Sartucue. Romani Feminists Organizing in the Struggle Against Gender Violence

Many women and men are struggling united worldwide for overcoming gender violence and scientific literature is shedding light on how these allies are occuring in different social contexts. However, Romani women have traditionaly been portrayed as deprived from their capacity of agency to organise and foster a change. In this way, analyses offered by non-Roma women on the reason why Roma women suffer gender violence attribute the causes to the cultural aspect. As a consequence, protocols of intervention implemented in institutional organisms oriented to victims of gender violence are many times colour-blind and not done in dialogue with end-users, what makes that Romani women and women of other etnhic minority background encounter some barriers that prevent them to access to these institutional structures of help. In order to respond to these challenges, in the present paper we present preliminary findings of the reserch project SARTUCUE (together with you in Romany language) (funded by the Spanish Plan of Research, 2016-2019) which is aimed at studying gender violence among the Roma. SARTUCUE explores barriers to accessing services for victims and analyze the strategies developed by the community itself to deal with situations of domestic violence and its prevention. The project is analyzing the key elements that have allowed the Roma to create a series of strategies to address and prevent domestic violence in their community. Findings are in relation to the informal strategies emerged in the very networks of Roma families. We deepen in those strategies that have a significant role in the organization and mobilization of the Roma community, focusing on the role of the Evangelical Church of Philadelphia, since it is de facto a site for meeting and social cohesion and where principles condemning any kind of violent behavior are promoted.