In Sweden as in most other Western countries, violence against women has become a public issue. Despite its historic occurrence in virtually every time period of human existence, it has only recently been defined as a social "problem" and not as a private affair. Most social programs that deal with the problem are therefore quite recent so that little definitive evaluation of their impact is available as yet. This paper attempts to provide a short survey of the most important activities for countering violence against women that are currently ongoing in Sweden.