The culture of violence against women persists in our societies: it is a social, systemic problem, perpetuated even by non-violent individuals. What it is and what the solutions are.
The violence against women persists within most of the world's societies, to the point that it is still considered by most as an "inevitable" aspect of reality. It is instead a social, systemic problem, perpetuated even by non-violent individuals, based on systems of thought that justify its existence, and that for this reason normalise it.
It is in fact a power dynamic, sustained by individuals aligned within a culture that considers women inferior and destined for specific roles within society. Those who oppose or exceed the limits imposed by their role can expect the kind of retaliation usually reserved for "dangerous" individuals, ranging from social exclusion to physical violence and even murder.
Every aspect of a culture is socially constructed through the interaction between the level of understanding of reality, the interpretation given to it, and the power dynamics that one wishes to create within it. When a group seeks to gain an advantage, it will construct a system of thought and social control to justify the subordination — and thus the exploitation — of another group, normalising this relationship. It is in this way that patriarchy is theorised to have come into being: a culture with various expressions that has justified violence against women for centuries.
In the patriarchal system, primary power — such as moral and political authority and control over resources — is reserved for males, while females are assigned the role of family care. Some sociologists have theorised that gender roles were the "natural" response to biological differences between men and women. However, the supposed link between biology and gender behaviour has been discredited by the wide variability of roles recorded across different indigenous and pre-industrial societies. The studies of anthropologists Margaret Mead and George Murdock were fundamental in dismantling, at least from a scientific research perspective, the belief that the link between biology and social behaviour was so tight as to leave no room for any variable, turning people's "anatomy" into a "destiny" that by definition is inevitable and therefore cannot be changed.
And yet beliefs such as the idea that women are better suited to caring for the family, given that they give birth and breastfeed, remain deeply rooted in common thinking to this day. Over time, women have found ways to challenge social conventions, demonstrate their capabilities and win equal rights. Dramatic historical moments such as the Second World War are a case in point: with men at the front, women found themselves working in factories and producing goods with no difference from the men who had previously held those positions. At the end of the war there was an attempt to reclaim that space as purely male, but the shared experience of millions of women prevailed, proving that there was no real reason to limit their access to the world of work. This was a first step that led to further battles, because the underlying prejudice that women were inferior to men remained. The struggles for equal pay, the right to divorce and access to abortion are just some examples that show how the supposed inferiority of women continued to be used to discriminate against them.
It is this culture that justifies men's violence against women. Today women have equal rights, and no one would dare declare any kind of inferiority on their part, but patriarchal culture allows their lives to still be seen in relation to those of men, and means that in practice they are discriminated against and subjected to levels of violence that would not otherwise be tolerated.
Today women have equal rights, and no one would dare declare any kind of inferiority on their part, but patriarchal culture allows their lives to still be seen in relation to those of men, and means that in practice they are discriminated against and subjected to levels of violence that would not otherwise be tolerated.
Men, within this paradigm, seem to bear no responsibility, but to be themselves the victims of women's behaviour. They are violent towards women because women do not behave as they should, thus failing to meet men's needs. By stepping outside their gender role, it is women who provoke men and who therefore deserve to be educated and controlled; in other words, the responsibility for being the object of violence lies with them ("they were asking for it").
In patriarchal culture, control and violence are extolled as the natural expression of being a man. Violence against women is therefore, more or less directly, encouraged even in a sexual context and its consequences minimised, with greater attention often paid to the behaviour of the victim (Why was she out at that hour? What was she wearing? Why didn't she scream? Why did she wait 8 days to report it?) rather than to that of the perpetrator.
In the book "Trasformare la cultura dello stupro" Emilie Buchwald, Pamela R. Fletcher and Martha Roth describe perfectly how patriarchal culture leads to the justification of sexual violence: "Women perceive a continuum of threatened violence ranging from sexual comments to physical harassment to rape itself. A rape culture condones as 'normal' physical and emotional terrorism against women. In a rape culture both men and women assume that sexual violence is 'a fact of life', as inevitable as death or taxes."
In a rape culture both men and women assume that sexual violence is 'a fact of life', as inevitable as death or taxes
Emilie Buchwald, Pamela R. Fletcher, Martha Roth
The statistics confirm that men are the primary perpetrators of harassment, rape and the killing of women. Women are killed by men for failing to meet gender expectations in some way so frequently that a specific term had to be coined: femicide.
Those who are not violent and respect women distance themselves from these acts, while failing to acknowledge that the men who commit such violence are not an anomaly, but the product of a culture they themselves help to perpetuate. By not challenging models of toxic masculinity, by laughing at a sexist joke, by not condemning inappropriate behaviour, they become complicit in a social system that oppresses and endangers women every day.
Jackson Katz, activist and researcher, has dedicated his life to working with men to tackle the problem of gender-based violence and achieve full equality. In his work he stresses that it is necessary to recognise not only that this phenomenon exists, but that men have a duty to help resolve it because they are its cause. Their active involvement alongside women is essential to addressing the problem at its root — especially at this historical moment, when we are witnessing a regression of women's rights.
The most recent example is that of Turkey, which has officially withdrawn from the Istanbul Convention, the international instrument that recognises that violence against women will not be eradicated without tackling the beliefs, attitudes and institutions that underpin it at their very foundation. Turkey's withdrawal is an alarming signal, a symptom of the widespread instability that a great many countries are facing, and it compounds the tragedy of the attacks that women, girls and female children endure every day against their most fundamental rights. The hope is that the female sex will as soon as possible gain the active support of those men who already respect them and who can make a difference, by raising their own voices and becoming new models of masculinity themselves.
Reversing the perspective means stopping talking about violence against women in general, and instead beginning to talk about violent men against women. Holding men accountable for creating healthy male models for others around them means making them a positive and active part of the solution, and true allies of women.