Abstract:

Peace and gender studies share a common search for social transformation. However, the relationship between both fields of study wasn’t established clearly until 1995 Beijing´s Conference. It wasn’t anymore just about violence against women, but also about the need to empower women to resolve conflicts, as well as defending peace. From this perspective it is evident that peace can not be built without the effective participation of women.

The above means that peace education, understood as a “an education in the habits and competences that help us to live together, and that implies achieving equality and eliminating the domination of some individuals over others” [2], needs to ask about the difference between the learned discourse about gender violence and the real perception of the abuse men exercise on women all over the world.

Because of this, lead by Tencologico de Monterrey and the Universidad de Granada, a survey was designed with other participating educative institutions from Mexico and Spain, to research the differential space, concordance and non-concordance between these two dimensions –discourse and real perception of abuse–. 320 teenagers participated in this survey with a mean age of 17.36 years old, through three questionnaires: scale of myths of love [3], attitudes towards gender and violence [4], and the scale of the perception of abuse [5].

Through crossing the information from these questionnaires we were able to establish an important discordance between both countries on the learned discourse on gender violence and the perception of the real abuse. This is viewed as an important finding to reassess the design of educative interventions that set out not only from a discourse which conceptualizes and condemns gender violence but also takes into consideration the exploration of concrete practices that are not perceived as abuse, focused mainly on: sexism and the justification of gender violence on biological factors, as well as the assessment women’s work and how they too should receive consideration for important positions.

References:
[1] Díez, M.E. y Mirón, M. D. (2010) “Paz y Género. Debates y coincidencias sobre un binomio imperfecto˝ en Muñoz, Francisco Pax Orbis: Complejidad y conflictividad de la paz. (pp. 104-105). España. Editorial de la Universidad de Granada.
[2] Bastidas, A. J. Género y Educación para la paz: Tejiendo utopías posibles. Revista Venezolana de Estudios de la Mujer. Julio-Diciembre 2008, Vol 13. No 31. pp 81.
[3] Barrón, D. Martínez-Iñigo, P. De Paul, y C. Yela. “Romantic beliefs and myths in Spain”. The Spanish Journal of Psychology, vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 64-73. 1999.
[4] Díaz-Aguado, M. J y Martínez, R. “La construcción de la igualdad y la prevención de la violecia contra la mujer desde la educación secundaria”. Madrid: Instituto de la Mujer. 2001.
[5] Luzón, J. M. Ramos, E., Recio, P. y de la Peña, E. M. “Factores de riesgo y protección en la prevención contra la violencia de género en la pareja”. Madrid: Instituto Andaluz de la Mujer, Consejería para la Igualdad y Bienestar Social, Junta de Andalucía. 2010.

Keywords:

Peace education, gender violence.