Another form of Gender Violence: Instrumentalization. "Where does it hurt the most?"

Abstract

Our society is still under the blueprint of patriarchy and male chauvinist culture and, as a consequence, gender violence shows. Usually, behind all of the forms, we can always find psychological violence, more invisible but more frequent. One of the mechanisms used in psychological gender violence is the instrumentalization, specially used through children. Therefore, with this research it is intended to highlight the importance of psychological violence as an essential part of gender violence, as well as analyze children instrumentalization as a way to use psychological violence towards women. To answer it, this research has been designed, set in Andalucía, in order to obtain this information through interviews to professionals who work with women and children victims of gender violence. Firstly, in this document it is presented an insight of this research set in the provinces of Seville and Cádiz. Thus, from this insight we can conclude that, despite its frequency, not enough research have been done on instrumentalization. Also, an improvement on judicial coverage and a stronger specific intervention from social work’s professionals is needed.