Sociocultural context of gender-based violence in local societies

Abstract

The concept of gender-based violence takes into account the dominant significance of specific sociocultural phenomena — masculine and feminine styles of existence in specific traditional societies. This sociocultural context provides an additional notion to the gender-based violence in family, ―legitimizing‖ it in a way. Several researchers study the scale of gender-based violence within modern societies as a consequence of the hierarchical construction of gender relations (Brückner, 2006). In traditional cultures, the gender hierarchy is also regarded as sacred and serves as the basic component of the attributive gender practices of male and female daily life. The article analyzes the causes of gender-based family violence by man over woman in a local society such as Chechen, wherein the normative etiquette of the Adat (oral law), on the one hand was extremely disapproving of such practice of man’s manifestation of his power in a family. It should be noted that there has existed a hierarchical subordination of woman to man in the Adat, however, at the same time, any type of male violence against woman had negative connotations in the public consciousness while characterizing a man as a social unit. The man’s code of honor ―Khonahalla‖ symbolized, along with other sets of valuesand the power over his wife. On the other hand, it would exclude the possibility of physical, psychological and moral violence against her. The article discusses the reasons for the increasing practice of gender-based violence within the Chechen society, in the context of socio-political and cultural transformations of the latest 10-15 years. Specific difficulties of institutional protection of women exposed to domestic violence under these conditions have been studied. An analysis of a subjective assessment of gender-based violence by women themselves has been made on the basis of in-depth interviews among the 5th year female students of Chechen State University. (N17). As a result, we have come to the conclusion that the key causes of the deformation of value bases of family and the increase of gender-based violence against women are problems of the institutional transformation of social and legal institutions in the Chechen society, especially: the violation of steady value norms of the Adats; - simultaneous strengthening, poorly reflected by the society, of Sharia norms, - the peripheral place of the Russian legislation in family-marriage relations.