The Difficult "Cohabitation": Gender Violence and Religious Culture in a Mediterranean City

The paper aims to highlight the differences and similarities between the different religious cultures (especially Christian and Muslim) in relation to the way in which men and women are defined with respect to gender stereotyped patterns, to shapes relationships between the sexes, to models of sociability, to models of management time and space. It is assumed that gender violence is closely linked to an ingrained culture that considers "natural" man's dominion, guaranteeing countless benefits and privileges and sanctioning such a domain with role assignments and expectations rigidly and sometimes violently default. This paper reports the results of a research carried out in Palermo under the project SUNIA Geel 2, European project (coordinated locally by CESIE) co-funded by the Daphne III Programme (DG Justice) that aims to reduce domestic violence against women and children belonging to ethnic minorities marginalized. The fieldwork was carried out through the methodological approach of visual sociology: in pictures (collage or painting) the parties involved have expressed their views about family roles, forms of relationship between the sexes, the ways in which is expressed violence within the family.