Beginning in the mid-70s, the women’s movement made the dramatic extent of violence by men against their own wives and children public and launched the first women’s refuges.

The feminist debate about pornography was divided: Some considered it unproblematic, but most opposed it as verbal and visual sexual violence.

For some, it is “the oldest trade in the world” – for others, a violation of human dignity and ‚white slavery‘.

In the mid-1970s, the women’s movement brought the epidemic of sexual violence to the public’s attention. The women fought for a sex crime law reform, that finally came through 1997 and 2016. In Germany today the principle rules: No means No.

Sexual harassment in the workplace became a public issue in Germany in the late 1970s, studies and debates have followed until it finally became a part of the sex crime legislation.

In 1978 feminist magazine EMMA first broke the silence of a long-held taboo: sexual abuse. 5 years later the self-help group Wildwasser and the first girls’ refuge were established.