The Coordination Unit against Violence against Women of the Government Delegation in Navarre held today in Civican the seventh day on Violence against Women that is part of the commemorative events of the 25N, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. A day in which “invisible violence” has been addressed, those machista expressions less evident but that leave equally deep traces in the women who suffer them.
The opening of the day was in charge of the Government delegate in Navarre. Alicia Echeverría has referred to the “normalization of violence” that occurs in society when “we immunize ourselves against the pain and suffering of others”, when “what previously shocked us, over time begins to become invisible before our eyes”. And he has stressed that this is something that cannot be allowed in any area. “We cannot remain sleepy in the face of what is happening in our environment,” said Echeverría.
The Government delegate has reviewed some of the policies developed by the central executive regarding the prevention of male violence and the protection of victims. He has thus referred to the Spain Plan to protect you against male violence, which has extended comprehensive care services to all potential victims of all forms of violence against women.
Care and protection devices have been modernized and expanded, both ATENPRO and COMETA; and 24-hour Comprehensive Care Services for victims of Sexual Violence have been created, such as the one that came into operation in Pamplona last April. A Royal Decree has been approved that regulates financial aid to victims of sexual violence; the National Office against Sexual Violence has been launched; and work is being carried out on the implementation of the System of Registration, Monitoring and Prevention of Sexual Crimes, VioSex.
The Ministry of the Interior, for its part, has implemented a new version of VioGén, the Comprehensive Monitoring System in Cases of Gender Violence, more intuitive and easier to handle; and is preparing a new instruction with a new protocol for risk assessment.
Echeverría has valued in a very positive way the extension of the Violeta Points, which are already more than 600 throughout Navarre. “And we are working to keep this network growing and to make more and more safe spaces for the victims of male violence,” he said.
Invisible violence
The first presentation of the day was given by Amaia Nausia, PhD in History and professor at the Public University of Navarre. She has reflected on the construction of the ideal of femininity and the institutional and patriarchal violence suffered by women throughout history. A story that, he said, we have been told incompletely, since he has turned his back on half the population.
For her part, Beatriz Ranea, PhD in Sociology and Anthropology and professor at the Complutense University of Madrid, spoke about prostitution. And, specifically, about the demand of men that, he has pointed out, disappears from the story when it comes to prostitution. “They disappear and the focus is placed on the women,” he said. They are men from all walks of life, professions or ideologies, and they have in common a model of patriarchal masculinity, a “pay to exercise power”.
Judge Esther Erice, a member of the General Council of the Judiciary and president of the Observatory against Domestic and Gender Violence of the Judiciary, spoke about vicarious violence in the judicial sphere. He explained that in vicarious gender violence the aggressor seeks to harm the victim, usually through his sons and daughters. It is a violence that is always conscious, in which there is no room for recklessness, and that generates extreme damage, although there are more subtle expressions of vicarious violence.
For her part, the lawyer of the Service of Attention to Women of the College of Lawyers of Pamplona Maribel Martínez has referred to economic violence as another form of abuse. It is linked to control through access to money in its multiple manifestations or to non-payment of pensions, with the aim of generating a dependency on the aggressor that complicates for the victim to break the circle of violence. He has also recalled that the indemnities do not repair the damage caused by the abuser, but help to get out of this violence.
The day ended with the presentation of Sofía Remón, psychologist of the Unit of Attention to Victims with Intellectual Disability of Navarra. He spoke precisely about violence against women with intellectual disabilities. He has referred to the double vulnerability they suffer, because they are victims of violence, and because of their disability, which makes it difficult for them to identify the abuse and take the step of denouncing because they feel that their credibility will be doubted.