Gender-based violence against women in Barranquilla: Dynamics, memories and public policy

Abstract

This article is a summary of an extract of the research project Urban violence and memories: a comparative look at five Colombian cities (1980-2012) led by the sociologist Álvaro Guzmán Barney and funded by Colciencias and the Centro Nacional de Memoria Histórica (National Center of Historical Memory). It focuses on the issue of gender-based violence in Barranquilla between 1980 and 2012 from a socio-historical, memory, and public policy perspective. Its main objective is to describe and explain the magnitude, dynamics, and impacts of gender-based violence in Barranquilla. Through a descriptive quantitative and qualitative focus, we developed a research process with three methodological levels of analysis in order to approach the phenomenon. In the first level of empirical verification of the social scope, we collected statistical data of women murdered by their partners and of nonfatal cases, occurred during the years of study in the city of Barranquilla, through various sources such as the Criminalidad magazine of the National Police, the Forensis Journal of Legal Medicine, the Unified Information System of the District Security Fund of Barranquilla, and the press information, as well as of some NGOs. A second level of societal assessment, in which we recovered some of the memories of women victims of gender-based violence through a focus group and semi-structured interviews. And a third level of the properly sociological scientific explanation, which was developed as a transversal process of the research, since it focused on recognizing a theoretical tradition that analyzes the central variables of research: violence, gender violence, memory and public policies. The main results show how gender-based violence is articulated to the patriarchal culture, the importance of the memory as a political and personal process of resilience to overcome the burden it implies, and how disjointed and conjunctural local public policies have been in order to face the problem.