Misogynist society Fernanda Sández 3/6/2008 Nearly 100 women killed as a result of domestic violence last year.

On Oct. 10, 2007, Cristina Fernández became the first woman in Argentine history to be elected president by popular vote. While this initially boosted the confidence of women’s rights organizations, Fernández’s arrival has not seemed to bring any radical change in the conditions for millions of women. Actually, crimes and attacks against women are on the rise.

Last year, the number of women murdered by domestic violence totaled 95 cases, and in just the first month of 2008, nine more women were murdered — figures that human rights organizations believe might be lower than the real ones.

Despite the vast differences in age, social status and lifestyle, these women all shared the common fate of being murdered by their current or former male partners.

In the majority of cases, the crime was a “death foretold,” meaning that it was not the result of an accident or “a sudden seizure by jealousy” — an expression used by defense lawyers in order to clear the charges against their defendants.

Instead, the crime was the expected result of increasing emotional and physical violence that went on for a long time. Though many women file a police report, try to move away from their aggressors and rebuild their lives, they end up dead.

Heightened machismo
According to Nina Brugo Marcó, president of the Women’s Commission in the Buenos Aires Lawyers Association, “the entire judicial system is deeply misogynist and everything seems to be designed to minimize women’s voice.” Bills intended to defend women’s rights, she said, are ignored by legislators and never get passed.

“There is not the least bit of gender awareness and the majority of lawyers do not call aggression towards women for what it really is: a violation of human rights”.

Despite the Argentine’s election of a woman president, the country still seems to back the idea that men are superior to women. To understand why this idea is prevalent, experts say, the first thing to be taken into account is that, beyond the “modern” façade that Argentines love to present to the world, the country’s society is still largely machista.

Apart from laws that fail to include a gender perspective, there are still strong beliefs toward women that translate first into discriminatory practices and may develop later into criminal acts. Thus, women who suffer domestic violence are often persuaded by the police to not file a report and simply fix the problem “within the family.”

Psychologist Irene Meler claims that this heightened discrimination and inherited machismo has been fueled by the economic crisis affecting various sectors of society.

“The current unemployment tendency threatens the role of provider, which has been the masculine symbol of excellence in modern times,” she said. “Men, affected by in their feeling of masculinity, secretly long to be women because that way they would be less pressured to be financially successful.
But at the same time, the desire to be a woman is considered dishonorable and inferior to a male.” Therefore, she argues, violence toward women has increased due to male jealousy of women — who supposedly do not have to face economic demands — and due to their inability to admit their feelings.

State apathy
In November of last year, Amnesty International-Argentina launched the campaign “Domestic violence, a government problem” and presented a plan of action including 14 points against violence in the family.

The plan includes concrete suggestions on how the state can take on an active role in the reversal of this problem of blows first, death later, in order to highlight the importance of women’s rights and raise awareness of the false conception that these rights are less important than men’s.

The United Nations defined femicide seven years ago, calling it “the murder of women as the extreme result of gender-based violence.”

In celebration of International Women’s Day on March 8, the Women in Equality Group (MEI for its initials in Spanish) will give President Fernández an open letter voicing their concern for the different expressions of violence toward women, including “domestic violence, femicide, trafficking of women and girls, sexual abuse and exploitation, harassment at work.”

The letter requests that gender violence be included in the human rights agenda since the state has done little up till now to address the issue.

“We are in total debt with women victims of violence,” admitted Brugo.

“Today gender violence is an issue for debate in universities or academic forums, but in practice it has not figured into the political agenda.” Though Argentina signed the Protocol of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women as well as the Inter-American Convention on the Prevention, Punishment and Eradication of Violence Against Women, women are still dying as a result of domestic violence.

“So whether or not a woman is in power doesn’t seem to change things,” said Brugo. “If there is no real gender awareness, as in this case, this factor is useless.”