Approaches to vulnerability in the 21st century.

by Christine Marlet | Mar 8, 2025

TO RECOGNIZE, MAKE VISIBLE AND STRENGTHEN THE IMPACT OF WOMEN IN THE FACE OF THE VULNERABILITIES OF THE 21ST CENTURY,

Maria Cruz Diaz De Teran in Aproximaciones a la vulnerabilidad, Larena C Bolzon José Carlos Ortiz Muggenburg, compilacion, Editorial EPAEP, 2024.

Text by Ma cruz Diaz De Teran, Instituto Cultura y Sociedad University of Navarra

Throughout these pages I will outline a series of questions that we have been working on for some time now in the research group that I coordinate at the Culture and Society Institute of the University of Navarra (Spain). These approaches have been enriched with the comments and challenges that arose in the two round tables that took place within the Axis Women and Vulnerabilities of the Interuniversity Agenda Family and Vulnerabilities, organized by the Austral University (Argentina) and UPAEP (Mexico).

WAYS OF VIOLATING WOMEN IN THE 21ST CENTURY

Having established as a starting point the lack of recognition of the leading role that women have had and still have on too many occasions, both in the private and public spheres, and that this has led to many of the vulnerabilities they have suffered and continue to suffer, I will now outline some of the specific forms of violation that still occur today. Some of them were discussed at the round table we organized last October. As is well known, November 25 is the day that the United Nations has declared as the “International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women”. On many occasions, this type of violence tends to be reduced to physical abuse, but the actions and the types of violence it encompasses go much further.

The ways in which violence is applied against women and girls take many different forms. UN Women, the United Nations organization dedicated to promoting gender equality and women’s empowerment, classifies these types into seven blocks: violence against women and girls in the private sphere, sexual violence, online or digital violence, femicide, human trafficking, female genital mutilation and child marriage (each of these blocks comprises different actions).

We put in this blog article what Mr; Cruz Diaz De Teran writes about femicide, human trafficking, female genital mutilation and child marriage. For the other topics, we suggest you read the pages dedicated to these issues here

FEMINICIDES

Femicide is the intentional murder of a woman because she is a woman. In most cases, femicides are committed by partners or ex-partners of the victim, and are the culmination of a process of constant abuse, threats or intimidation in the home, sexual violence, or situations in which women are in a situation of inferiority with respect to their partner in terms of power or availability of resources. The latest Report of October 2023 prepared by the Gender Equality Observatory for Latin America and the Caribbean of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) indicates that “According to specialized national surveys in ten countries in the region, between 42% and 79% of women (around two out of three) have been victims of gender-based violence in different settings. In addition, on average one in three women has been a victim of or experiences physical and/or sexual violence by a perpetrator who was or is her partner, which carries the risk of lethal violence, according to the WHO. This corresponds to 88 million women over the age of fifteen in Latin America and the Caribbean”(2).

TRAFFICKING IN PERSONS FEMALE GENITAL MUTILATION AND CHILD MARRIAGE

Human trafficking is the acquisition and exploitation of persons using means such as force, fraud, coercion or deception. Trafficking continues to disproportionately affect women and girls. According to a recent UN report, out of every ten victims detected worldwide, four are women or girls.(3) The same report states that in 2020, trafficking for sexual exploitation was one of the most prevalent forms of exploitation detected.

Women constituted about two-thirds of detected victims of trafficking for sexual exploitation and girls, one-quarter(4). Widespread impunity and the lack of adequate responses to trafficking remain a dramatic problem. Female genital mutilation consists of altering or injuring the female genitalia for non-medical reasons. According to UN Women data, girls are one-third less likely to undergo female genital mutilation today than they were 30 years ago. However, by 2024, nearly 4.4 million girls are at risk of female genital mutilation worldwide.(5) Child, early and forced marriages and unions, meanwhile, compromise the future of girls and women around the world, depriving them of decision-making power over their lives, disrupting their education, making them more vulnerable to violence, discrimination and abuse, and preventing their full participation in the economic, political and social spheres. They are a harmful practice and a manifestation of persistent and widespread gender-based violence in the Latin American and Caribbean region, affecting one in five girls.(6)

How do we prevent all these forms of violence against women? The answer is not simple and, moreover, it is cross-cutting because it involves many areas. On the eve of the “International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women”, the Executive Secretary of ECLAC said this year that “feminicidal violence can be prevented with comprehensive and forceful state responses”. He added that “Profound transformations are urgently needed to ensure that women and girls in our region can live lives free of violence”.18 I believe that, if his words are true, the measures he proposes are undoubtedly necessary, but insufficient. Responses to vulnerabilities require collaborative actions that go beyond state actions.

THE ROLE OF FAMILIES

The axis that I coordinate, Women and Vulnerabilities, is part of the Inter-University Agenda Family and Vulnerabilities, so the time has come to ask what role families have to play in this issue. From the beginning, I maintain that the key lies in recognizing and valuing women. We must start with ourselves, since charity, properly understood, begins with ourselves. I said at the beginning, and I repeat, what is recognized, what is valued, is not mistreated. Likewise, I said that the public sphere is as important as the private sphere.

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(1) https://www.unwomen.org/es/what-we-do/ending-violence-against-women/faqs/types-of-violence)

(2) ECLAC “Violencia feminicida en cifras”, October 2023, https://www.cepal.org/es/taxonomy/term/8400

(3) United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). Global Report on Trafficking in Persons (2022) https://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/glotip/2022/GLOTiP_2022_web.pdf

(4) ibidem

(5) https://www.un.org/es/observances/female-genital-mutilation-day

(6) https://www.un.org/es/observances/ending-violence-against-women-day

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Maria Cruz Diaz De Teran

Profesora Titular de Filosofia del Derecho

Approaches to vulnerability in the 21st century.

Gender Equality, Research and Analysis General

Dueños de nuestro destino: Cómo conciliar la vida profesional, familiar y personal

All, Research and Analysis General, Work-Life Integration

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