Segovia, May 2 (EFE) be treated or the repression of often more conservative environments.
The lawyer Amalia Gozálvez has presented this Tuesday in Segovia some of the conclusions of her study “Gender Violence in the rural area of Segovia: Impact on the victims and their daughters and sons”, in which she concludes that the sexist violence that is exercised in towns “has a greater burden”, is “more difficult” and “suffers more” than that which can be experienced in urban environments.
Sexist violence in rural areas
After interviewing almost one hundred women victims of gender violence residing in towns with less than 10,000 inhabitants, Gozálvez has pointed out that, on many occasions, there is an “idyllic idea” of rural areas as environments in which neighbors are very close and a “spontaneous solidarity” always arises.
However, she has given the concrete example of many women who live in towns of 500 inhabitants where everyone knows each other, and where, when they go to file a complaint, the civil guard of the post knows her husband and “is drinking beer ” with the.
“That is not an facility to file a complaint, that is a difficulty, because it can happen that this civil guard, with his best intentions, tells him ‘give him another chance,'” the specialist recounted.
Unreported sexist violence
In fact, 55% of the women interviewed for this study indicated that they did not inform the authorities of the events they suffered and, of these, 45% indicated that they did not do so because the Civil Guard of their town knew their partner. .
Amalia Gozálvez has presented her study on Tuesday, carried out thanks to a scholarship financed by the Provincial Council of Segovia endowed with 8,000 euros, in an appearance attended by the Minister of Family and Equal Opportunities of the Junta de Castilla y León, Elizabeth White.
Lack of royal support
She has called attention to the lack of a real support network for the victims: “Women, when we have asked them, in small towns, ‘Do you have someone to talk to about your problems?’ They say no. Or, ‘Do you have somewhere to go in dire need?’ They say no”, assured the author of the work.
The lawyer has also pointed out a great lack of knowledge about what gender violence is in small towns, which worsens depending on the distance these nuclei are from the largest municipalities.
The biggest problems it has detected in this regard are in women over 60, since many of them recognize the particular events they have suffered but do not see themselves as victims of this type of violence.
This happens, according to the researcher, because for them gender violence is “being beaten up and left devastated” and the rest of the physical and psychological aggressions is something “very assumed”, which falls within the “normal” of cohabitation as a couple.
But this lawyer has also called attention to a clear “regression” in younger people, among whom she has detected “boys who are much more controlling” than before with respect to mobile phones or the social life of their partner.
Another problem that Gozálvez highlighted during her presentation is related to foreign women residing in rural areas, especially those of Moroccan origin, since, according to her, many spend long periods of time in the towns without learning Spanish or interacting with the rest of the neighbors.
This worries her “very much” because when these women have denounced having suffered gender violence it has been because they have reached “excessively painful” extremes. EFE