gender violence exists

Convinced that March 8 is a day for reflection and vindication, and in response to my current responsibility, I do not want to miss this opportunity to speak about the most serious manifestation of discrimination based on gender, the violence against women, and warn of the risks of setbacks that we face if we do not stand up to those who trivialize and deny, not only the inequality to which women are subjected in all areas, but also that violence that takes away lives and destroy many others.

Violence against women is an undeniable reality and is unjustifiable.

In 2004, according to the European Parliament, 45% of women in the European Union (EU) had suffered some act of physical, sexual or psychological violence, and according to the European Agency for Fundamental Rights, 13 million women had suffered physical violence and 3.7 million, sexual violence.

22% of women had experienced physical and/or sexual violence from an intimate partner.

According to the UN, 96% of victims of trafficking for sexual exploitation are women and girls.

According to UNICEF, there are 200 million genitally mutilated women and girls in the world and every year three million girls are at risk of being mutilated.

In Spain, since 2003, 1,132 women have been murdered by their partners or ex-partners;

Since 2013, 340 minors have been orphaned as a result of this violence and 48 have been murdered along with their mothers or to do them the maximum possible damage.

Of all the victims of sexual violence, 85% are women and girls, while 97% of those investigated are men.

Of all the crimes related to prostitution, 92% of the victims are women.

In addition, not only women are victims of this violence;

so are the boys and girls who live with them.

According to the 2019 macro-survey published by the Government Delegation against Gender Violence, 1,678,959 minors live in households in which the woman is suffering some type of violence by her partner.

69% of women who suffered some kind of violence from their partner when they had children acknowledge that they witnessed or heard the violence against the mother, and 51.7% acknowledge that they were also mistreated.

We have to protect children from gender violence suffered by their mothers because they are also victims.

To this end, the legislator has carried out two very important reforms in 2021: it has modified the precept that regulates the protection order in the Criminal Procedure Law and the one that regulates the visitation regime in the Civil Code.

The purpose of the first is to prevent the establishment of a visitation order with the aggressor once the protection order has been agreed upon and if, at the time of adopting it, there is a previously agreed visitation regimen and the children have witnessed, suffered or lived with this violence, the legislator provides for its suspension as a general rule and only exceptionally its maintenance if the best interest of the affected minors so requires.

Along the same lines, it modifies the Civil Code.

The Prosecutor's Office is maintaining an interpretation that, based on the letter of the law and the legislative will, attends to the social reality to which the norm must be applied;

that reality that, reflected in data, shows us the image of the suffering to which these children are subjected, who are also victims and, furthermore, understanding that if we do not protect them we do not protect their mothers because, apart from the risks of mistreatment and suffer unspeakable harm from exposure to this violence, minors are often instrumentalized by the aggressor to continue exercising power, control and even violence over them.

It can no longer be argued that "the abuser can be a good father."

On the contrary, the starting point should be that “the abuser is not a good father”.

We must protect mothers and their children from the aggressor, and the Prosecutor's Office is working along these lines.

With the above, no one can doubt that there is violence that mainly affects women and sometimes only them (such as female genital mutilation), and the reason for its existence cannot be denied either.

Women and girls are murdered, mistreated, raped, mutilated... for the sole fact of being women, because their aggressors consider them to lack the minimum rights of freedom, respect and decision-making capacity.

Because throughout history we have been relegated to the background in which man has had the ability to make decisions about our lives and our bodies based on a thought that survives as a core ideology in our society.

That patriarchal ideology contrary to equality against which we must continue fighting, despite the enormous resistance we face.

We have come a long way, but the risk of setbacks is great.

The European Parliament, already in 2019, expressed its concern about the different forms of violence that have intensified, expressly mentioning incitement to sexist hatred and against LGBTI people, misogyny and

, including harassment and stalking, but also violence against women in the workplace, or derived from trafficking and prostitution.

He expressed his concern at the rejection of that principle that we invoke so much, that of zero tolerance for violence against women and gender violence.

He was especially concerned about the involution of women's rights and gender equality and warned that resistance "can be exercised regardless of the social context or age, it can be formal or informal, and it can involve active or passive strategies. to oppose new advances trying to modify laws or policies that ultimately limit the acquired rights of citizens and, that this has been accompanied by the dissemination of false news and beliefs in harmful stereotypes.

The messages denying gender violence through social networks and other media not only reach users with the ability to evaluate the sources and the veracity of the information, to discern the reality of what they tell us;

they also reach other people, especially young people and adolescents, who do not question said information, who do not contrast it and assume it to be true even when it lacks any foundation.

It is essential to strengthen the critical thinking of adolescents from the early stages of their education and make a greater effort to better disseminate, and in a language accessible to the whole society, the different forms of discrimination and violence against women.

Let's not allow them to put blindfolds on us and plugs in our ears.

Gender violence exists.

There are the sons and daughters of the survivors and those of the murdered women, their relatives and friends.

The raped women;

the abused and sexually enslaved;

the mutilated and those that have been given in a marriage, as merchandise without rights.

Ask all those people if there is this violence… if they have the courage to do it.

Teresa Peramato Martín

is a prosecutor of the Delegate Chamber for Violence against Women

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