Mexico City, December 2, 2022.- In the framework of the International Day against Gender Violence, the Universidad Panamericana held a joint conference and lecture between the Mexico City and Guadalajara campuses.
In Mexico City, Dr. José Alberto Ross, Director of the Institute of Humanities; Mtro. Luis Alberto García Barrón, Psychologist graduated from UNAM with a master's degree in Political and Social Studies and Dr. María José García Castillejos, who acted as moderator, were present.
Victor Bautista, Industrial Engineer with a specialty in Quality Management Systems from the UP, and Dr. Rodolfo Castro, Researcher for the Institute of Marriage and the Family, were in Guadalajara.
The role of men
During the discussion entitled The Role of Men in the Face of Violence against WomenThe panelists spoke about feminism and the way in which, from their fields of expertise, each one collaborates in some way to the feminist struggle. They also talked about the importance of teaching men the qualities of caring for women in the professional, family and social spheres.
Dr. Ross spoke about the gestation of the GIEF (Interdisciplinary Group of Feminist Studies), a space that promotes a feminist study centered on the person: "this space was created to give cause to the research carried out by teachers and researchers of the Universidad Panamericana", he explained.
Victor Bautista, who developed a theory on the importance of educating boys as a fundamental solution to eradicate the violence that some men exercise against women, spoke about some of the causes that generate machismo in Mexico and how when a man finds himself in conflict with himself, this type of attitude arises: "the reactions are violent or unbalanced and women and children are paying the price".
Garcia, as coordinator of studies of the School of Philosophy at UP, explained how the faculty has sought to ally itself with feminist issues: "as men we have to exercise the role of allies inscribed in the leadership that, in this case, GIEF has assumed within the Universidad Panamericana and in particular I have to do it from social psychology ".
Castro spoke about the definition of violence, from what perspectives it can be approached and how it has been transformed into a cultural phenomenon. He also spoke about a research he conducted eight years ago, where he came to the conception that violence is a fact and where he found determining variables in gender violence and how they interact with each other .
Vicarious violence
This was followed by the keynote lecture Vicarious Violencegiven by Ingrid Tapia, a lawyer dedicated to strategic litigation in defense of victims of discrimination in all its forms . In her lecture, she spoke about her litigation and mobilization efforts to achieve recognition of the need to increase penalties in cases of vicarious violence and procedural dangerousness of maintenance debtors.
Upon taking the floor, he pointed out the importance of having a state that provides National Security against any type of violence; later, he contextualized this problem in terms of gender violence: "we have a big problem in the nation if we are being killed one by one".
She also explained that there are different types of violence against women and, as a result of this, there are different types of feminist movements. In this way, she assured that, in spite of the existence of different causes, all women must be united regarding violence against women: "in the issue of violence against women, we are all one, we must all be one".
To conclude, Tapia reflected on the importance of defending women and children: "the damage you do to a child in its infancy or to a woman throughout her life has no restitution, it is a damage that not even money can pay for (...), the best gift a nation can give its children is to give them the opportunity to grow up with a mother and a father".
