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 Editorials | Issues | March 2007 
Mexican Machos Resort To Fists Against Strong Women
 Franz Smets - DPA
Many Mexican women continue to experience domestic violence from a very early age, even as the world celebrated the 30th anniversary of International Women's Day on Thursday.
Cecilia, 40, was beaten by her husband for 18 years, twice a week - always when he had had too much to drink and had been in a motel with his secretary. Only after putting up with such behaviour for so long did she find courage in her desperation to report him and get a divorce.
Her ex husband - an influential man - sought revenge and managed to get Cecilia's monthly income reduced to about 460 dollars.
This happens to many women in Mexico, and most of them do not defend themselves because they are financially dependent.
The fact that they earn less than their male colleagues is hardly the most significant factor. Most have less education, they are beaten, raped, exploited and degraded.
The mistreatment of women and the over-blown importance of men starts very early on in Mexico. Many children see their mothers beaten up by their fathers, and replicate the pattern as adults - boys grow up to hit, girls grow up to be hit. That is how psychiatrists explain it in marriage counselling.
Strong and independent women are particularly vulnerable to being beaten by their boyfriends. A study reported Wednesday in the newspaper El Universal said that 31.5 per cent of girls between age 13 and 18 reported abuse, and noted that self-confident teenage girls were especially singled out for physical, sexual and psychological violence.
According to the study, many teenagers hit their 13-year-old girlfriends because they feel inferior, or simply because they feel entitled to use violence.
"Violence against women is the human rights violation which is most widespread in Latin America," the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) said in its most recent report.
These problems are not new to the public in Mexico, and the fight against them is on the political agenda. Conservative President Felipe Calderon who was inaugurated in December appointed several women to join his government, and four of his 19 ministers are female.
Even the old though debilitated Party of the Institutional Revolution (PRI) - which held power continuously for over 70 years until 2000 - has now chosen as its chairman a strong woman, Beatriz Paredes. And the number of women presidents and defence ministers across Latin America has been rising.
But the financial daily El Financiero reported on Wednesday that only around 400,000 women hold posts of leadership in Mexico, a country with 104 million people. The absolute majority of Mexican women continue to live in the shadow and the service of men.
The slogan "there is no development without equality between women and men" - omnipresent to mark International Women's Day - falls flat on its face in many sectors of Mexican society.
In Mexico and also in Central America, violence against women knows no barriers of wealth or social status. The machos do not hit their women because they are poor or desperate.
In Mexico City - a metropolis with 20 million people - violence against women is evenly spread across rich and poor neighbourhoods. Women can temporarily seek protection and a lawyer through shelters devoted to the cause.
In its posters, the National Women's Institute calls on battered women to change their lives.
"One day I decided ... not one more blow! And I reported him," the woman pictured in the poster says.
This has had consequences - the percentage of divorced couples is currently at 10 per cent, compared to 3 per cent in the 1970s. The number of divorces have doubled in the past ten years - there were around 36,000 divorces granted by the courts in 1995 and over 70,000 in 2005.
Along with the male's refusal to contribute to the family income, violence is the main cause cited in petitions for divorce, and most sentences favour women. |
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