March 11, 2007

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Ending Gender Violence

By Marissa Revilla

Mexico's gender violence problem is perhaps most starkly apparent in the northern cities of Juarez and Chihuahua, where, according to Amnesty International, over 400 women have been disappeared or murdered since 1993.

But violence against women is rampant across Mexico. At least 46.6 percent of Mexican women have experienced violence, according to a 2003 study conducted by the National Women's Institute, InMujeres, and the United Nations Women’s Development Fund.

In 2004 alone, 1205 Mexican women and girls were killed, according to the National Institute of Statistics, Geography, and Information, INEGI.

Ending Gender ViolenceA new law, called the General Law on Women's Access to a Life Free of Violence, seeks to end violence against women, while addressing what advocates consider its root cause: gender-inequity.

The new law, signed by the Calderón government on February 1st, is the first in Mexico to specifically address violence against women.

"When people are not equal, and one [person]has power that they exercise in an abusive way over the other, violence is the result," said Olivia Velasquez Torres, a psychologist at La Morada, the only center of attention for victims of domestic violence in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico.

The General Law on Women's Access to a Life Free of Violence has been celebrated by many women's groups and lawmakers who say that its innovative features, which include the regulation and coordination of domestic violence shelters nationwide, mandatory gender reeducation for those who commit gender-based crimes, and a Gender Violence Alert System, modeled after natural-disaster alert mechanisms, will improve services for gender violence survivors and treat the root causes of the problem.

But, even some of the law's supporters worry about its implementation, because it is designated as a general law, which means no federal or state resources have been allocated, and some critics, most notably the Archdiocese of the Catholic Church, argue that they law could further divide the genders.

While laws against family violence do exist in Mexico, they do not treat violence against women as an effect of the inequalities between men and women, said Marcela Lagarde, former senator and feminist anthropologist, one of the law's main proponents. "The majority of cases reported, though they are labeled family violence, are, in fact, instances of violence against women in more that 80 percent of cases," she said.

The new law identifies five kinds of violence: psychological, physical, economic, sexual, and patrimonial violence, or the denial of property or inheritance. It also names the environments in which these forms of violence occur: the family, the community, at work, in educational settings, and public institutions. Defining and recognizing the violence that women suffer is the first step in finding effective ways to eradicate it, said feminist lawyer Martha Figueroa.

The new law also proposes is the creation of a National System to Prevent, Attend to, Sanction, and Eradicate Violence Against Women, which will specify concrete functions and responsibilities for federal and municipal entities with the goal of eradicating violence against women. The system will involve a coalition of Federal Government Secretaries including the Secretaries of Secretaries of Public Education, Health, and Government.

Ending Gender Violence

One of the system's goals is to ensure that abused women whose lives are at risk have a safe place to go, said Lagarde. "In our country, there are many models [of protection], but many are in early stages, and sometimes don't get the kind of results we want," she said.

Currently, most women's shelters are private, run by women's groups and non-profit organizations using various models with varying degrees of effectiveness. "This law establishes a model and protocol for shelters. We don't want women to just go there for a little bit, and have a cup of eucalyptus tea to calm their nerves. We want the state and society to provide them and their families with integral recuperation," said Lagarde.

Dr. Adriana Luna, who has worked with at the only shelter for abused women in San Cristóbal is in favor of the law. She said that the shelter, operated by the Human Development Institute (IDH), sees mainly women in situations of extreme, life-threatening violence, needs more resources in order to attend all of the women who need their services.

Women at the IDH shelter have access to medical, psychological, and legal help and usually stay for about three months, said Luna. In complicated or particularly dangerous cases, La Morada works with shelters in other states to coordinate the care of women and to help them change their identities. "Without a doubt [the new law] is part of the solution to the problem. The law needs to be implemented in its entirety because if not, we run the risk of women being the ones who are imprisoned, not their aggressors," she said.

Under the new law, those convicted of violent acts against women will be obligated to undergo gender reeducation to explore and transform their conception of women, themselves, and relations between the genders. Each state will develop its own method for reeducating aggressors if the law is adopted. Velasquez said such rehabilitation is necessary because "it isn't enough to deal the consequences of violence without analyzing the construction of gender inequality," she said.

The law also creates a "Gender Violence Alert System" to confront widespread gender violence against individuals or communities. This mechanism will function similarly to natural disaster alert systems, and will orchestrate investigations, develop action plans, and designate resources.

The Gender Violence Alert would be implemented in special situations of violence against a certain group of women, or in a certain region or sector. While the alert could be put into place in Juarez-like situations of epidemic murders of women, it could also be instituted if there were several cases of maternal death in the same clinic, or repeated complaints of harassment against schoolgirls, said Figueroa.

"If we had had the Gender Violence Alert for Ciudad Juárez ten years ago, and if we’d been able to develop the set of emergency actions in order to know what was happening and how to confront it, maybe some of the victimized women would be alive today," said Marcela Lagarde.

But not everyone is in favor of the law. In an editorial published in its weekly bulletin, Desde la Fe, on February 1st, The Archdiocese of Mexico criticized the new law for being written with "a clear ideological tint" and asserted that the law had strayed from its original goal of protecting women from violence "to the discourse of 'women's empowerment’ which brings about a certain confrontation between genders, not an equity and balance between the two."p>

The editorial went on to warn that certain aspects of law, such as its prohibition of emotional violence, lack of love, and indifference were "so subjective and bereft of substance that they could lead to abusive attitudes on the part of women without any reciprocal law to defend the rights of males as a gender."

Responding to the criticism, Marcela Lagarde said she recognizes that some males experience gender violence, but that this law only protects women because it is a law especially for women. "n over 90 percent of [gender violence cases], the aggressor is male, and this law is directed at the 90 percent of women who are victims,"she said.

Critics and proponents agree that in order to implement this new law, funds are needed. Though the law was signed after the 2007 federal budget was already approved, lawmakers have proposed several options for its funding, such as using 17 million pesos (about $1.7 million USD) allocated to the a senate commission investigating the murders of women in Ciudad Juarez in order to implement the law. Women senators from the right-leaning National Action Party (PAN) have issued a statement in favor of creating a resource fund in order to implement the law, while other legislators are putting together a proposal that would ask state and municipal governments to use part of their resources to implement the law.

Some gender-violence survivors are cautiously optimistic that, once implemented, the law will have positive effects. Flor Gomez, 33, of San Cristóbal, is a lawyer and human rights activist who survived an attempted rape and murder six months ago. She said she is hopeful, and is glad to see the law's gender focus, " feel that this is a big step ahead, but still, in practical terms, it's going to take a lot to make the authorities conscious of this problem of gender inequality and violence. But the legal framework is being laid."/p>

Lagarde says there is still work to do before the law will be in place nationwide, but she is confident that the proposal is thorough enough to attack both the roots and symptoms of gender-violence. "We aren't trying to make it so there is less violence [against women], the objective is to eliminate violence,"she said.

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