scholarly journals Chicas muertas from Selva Almada: On the Normalization of Gender Violence

Author(s):  
María José Bruña Bragado

In light of the reflections on violence and power of Hannah Arendt - "La violencia aparece donde el poder está en peligro pero, confiada a su propio impulso, acaba por hacer desaparecer al poder" (Alianza, 2005), I will approach the impeccable fictionalized chronicle of Selva Almada that delves into the complex mechanisms of the normalization of violence - both real and symbolic - exercised against women. The text focuses on the murder of three teenagers - Maria Luisa, Andrea and Sarita - in the Argentina of the 1980s, but also shows how internalized socially misogynist mental structures are - the patriarchal power in danger derives from violence- and outlines the close links that in the Argentine case have systemic violence against women both with poverty and the rural world and with the previous military dictatorship and state repression of bodies and minds whose imagination also extends to democracy. The author of Ladrilleros puts her finger on the wound and clears with intelligence how patriarchy works and to what extent we can all be accomplices of horror.

2020 ◽  
Vol 33 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Victoria A. Ferrer-Perez ◽  
Andrés Sánchez-Prada ◽  
Carmen Delgado-Álvarez ◽  
Esperanza Bosch-Fiol

Abstract Attitudes play a central role in intimate partner violence against women and are related to its origin, to the responses of women who suffer violence, and to the settings where it occurs. In fact, these attitudes are recognized as one of the risk factors linked to violent perpetration and to public, professional, and victim responses to this type of violence. However, even though available research generally shows a broad rejection of this violence, it remains a serious social and health problem that has reached epidemic proportions. This suggests that the information available about these attitudes (obtained through explicit and direct measures, i.e., self-reports) may be distorted or influenced by factors such as social desirability. In this context, the overall objective of our research project is to provide multi-method measures (explicit and implicit) of attitudes toward intimate partner violence against women, and the main goal of this paper is to propose an instrument for the implicit measurement of these attitudes. In this regard, the Implicit Association Test (IAT) is the most common procedure used, providing a superior predictive validity compared to explicit measures for socially sensitive topics. We will present an exploratory study that describes its adaptation for our purposes, and the development of the Gender Violence - Implicit Association Test (GV-IAT) to use among Spanish-speaking populations, and discuss the strengths and limitations of this proposal.


2021 ◽  
Vol 61 (1_suppl) ◽  
pp. 113-124
Author(s):  
Valeria Tullio ◽  
Antonietta Lanzarone ◽  
Edoardo Scalici ◽  
Marco Vella ◽  
Antonina Argo ◽  
...  

Intimate partner violence against women (IPVAW) is the most pervasive violation of women’s rights worldwide, causing devastating lifelong damage. Victims can suffer physical, emotional or mental health problems, and experience detrimental effects in social, psychological and relational health with their families, especially children. Due to the complexity regarding violence against women in heterosexual couples, it is important to make a clear distinction between psychological and physical mistreatment, which also includes psychological violence. This differentiation is important in determining different emotional and psychological aspects of mistreatment in order to understand the reasons why some women stay in such relationships and to explain the personality profiles of victims and perpetrators. In this short narrative review, we have combined perspectives of depth psychology and attachment theory from studies on trauma, traumatic bonds and the perpetrator/victim complex in gender violence. We have also considered the growing literature on IPVAW as it relates to the medico-legal field. Our search strategy included intimate partner violence, attachment styles, risk factors and the victim/perpetrator relationship. Distinguishing the different types of IPVAW is a necessary step in understanding the complexity, causes, correlations and consequences of this issue. Above all, it enables the implementation of effective prevention and intervention strategies.


2011 ◽  
Vol 26 (S2) ◽  
pp. 1673-1673
Author(s):  
A. Matos-Pires ◽  
F. Salazar-Garcia ◽  
E. Monteiro ◽  
D. Estevens

Domestic violence, particularly violence against women, is a scourge that has killed this year in Portugal more than twenty women.Our aim is to present a case study on the issue of gender violence on a 49 years old woman with a prior diagnosis of bipolar disorder and its (terrible) consequences.The multiple injuries sustained over several years “treated” the bipolar disorder. Apart from a frontal lesion on CT there is now a set of neurological and psychiatric symptoms compatible with a diagnosis of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) “boxer's dementia” like.


Author(s):  
Traci C. West

This chapter presents the interdisciplinary framework of the book and its core argument linking issues of racism and religion--particularly heteropatriarchal Christianity--in the cultural support for gender violence. It argues that the conjoined presence of religion, anti-black racism, and sexual violence against women in American history of slavery and colonialism compels a similarly transnational exploration of inspiration from Africana activists and scholars to address U.S. gender violence. A methodological overview describes the book’s theoretical foundations in feminist and womanist studies, and how tools of ethnography, anthropology, and Christian theo-ethics inform the its unconventional narrative approach. The U.S.-based analysis features snapshots of the author’s encounters with leaders and their contexts, not a broad survey or comparison of gender violence in Ghana, South Africa, and Brazil.


