In the Shadows of Denial: Navigating the Politics of Ignorance in Czechia's Approach to Gender-Based Violence

In this paper, we are looking into ways in which the politics concerning the system of prevention and assistance to survivors of gender-based violence (GBV) in Czechia is affected by the actual, alleged and strategically used claims to ignorance (Tuana 2006). These different yet complementary forms of ignorance reinforce a system that frames GBV predominantly in a criminology sense, which contrasts with the conceptualisation of GBV as a threat to public health, as is often the case in other EU countries. Moreover, the current "policy of ignorance" is taking place against the backdrop of the ongoing anti-gender narratives, especially concerning campaigns against the ratification of the Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence. Paired with the reluctance to approach GBV's position within the nexus of broader gender inequalities, it allows for the system's lack of progress or change. To substantiate our claim, we offer an analysis based on two data sets focused on the effects of COVID-19 pandemic measures on the issue of domestic violence. The first one is an extensive explorative qualitative study conducted from April to December 2020 that used semi-structured interviews, interviews with clients of an assistance-providing organisation, and analyses of concrete cases from the period of the first pandemic lockdown in Czechia. The second data set comprises anti-pandemic policies aimed at GBV that were developed across the EU. The Czech government did not introduce any special measures to address domestic violence during any of the lockdowns or as part of any counter-pandemic measures. The issue of GBV thus remained separate from public health policy focus even under the COVID-19 pandemic. This separation, among other things, means we do not have medical data on the issue from both before and during the pandemic, which then contributes to continuing with the framing of this type of violence as outside the scope of health policy: we simply do not know (sic!) what the scale of the issue is.