A path to understanding and combating gender violence, a scourge that threatens the lives of women

To begin this visit, I would like to ask some questions that arise from my specific experience of working for gender equality in Latin America, close to the communities that populate the region, and from the situation in which we are all inserted: How to deal with violence against women which, rooted in dominant gender relations, can be physical, psychological, sexual, economic or institutional? Where are you from? How to dismantle the cloak of silence that is drawn up on her on so many occasions? I would like these words to be used to raise hypotheses, debates, possible answers.

If we want to act, we must shed light on the nature of this phenomenon and its extent today. In this sense, I am interested in recovering Rita Segato, anthropologist and one of the greatest references on the subject, when she defines this particular type of violence as falling within a “pedagogy of cruelty”, from which subjects are brought up and incorporated in a paradigm that transforms the female body into a dehumanized terrain, where the objectification of life takes place and can be annihilated without consequences.

Although his investigations have a broader scope, in Writing on the bodies of murdered women in Ciudad Juárez Segato focuses its analysis on feminicides that have occurred since at least 1991 in this town in the state of Chihuahua. The specialist says that violence against women is perpetrated for a purpose expressiveto designate power in a social context marked by the imaginaries that emerge from this pedagogy, precisely where crimes go unpunished, again designating the power of the perpetrators, their sovereign condition on the territory.

To date, Ciudad Juarez recorded 2,376 feminicides and 282 missing women in three decades, and 70% of crimes remain unsolved.

Brenda Navarro, a Mexican intellectual, says that “Women disappear, physically, they kill us”, but at the same time it is the survivors who support others, organize themselves, create links to mitigate attacks. To name a reference of this type, we can resort to the enlightening research of Patricia Ravelo Blancas and Sergio Sánchez Díaz, anthropologist researchers from CIESAS-Mexico, who analyze how the workers of the maquiladoras of Ciudad Juárez created organizations and common spaces for protect against sexual violence and feminicide, including their own awareness campaigns, posters that burst onto public streets with slogans such as “Stop the violence!”.

In circumstances where pain paralyzes us and where it seems that language is insufficient to express the horror, it is essential to overcome this barrier of silence in order to intervene in reality. Without a doubt, Mexico is a country marked by gender violence and feminicides, where women are exposed to all kinds of aggression and harassment. According to statistics reported by INEGI in November 2022, 70.1% of women have experienced some type of gender-based violence throughout their liveswhile 43% suffered violence between October 2020 and October 2021. Concretely, during their lifetime, 51.6% of women have suffered psychological violence, 34.7% physical assault, 49.7% sexual violence , and 27.4% of economic or property-related violence.

Once again, we are faced with silence: according to current surveys of women victims of gender-based violence, 88.4% of Mexican women surveyed did not seek or seek professional or institutional support (INEGI). Among the women who had suffered physical and/or sexual violence within the framework of a couple, only 13.1% filed a complaint or lodged a complaint with an authority, while in the school environment the percentage was 7.8. % and with family by 7.1%. . Behind these figures hide complex problems, which make it difficult to file complaints and leave the facts unpunished.

As confirmed by the INEGI surveys to which we have referred, the low percentage of female complainants is multicausal: some do not report for fear of their attackers, because of the stigma attached to being a complainant in their community, and others because of a lack of institutional confinement that protects them, not knowing where to assert their claims. Also it is common for women to perceive attitudes of micro-violence, predecessors of greater aggressions, as irrelevant acts to be denounced, being part of their daily lives and of the women who raised them. The latter is the majority cause of non-declaration both in the contexts of domestic violence, intra-family violence and in the community, professional and school environment (INEGI).

From professional woman, as part of our overall work to advance gender equality in Latin America, we consider gender-based aggressions as one of our main concerns and we address those factors that make reporting difficult, always ensuring the women’s well-being. Following Nidia Hidalgo (2020), IDB Senior Gender and Diversity Specialist in the El Salvador Country Office, we are focusing our strategy on achieving personalized training and prevention workshopswhich aim, broadly, to give women concrete tools so that they can recognize situations of naturalized violence and act accordingly.

Soon in the southeast mexico, where we started working in 2022, we will set up new workshops on the issue specifically designed for women in the region, who are mostly from indigenous communities; where women, at the same time as they are the engine of the Mexican economy and the support of many families, face various types of discrimination which can make it difficult for them to exit circles of violence, given unequal access to health services, education and quality employment (CDHCM, 2020). Currently, Yucatán is one of the localities with the most sexual assaults in contexts of dating or marriage, with 45.1% of women in couples raped, and oaxaca It is the eighth state in the country with the highest incidence of gender-based violence within the family (ENDIREH, 2021).

As gender inequality and violence affecting women is a phenomenon that transcends ethnicity, class or regionAt Pro Mujer we seek to be present throughout the country, with 16 strategically distributed offices. In fact, in January, we opened a comprehensive new space for women’s health education, funding and services. in the Valley of Mexico metropolitan areaand in mid-February we will inaugurate another office with medical practice in Tultepec, State of Mexico. Our holistic model seeks to support women from a global approach, which takes into account their uniqueness and encourages them to develop their maximum potential, their autonomy.

As we glimpse through world-class research, thegender-based attacks have deep cultural roots, linked to power relations established for centuries. It is our responsibility to break down these ideological constructions based on the objectification of women and the dominant notions of masculinity and femininity; always raise awareness and give voice to the survivors of gender-based violence themselves, who participate in our support networks within the framework of the Safe Woman programme. It is our reality that demands that gender lenses finally be within the eyes of all of society.

Carmen Correa, (@carmen_correaPM) is CEO of Pro Mujer