a man.

At the heart of solving this crisis lies the need to understand that masculinity and relationship structures are a matter of personal taste and have nothing to do with personal value. Whatever roles we perceive as natural to us need to be voluntary and not enforced, least of all through violence.

Advances in feminism and progressive politics are frequently met with a misogynistic backlash, such as mass harassment, assault, and a shift towards extremist, regressive politics. This retaliatory reaction can also be observed in German politics where “the misogynistic positions of the AfD [Alternative für Deutschland] and the misogynistic rhetoric of this and increasingly other parties will have a negative impact,” according to the Rapporteur.

In January, the German federal parliament passed the Violence Assistance Act, which obliges federal states to create sufficient protection and counselling services for vulnerable women.

“It will provide women and their kids as victims of domestic and gender-based violence with a legal right to protection and counselling. A milestone from our point of view. A federal contribution of 2.6 billion euros to the financing of the support system until 2036 will ensure that sufficient shelters and a well-developed counselling infrastructure are available,” the spokesperson for the Ministry commented.

Yet, it still “remains to be seen” whether the incoming government is going to be meaningfully addressing this femicide crisis, the Rapporteur noted. “[B]ut great hopes are pinned on the further expansion of measures and the adoption of the Violence Assistance Act, Federal Council decision pending.”

As Germany’s political future continues to hang in the balance, with none of the top contenders for leadership making violence against women a priority, only time will show how this pressing crisis will be combated in a country where femicide is so prevalent.