A couple of weeks ago, one of us (Evelina) attended a seminar with the feminist legal scholar Annica Rudman. Rudman, who has lived and worked in South Africa for the past two decades, spoke about a landmark case: Mary Sunday v. Federal Republic of Nigeria. Sunday lived in a region notorious for entrenched patriarchy and epidemic levels of domestic violence against women. For years, she was in a relationship with a police officer who routinely brutalized her. One evening, dissatisfied with the stew she had cooked for him, he hurled both the pot and the stove at her. Sunday was left severely burned and lost both her ears. Her fight for justice stretched on for years as courts refused to intervene, insisting that domestic violence fell outside the state’s responsibility.

Stories like these can make us want — however unreasonably — to gather all our female friends and children and retreat to a male-free island, a kind of Herland somewhere far away. Sunday’s fiancé is, of course, personally responsible for his violence. But his actions were enabled and excused by both his community and the state. And while patriarchal structures and norms are stronger in some parts of the world than others, the home remains the most dangerous place for women in much of the world. Even in Sweden — where we live and where such an act would almost certainly lead to prosecution — intimate partner violence is widespread. In fact, despite Sweden’s reputation as one of the most gender equal countries in the world, European Union–wide studies indicate that levels of violence against women are higher than in many other European nations. That says something about the persistence and ubiquity of men’s domestic violence against women.