Gender based partner violence: Constructions of narratives of women sentenced to prison

Abstract

This work presents results of a wider empirical research of the issue of gender based violence and violence against women as a problem rooted in structural systems of the patriarchate and the ideology of gender inequality. The goal of the research that was carried out in the Correctional Facility for Women in Požarevac, is to reassess theoretical concepts of “structural violence”, “cultural violence” and “patriarchal terrorism”. Revised are gender and patriarchal ideology, which gives legitimacy to direct and structural violence in a manner that makes it acceptable and unrecognizable as violence. Systematic violence from a partner is rooted in the patriarchal tradition which gives men the right to control their women by using not only physical violence, but maybe even more present forms of violence, like: economic violence, emotional violence, isolation, threats and many other forms of control. Narratives of women who suffered violence and killed their bullying partners, reveal their perceptions of the problem and construct a certain reality in which they were living prior to their arrival in the prison. To stay in a prison is undoubtedly a special kind of experience, and the initial event is anew survived by the probationers and “processed” while they are trying to find sense in their new living circumstances of staying in the prison. Certain social constructs and discourses can be recognized, among other things, in their narratives. [Project of the Serbian Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development, Grant no. 177018: Transformacija kulturnih identiteta u savremenoj Srbiji i Evropska unija]

Keywords

• gender based violence
• homicide
• structural violence
• cultural violence
• patriarchal terrorism