Author(s):  
Caroline Bettinger-López

International human rights treaties and monitoring bodies have repeatedly called upon governments to develop national plans of action to eliminate violence against women. Although the U.S. is a global leader in the violence against women arena, it has never developed a national plan of action. The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA), despite its substantial contributions, does not contain some of the core features of a national action plan—such as a strategic vision for ending violence against women, or a declaration that violence against women is a human rights violation and a form of sex discrimination, or a set of goals or benchmarks to measure progress. This chapter examines the key elements of national action plans on violence against women, and ultimately argues that in the Trump era, a national action plan can best be developed through coordinated action at the state and local levels.


Author(s):  
Kanika Kaul

Recent years have witnessed important changes in planning and budgetary processes in the country. The constitution of NITI Aayog in place of the Planning Commission, restructuring of the Union Budget following the Union Government’s acceptance of the 14th Finance Commission recommendations and measures undertaken for rationalisation of Centrally Sponsored Schemes have marked gender implications. They also have a bearing on public financing of government programmes in a range of sectors, including those meant to address violence against women. The analysis of schemes to address violence against women by state governments in Madhya Pradesh and Jharkhand presented in the chapter, reflects low priority towards the issue in the state budgets, indicating that the importance accorded to gender violence in policy discourse is yet to translate into budgetary priorities. The author concludes that budgetary dimensions of the state’s response to the issue require attention if we are to ensure a comprehensive response mechanism for women facing domestic violence.


Urban History ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 642-642
Author(s):  
CARRIE RENTSCHLER

ABSTRACTThis essay examines a body of films that represent and re-enact the infamous 1964 Catherine Genovese rape and murder, helping to define the crime as a problem of bystander non-intervention exacerbated by urban living conditions and the ‘high rise anxieties’ of apartment dwellers. The moving image culture around the Genovese case tells a story about male violence against women in the city through the perspective of urban apartment dwellers, who are portrayed as bystander witnesses to both the city and to the social relations of stranger sociability in the city. Films depict the killing of Kitty Genovese, sometimes through fictional analogues to her and the crime, as an outcome of failed witnessing, explicating those failures around changing ideas about urban social relations between strangers, and ways of surveilling the city street from apartment windows. By portraying urban bystanders as primarily non-interventionist spectators of the Genovese rape and murder, films locate the conditions of femicide and responsibility for it in detached modes of seeing and encountering strangers. By analysing film as forms of historic documentation and imagination, as artifacts of historically and contextually different ways of telling and revising the story of the Genovese murder as one of bystander non-intervention in gender violence in the city, the essay conceptualizes film and filmic re-enactments as a mode of paying witness to the past.


2015 ◽  
Vol 105 (5) ◽  
pp. 625-629 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dara Lee Luca ◽  
Emily Owens ◽  
Gunjan Sharma

Violence against women is a critical problem across the world. In this paper, we exploit state and temporal variation in alcohol control in India to examine the impact of prohibition on alcohol consumption and violent crimes against women. We first use detailed household survey data to show that prohibition policies are associated with substantially lower rates of drinking among men and domestic violence. Next, we provide evidence that alcohol prohibition reduces aggregate violence against women in officially reported crime data. The results suggest that policies that restrict access to alcohol may help reduce gender violence.


Teknokultura ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 213-228
Author(s):  
Laura Martínez-Jiménez ◽  
Belén Zurbano-Berenguer

Gender violence has gradually become a public issue and a matter of State concern under permanent discussion in the Spanish media. Its increasing visibility has stimulated social and political awareness, but has also given rise to controversies, which are especially manifested in the digital environment. In this environment, meanings are built and expressed not only by the media, but also by online audiences participating through various mechanisms. This work observes the dynamics of the readers’ views on gender violence, as expressed in a politically progressive born-digital medium like eldiario.es. A sample of 716 comments to articles on gender violence published by this online newspaper are analyzed. A quantitative analysis shows a male-dominated participation of readers who are not subscribed to the site and whose views are contrary to those of eldiario.es’ editorial charter and its commitment to equality. A qualitative analysis of the contents of those comments reveals the recurring use of the feminist-antifeminist dichotomy in the debate, as well as a questioning of the scientific nature, purpose and suitability of feminism for the eradication of gender violence. Finally, the promotion of a genuine democratic debate in digital sites as the one here analyzed is discussed in light of women’s notable underrepresentation in the debate and of the possible misuse of participation as a means to perpetrate symbolic violence against women.


Author(s):  
Alexandra Fanghanel

Issues of social and spatial gendered justice have never been more pertinent in contemporary post-industrialist societies. This book which marks an intervention in contemporary debates about women’s bodies, public space and rape culture, in order to think through ways in which the normalization of violence against women might be contested. It brings together a rich web of thought about politics, embodiment and public space to examine social and spatial justice in the context of the female body in public. Transforming rape culture is not easy; the problems outlined in this book are not things that can be fixed by policy changes or legal reform (alone). They necessitate an overhaul in the ethics of the way in which we think and act in public spaces, including attending to the exclusions that everyone, in part, is complicit in enacting. Through analyses of three provocative case studies (pregnancy in public space, the female body as protest, and BDSM in public spaces), this book opens up generative ideas about transgression and revolt and advances a transformative politics of the possibilities of living without rape culture.


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