Two decades after the law against Gender Violence promoted by the then President of the Government, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, a debate that seemed largely outdated is reopening: does sexist violence exist? Is intrafamily violence the same (expression legal) than gender violence? Questions put on the table after the denial of the first by the far-right formation Vox and that the PP, in accordance with the pacts reached in certain institutions, pays, contributing to the spread of doubt. But the answers are clear. Yes, sexist violence exists and no, gender violence is not the same as domestic violence.
But what is gender violence? This aggression that has its motivations “in the cultural references that lead to understanding that men can control and dominate women through their impositions and, even, aggressions with the aim of correcting or punishing the behaviors of women that they consider that they do not fit their role, according to how these men interpret and apply the macho cultural references”, explains Miguel Lorente, forensic and collaborator of the Observatory of Gender and Domestic Violence of the General Council of the Judiciary.
In fact, the gender perspective is an “essential” legal concept, and this is seen as both internal laws and international agreements that Spain has ratified, such as the European Social Charter or the Istanbul Convention, recalls the Association of Women Judges.
And the domestic? Lorente answers: it is that which occurs within the relationships of coexistence as a consequence of conflicts or problems derived from family dynamics, such as inheritance problems, economic problems, use of shared spaces or properties… It does not have an androcentric cultural construction nor their goal is to dominate or subdue anyone. This means that any member of the family can act as an aggressor or be a victim of this violence, since the reason for it is not in the roles assigned to the different identities, but in the behavior of each person who intervenes in the family conflict. .
Gender violence is a reality endorsed by the numerous reports and rulings of the Constitutional Court, the Supreme Court and the rest of the courts, as well as and, especially, the Observatory of Gender and Domestic Violence of the CGPJ that has been studying both types of violence for decades. aggressions, with a clear result: there is sexist violence and it is not comparable with domestic violence neither by motivations nor by dimensions. The percentage of murders due to gender violence over the total number of deaths within the couple is 94.2% in 2022. 50 women murdered by their ex-partners in 2021 (latest detailed report available), one every seven days; 6 murders of men at the hands of their wives, one every two months.
And victims? The latest data collected by the INE leave no room for doubt. In 2022, 33,209 women were victims of gender violence compared to 8,151 of domestic violence. Of the latter, 3,202 are men and almost 5,000 women (60.7%). In the latter case, most of the attacks occur from children to parents, 37% (3,208); 26.7% from parents to children (2,316) and 26% from one sibling to another. And 154 attacks on grandparents have been reported. In all types of violence, convicted offenders receive their corresponding penalties according to the law (36,161 men in 2022 in the case of gender violence; 7,022 in domestic violence).
The dimension of both forms of violence is evident. So much so that even the Supreme Court magistrate, Vicente Magro (former PP senator), does not hesitate to describe sexist violence as “gender terrorism.” Lorente believes that this debate only seeks to make a reality invisible in favor of a machismo that has been reactivated in recent years. “Denying the existence of gender-based violence is done in countries like Afghanistan, but doing so within the EU and the Council of Europe means profoundly ignoring the international legal advances on gender and human rights achieved on this side of the world” , says Gloria Poyatos, president of the Spanish Association of Women Judges.
