Cultural Captivity: Stereotypes on Intimate Partner Violence in Guanajuato

Intimate Partner Violence is allocated, often, to the influence of socio-cultural norms based on patriarchal matrix that disrupt the recognition of egalitarian gender roles. In Mexican society, in particular, the binary nature of intimate relationships recognizes to the male role the right to exercise violence against women. The legitimacy of domestic violence against women, such as social and relational regulator, takes place both by the social representations that reproduce images of battered women with stereotypes and prejudices, and the legislative system that makes visible the denial state of justice. In this scenario, the voice of the woman who has suffered violence in intimate relationships is silenced, thus researches that reveal data on the social phenomenon "do not give voice" to the subject. Unlike qualitative research, avoiding statistics, uses as empirical basis a corpus of conversational interviews (in-depth interviews, life stories, non-directive interview) that require more experience and intuition, both in stages of exploration of the empirical basis and in the formulation and monitoring of the hypotheses. Therefore, on the basis of what has been exposed through this contribution there will be analyzed the cases of violence against women in Guanajuato society. For this analysis, it has been chosen the method of narrative semi-structured or free interview. This methodology allows to create a search on the dialogical plan, emphasizing the dimension of signification, in which on the one hand the interviewee tells reconstructing the facts in the introspective way, and on the other the listener identifies with empathic way to learn along with the main character a reality that it is not only individual but collective and shareable. Successively, the research focuses on the analysis of social representations about violence against women. In particular, by conducting qualitative research, it will be explored the collective imagination of the police officers. In fact, they are directly responsible for the prevention against violence and guarantors of justice and the physical integrity and safeguard of citizens, and consequently they should possess knowledge and informational tools both on this phenomenon and on the perception of gender roles uninfluenced by stereotypes and prejudices that justify the stereotypes according to the principle "woman deserves it", because "she was asking for it".

Keywords: Intimate partner violence, Mexico, gender stereotypes, social representations of IPV, biographic interview, sexism

Jel codes: I12, J12

Federica Cirami, Le prigionie culturali: stereotipi sulla violenza nelle relazioni intime a Guanajuato in "PSICOLOGIA DI COMUNITA’" 2/2016, pp 46-56, DOI: 10.3280/PSC2016-002005