One in four Finnish men under 35 say women may deserve violence

One in four men in Finland under the age of 35 believe women may be deserving of violence due to behaviour or how they dress, a survey published Tuesday showed.

The Coalition of Finnish Women's Associations (Nytkis) that had commissioned the survey about men's attitudes towards violence against women called the findings "alarming".

According to the survey, which queried over a thousand men in Finland between the ages of 18 and 79, one in four men under the age of 35 believed that a woman "may deserve violence because of the way she dresses, looks or behaves."

Counting all age groups, every fifth man responded the same.

"Our research shows that while not all men accept violence against women, far too many men are worryingly tolerant of it. Men normalise violence against women through their attitudes," Silla Kakkola, chair of Nytkis and Finland's Violence Observatory said in a press release.

"We have a lot to change in these attitudes, and men themselves have a key role to play," she added.

However, the results were in some respects incoherent: while 21 per cent of men responded that women can be deserving of violence, 90 percent said at the same time that violence against women is always wrong.

A majority also recognised men should shoulder a greater responsibility in ending the violence.

Finland's Prime Minister Petteri Orpo reacted to the report by stating that "violence against women is a disgrace to the Finnish society."

"Society as a whole must work to change these distorted and dangerous attitudes and eradicate violence against women", he wrote in a post to Instagram, calling for "men to bear responsibility".

Finland is one of the most unsafe countries for women in the EU, according to surveys and official statistics.

Half of women aged 16-25 have been victims of physical violence, threats of violence or sexual violence and one in five have experienced serious violence or rape, Finland's statistics agency said in a press release also published Tuesday.

"In Finland, the experience of violence is very common both within and outside relationships," said Marjut Pietilainen, a special researcher at Statistics Finland.

"Young women in particular stand out as a group that experiences a lot of violence in different areas of life," she added.