26-11-21. N15
Yesterday while reading the national Newspaper of my country, I noticed that November 25 was commemorated as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, and I found it interesting to share some of these issues with you, my dear friends from Read.Cash, not only for women but also for men, knowledge of these issues helps us to know what rights we have in society.
"The International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women 2021 is celebrated on November 25 in memory of the murder of the Mirabal sisters, known as the butterflies, three Dominican activists against the Rafael Trujillo regime."
Gender based violence, which directly affects women and girls, is one of the most widespread and persistent in the world. It is not only our duty as a citizen to warn about inequality, discrimination, femicides and the different forms of sexist violence, but also to demand public policies to prevent and end it. It can be said that gender violence is a pandemic in the shadows, since it does not stop growing and many women have seen their situation aggravated by the fact of having to spend more time with their aggressors or because their situation has been further reduced family.
The isolation and loneliness of the victims has inevitably increased during the pandemic. Gender violence is, however, a social problem, which must be addressed and made visible as such. Making it visible is essential to stop denying its existence, because this type of violence exists, and not only within a couple relationship: it occurs for the simple fact of being a woman.
The violence that is exerted on her is structural, influenced by historical and structural imbalances of power between women and men that perpetuate the idea of superiority of the latter. Types of violence against women Gender violence manifests itself in a physical, sexual and psychological way.
The United Nations Organization includes several types:
• Violence by a romantic partner (physical violence, psychological abuse, marital rape, femicide).
• Sexual violence and harassment (rape, forced sexual acts, unwanted sexual advances, child sexual abuse, forced marriage, stalking, street harassment, cyberbullying)
• Trafficking in human beings (slavery, sexual exploitation.
• Genital mutilation
• Child marriage.
Do not be alarmed by these issues, since the important thing is to recognize the different forms of gender violence, and that this is a social problem of such importance, that stopping at the number, or if it is more or less frequent, is not essential, But if a single woman, girl or any person is in these situations, it deserves all our effort and attention. The most important thing is to PREVENT, so that gender violence and any form of violence is not naturalized.
Hence, the political will of the country where one lives and its institutions are vital to achieve an effective, comprehensive and integrated response. The media also exert violence against women and girls when they are invisible, silenced, or represented in a stereotypical way. They contribute to the reproduction in the collective imaginaries of myths that support various forms of gender violence.
How many of us have been victims of gender violence without hardly perceiving it. How many of us have not sought employment on the networks. Not infrequently we find posts of job offers with images of young women, with long hair and shining smiles, where they seem to assume that only they fit in that type of job. Men are not admitted or, at least, they are not summoned.
I speak, for example, of calls for restaurants and cafeterias that are looking for young, pretty and uncompromised women to fill positions as waitresses or similar. The idea that women are more docile, tender, fragile and therefore destined for this type of work is still widely shared. Of course, as a counterpoint, men do not paint anything in such roles that are too "loose" for their masculinity, and those who assume them are automatically judged for it.
They contribute to a vicious circle of discrimination that, ultimately, limits us to imposed roles, occupations or professions. They are reflections of stereotypes that we have dragged along for decades in a still very macho society.
We have had before us an implicit sexist discrimination in the calls, on the fact of automatically associating sweetness and kindness with women and, by transitivity, them with this type of place. "Those jobs have historically been done by women because the concept is that a male can work something harder and there he will be 'underused'", we could have heard this more than once from our employer.
Gender roles are functions that are assigned to people depending on the sex with which they are born and that, in the long term, mark the way in which relationships between men and women are established in society.
They start with the story about the boys wearing blue and the little ones wearing pink, but they continue to present themselves in different ways at each stage of growth. Not crying because that shows weakness if you are a man, that a tough guy does not need to be romantic, while more girlfriends are more manly, on the other hand and against opposition, young women cannot be promiscuous, compulsory motherhood, obedience to their husbands.
Beyond what is correct and ethical, what is normal, appropriate or inappropriate for us, they are behaviors with which we are born stereotyped and do not leave our conscious choice, but rather we are influenced by ways of acting, expectations and obligations imposed by these roles.
In this way, to the common stereotypes of mom who stays at home and dad who goes out to work, caregiver woman and provider man; others join who try to mark them in specific professions once they decide to work.
In short, despite the many policies designed to incorporate women equally into the different sectors, there is still much to do. Gender roles learned over decades are not erased in one fell swoop.
Thank you very much my dear readers, if you got here I hope you have been of interest to my article today. To my sponsors, thank you for trusting me. And to you if it is the first time that you go through my articles and if you liked it, do not forget to subscribe, and if you feel identified with the subject, leave me your comment.
We still have a long way to go to achieve this. There are so many cultural, religious, encompassing factors that influence this matter. Also, women need to take some action to walk against this. You wrote a very informative piece of writing.