In 2017 Denmark was named the second best country for gender equality in the European Union, beaten only by its neighbour Sweden.
It was one of only nine countries to hit EU childcare targets, had one of the most gender-equal attitudes to housework, and was one of the few European countries close to achieving a 50:50 parliament, according to the Gender Equality Index.
But in a report released last week, Amnesty International warned that Denmark also has “widespread sexual violence” and systemic problems in how it deals with rape.
Several studies say that Denmark has the highest prevalence of sexual violence in Europe.
The Danish Ministry of Justice estimates that around 5,100 women a year are victims of rape or attempted rape, while the University of Southern Denmark put this figure as high as 24,000 in 2017 – a high number for a country with a relatively small population (5.8 million).
That same year, only 890 rapes were reported to the police, of which 535 led to prosecutions, and 94 ended in convictions.
Speaking to Amnesty, victims said they often found “the reporting process and its aftermath immensely traumatising”, either because they were not believed, they were interrogated by officers, or, in one case, important evidence that was later needed at trial was allegedly not properly collected.
So how did a country with an otherwise impressive record of gender equality end up being named one of the worst on the continent for violence against women?
Some believe the Scandinavian country’s image as a progressive utopia has actually added to the problem.
“We have this general notion that we have already achieved gender equality in Denmark, that the fight is over and there’s nothing left to fight for,” Helena Gleesborg Hansen, vice president of the Danish Women’s Society, tells BBC News. “And this is the biggest hindrance we see when we talk about gender equality.”
Denmark was one of the first countries to sign up to the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence (the Istanbul Convention) – a wide-ranging international treaty that seeks to combat violence against women worldwide.
But despite Denmark getting on board early, Grevio, the group set up to monitor whether countries are correctly implementing the convention, warned that it was still falling short in 2017.
One fundamental issue, the group said, was the definition of rape in Danish law.
Crucially, it defines rape as involving force or a threat of violence, rather than on whether or not there was consent.
For this reason, the Danish National Police Guidelines say that officers should ask rape complainants about “resistance to the perpetrator” – that is, whether or not they tried to physically fight them off.
But consent, Grevio said in its report, “is the central element in the way the Istanbul Convention frames sexual violence”.
Ms Hansen says the current law puts the onus on the victim to stop themselves being raped, rather than on the perpetrator to not commit the act – which in turn leads to a pervasive victim-blaming attitude.
“We have all these myths around rape”, including that rapists are often “monster attackers” who jump out of bushes to assault women as they walk alone, she says.
However, “most rapes that happen are actually [committed by the victim’s] husband, boyfriend, best friend, someone they met at a party. In these cases, there’s a shift of the guilt onto the victim, because they know each other. Which is what I find strange, because rape and sexual assault are never the victim’s fault – never.”
Focusing on whether or not there was a physical struggle, she adds, shows a lack of understanding of what can happen to a person when they are raped.
“A lot of people in these situations freeze, or get very confused – or they may be asleep, or drunk, or sedated,” she explains. “In the law right now, your body is accessible until you say ‘no’ and fight back. But we’d rather have it so your body is not accessible until you say ‘yes’.”
