Gender based violence, from society to family. Discussions of a hypothesis and the efficaciousness of various interventions

Our society continues to minimize atrocities perpetrated against women, especially acts of domestic violence, which constitute the most common form of violence against women worldwide. In fact, between 16 and 41 per cent of women are physically assaulted by a male partner in an intimate relationship (Crow, 2000). In spite of a huge development of an international agenda put forth by the Declaration and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) promoted by women’s rights activists (Hosken, 1981), and from which the Commission on the Status of Women Agenda (CSWA), World Conferences on Women and European Daphne Programme (Bunch, 1995; Larson, 1995; Zulficar, 1995), originate, the problem still persists and it is a challenge to try to go from policy making to creating hands-on interventions that produce tangible results in mitigating gender violence. Furthermore, despite the launch of the third wave of feminism consisting in the successful presence of an international women’s rights movement in academia, real women around the world are still trafficked as sex slaves, forced into marriage, vitriolaged, sexually assaulted during war by soldiers and in daily life, they are mobbed, controlled, denied the freedom of reproduction, stoned to death, bought and sold, persecuted, abused by their partner and killed (Vlachova, 2005). These actions deny their human identity. Women are thus seen as objects and are still denied the opportunity for self-realization both refusing/limiting their access to social/political decisions and are prevented from making deeply personal choices in their private lives (MacKinnon, 2006). This volume discusses some of these issues presenting both the development of a discussion with respect to the genesis of the problem and the research results obtained by the psychosocial, clinical and sociological interventions designed to address the problem or resolve the consequences arising from it. Our contribution includes the papers discussed at the international conference, held in Padua at the end of the Daphne III Empower Project, involving Italy, Albania, Austria, Bulgaria, Portugal and Romania. Our action-research intervention led by the University of Padua utilized psychodramatic techniques to promote the empowerment of women victims of domestic violence. The work is divided into two parts: the first part encompasses the articles which have developed into an entire and complete course of analysis or research, the second part includes the section “Family nodes,” where crucial points of our work in progress are discussed.