Violence Against Women and Femicide: Sociocybernetic Approach

In spite of the existence of significant regional differences, gender and domestic violence data (including psychological abuse, physical assaults and femicide) are so regular and stable that the phenomenon can be considered ‘structural’ and "systemic". First of all, we should admit that conflicts of interests, a frequent ‘cero-sum game situation frame, structural conditions of stress and imbalance of physical, economic, and/or symbolic power, inadequate emotional and cultural resources to deal with conflict, and inappropriate ‘scripts’ for communication and other forms of face-to-face interaction make intimate partnership a context prone to conflict breeding ‘accidental’ violence.

This paper presents, we present the first steps of our research program is the design of sociocybernetic model.  It gathers all relevant variables at all three structural levels, weighted by their predictive power according to path-analyses. Conflicts are frequent in intimate partner life, but it is only a precondition of violence. Violence and femicide are the result of personal, micro-social and socio-structural and cultural variables that, in some triggering circumstances, get aligned and form a ‘trajectory of accident’ from aggressor to victim.

This vision shows that true severe violence results from a continuous story of abusive ritual interaction oriented to establish and preserve a position of domination and control. More research at micro-sociological level is needed to identify really predictive variables. Path-analysis to weight them a sociocybernetic can help to build explicative-predictive models that could help to design better preventive public policies. This research could also help to move farther away from former ‘pathological culture’ and present ‘burocratic culture’ on intimate-partner gender violence towards a ‘generative culture’ able to foster a social ‘cycle of learning’ among all participants, from couple members through lawyers, psychologists and public officers, to all members of society.