WOMEN’S CIVIL SOCIETY AND COUNTRIES’ SUPPORT OF SUPRANATIONAL POLICY CONCERNING VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN A quantitative analysis of countries’ ratification of the Istanbul Convention

Abstract: Violence against women (VAW) is a societal problem and a violation of human rights. It is crucial that governments act on the oppression that women face for being women. There has been a lack of a coherent legal system across Europe on VAW. The Istanbul Convention was created by the Council of Europe and is first in being a supranational framework setting legally binding standards to prevent VAW. However, by the end of 2018, there were still countries in Europe that had not ratified the Istanbul Convention. The theoretical literature suggests that women’s participation in civil society matters for how governments act on VAW. This Master’s thesis explores to what extent women’s participation in civil society explains countries ratification of the Istanbul Convention. Moreover, it also explores what effect the strength of women’s civil society participation has on countries support of supranational VAW policy. The applied method is logistic regression analysis which is suitable when exploring a dichotomous dependent variable; the ratification or non-ratification of the Istanbul Convention. The results show that it is not possible to find a significant effect of women’s participation in civil society on the ratification of the Istanbul Convention. Additional findings indicate that a higher level of women’s physical security in a country increases the probability for ratification of the Istanbul Convention, indicating that countries that already have implemented and enforced laws on VAW are more likely to ratify the Istanbul Convention.