The escalation of violence of all kinds against women in indicator rates is not something local. On the contrary. It is a global, naturalized, silenced and democratic phenomenon, in that it affects women of all social classes, ages and races, presenting an unparalleled intersectionality, while also revealing what is already expected: the most impacted are poor, Black women with low levels of education and, in many cases, some form of disability.
In Brazil, Spain, Colombia, the numbers are rising. Violence against women is not modest even in countries considered more advanced, showing that patriarchy remains a strengthened structure of power.
This is directly related to the growth of the right and the extreme right, which attempts to discredit women’s struggle for gender equity. This includes hate speech, fake news, and the growing “red pill” movement of men who defend “dominant masculinity,” further fueling the narrative of objectifying female bodies and souls.
The scenario of wars underway in the Middle East, in Eastern Europe, and the North American interventions in Latin American countries such as Cuba and Venezuela impose yet another sacrifice on women, protected under International Humanitarian Law, such as the duty to protect themselves and their families. In these contexts, women and girls become even more vulnerable and susceptible to violence.
The struggle in the academic-scientific field is no different. Women constantly need to prove their qualifications, productivity and results in an effort to minimize confrontation and gender discrimination in science. In this context, information becomes a powerful ally for female empowerment.
The growing manifestation of hatred and the attempt to once again direct women toward a place of submission recalls a well-known but never diminished statement by Simone de Beauvoir: “It takes only a political, economic, or religious crisis for women’s rights to be called into question. These rights are never acquired for good. You will have to remain vigilant throughout your life” (BEAUVOIR, 1974, quoted in MONTEIL, 2008, p. 39).
In this sense, the purpose of this symposium is to bring together research and reflections from scholars on this phenomenon and to broadly discuss it based on experiences that engage with the Latin American and South-South context. It is necessary to foster more collective spaces for analyzing this universal occurrence, so that we may together seek new ways to curb it.
Hence its alignment with the third thematic line of the 59th ICA, “The Past Always Present,” which “allows us to understand that societies are built upon the inheritance of their histories. Historical memory, struggles for identity, and the persistence of social differences are current issues in twenty-first-century discourse.”
