Gender Violence

Abstract

After four decades of nominal displacement and extension of the semantic field, the December 28th Act, about Integral Protection Measures against Gender Violence, institutionalizes the concept of "gender violence", to describe the violence perpetrated by men over women within couples. Its two components are important, because the name of "violence" implies to admit the existence of relational behaviors that go beyond the level of "acceptable." Moreover, to qualify this violence as "gender violence" supposes the admission of its structural nature. The origin of these relational behaviors that go beyond the level of "acceptable" lies in the position of subordination of female to male. However, this threshold varies in time and space and therefore in this article it will be shown how the levels of tolerance of certain behaviors in couples have been modulated throughout history and leading to denominations up to the designation -with its advantages and disadvantages- of "gender violence".