One of the strategies that some women who suffer violence in their relationships told me they used to minimise it was to go to bed with their children before the abuser came home. What can they do now, being confined together all day, what strategies can they use? It is much more complicated in these times of lockdown, when they cannot even leave the house or contact people who can help them cope.
One of the strategies that some women who suffer violence in their relationships told me they used to minimise it was to go to bed with their children before the abuser came home. What can they do now, being confined together all day, what strategies can they use? It is much more complicated in these times of lockdown, when they cannot even leave the house or contact people who can help them cope.
Because not all women have the possibility or resources to leave their abusers. There are many barriers that prevent them from doing so, some of them structural, such as the lack of economic resources due to the sexual division of labour that forces many women to do work that is neither recognised nor paid (caring for the dependents of their families, minors and the elderly, domestic work...)
Likewise, another important barrier that prevents or makes it difficult for women to escape from their aggressors are the rickety social and family networks for help, often non-existent because they are in other countries, or broken and deteriorated because of the isolation to which the aggressors have subjected them in the processes of abuse.
Another barrier that women often refer to to endure the situation of abuse is the fear of losing their offspring, since they are not economically autonomous, or because of the belief that their children need a father. What could be more painful for children than to see their father insult, humiliate, beat up or kill their mother?
But in addition, another very important structural barrier has to do with the help that the public administration offers them. Because even though the situation has improved a little since the Integral Law against gender violence in 2004, the resources for economically dependent women who suffer violence are insufficient and inadequate. Many women still do not have the necessary means to be able to live autonomously with their children. In addition, some women continue to be institutionalized in residential centres, not for protection but because of a lack of material resources.
Naturally, women do not want to be institutionalised. This means, despite the good will and the fact that professional women are obliged to follow strict rules and schedules and to live with other partners whether they like it or not (in fact many women prefer to return to their aggressors than to endure this situation). And even without wanting to go into the economic issue, because it is in bad taste and because if it were to achieve good results, I would think it would be well employed. The residential place person/day supposes a great cost with which it would be possible to make a magnificent community intervention, in the place where the women decide to live because they have right to it (thus they say it the laws of violence, equality, the plans and until the state pact).
The institutionalisation of women is an unnecessary resource in most cases and more than archaic. As I have already said on more than one occasion, it is a mechanism for controlling women without resources or at risk of social exclusion and their offspring, which survives and evolves by adapting to the discourse of power on the protection of women. Do you not remember the centres of the Francoist women's protection board to educate women in Catholic morality or to punish those who have gone astray, or worse still, to hide pregnancies and where women came from after having "given birth" and their offspring? It has been a while, but not that long. Women do not want indoctrination, guardianship, or control. Women need, we need, that they do not attack or kill us and if someone must leave the house and be controlled or locked up it is the aggressor, who commits the crime.
In the case of migrant women, these structural barriers can be compounded by the fact that they are in an irregular documentary situation, the fear of being deported, or the fact that they do not know the language or legislation of the country.
But in addition, in the case of both migrant and indigenous women, other cultural or psychological barriers such as the normalisation of violence, emotional dependence, love and the family ideal trap them in violent relationships. Thus, in addition to structural barriers, cultural barriers also prevent or make it difficult for women who suffer violence in their relationships to escape it.
The social structure, the patriarchal culture and the public authorities are responsible for the fact that some women who have not been helped to leave their abusers are now at home almost 24 hours a day confined to them, with great difficulty in being able to minimise the suffering and damage, or perhaps even worse.
Although patriarchies use different types of physical, psychological, sexual and economic violence to subordinate women and take over their bodies, work and offspring - and we want all of these to be included in specific legislation - the main and most important violence suffered by women is gender-based violence, as defined in the 2004 Comprehensive Protection Act. The data in this regard are clear (it is not a question of making invisible the violence suffered by women from other men in their family, neighbours, or acquaintances, nor in the community or in the work environment). However, it is in the home sweet home and with the men with whom they have a common life project, where women suffer most violence.
According to the reports of the Women 24 Hours Centres and Women Centres (CM24H and CM) of the Valencian Community, the number of women attended (new cases per year, from previous years and taken up again) and calls made (both to the regional telephone and to 016), indicate both the great problem that gender violence represents for many women and its difficult solution. Because most of the users of the CM24H and CM are economically dependent, have family responsibilities (which makes it difficult for them to make their reproductive work compatible with their productive work), are migrants and/or have functional diversity. In other words, in addition to gender inequality, there are other important axes of inequality that make them vulnerable to violence. Therefore, although violence affects all women, not all women are affected in the same way and with the same brutality, or at least it is not so difficult for all women to escape it.
Some women are only affected by some of the barriers, others by almost all of them. These women are at the crossroads of male violence from which they cannot escape alone. Therefore, it is necessary for the public administration to implement all the policies and measures they need so that they do not remain trapped in relationships of male violence where they should be safe and calm. The numbers of women who say they suffer violence and report it, even if it is the tip of the iceberg, is horrible. Unbearable, too, is the number of women killed by their partners or ex-partners. In confinement the suffering, pain and danger is much greater. Let us never leave them alone with the aggressors, even less so now, they are, we are, the life in it.
Gabriela Moriana Mateo.
This article was originally published in Levante.
