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.

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