In the Dominican Republic it is known that women are the head of the household and this role can be the cause of many tensions between man and wife. Some men are intimated by a woman’s power, causing them to feel emasculated. It is a type of empowerment for women in the United States to be the head of household and the feminist movement has recirculated into society. In the Dominican Republic, gender-based violence, specifically against women is a huge issue related to cultural norms influenced by “machismo” – a form of aggressive masculinity in Latin culture.. In Dr. Angel Pichardo’s lecture on Gender Violence, he spoke of what it meant to be a “good” mother in the Dominican Republic in comparison to the United States. The children in the Dominican Republic are likely to live at home with their mothers until the age of 35 or until they get married and in the United States once a child turns 18 they are to move out of their parent’s house and live on their own. I can definitely agree with this phenomenon when it comes to Latino families in general because I am Mexican and Puerto Rican and I did not move out of my mom’s house until the age of 24. I never felt the need to or rushed by my mom to move out of her house because I was comfortable. This is intended to show how nurturing the Dominican mother is to her child and yet there is still a problem with gender violence in their culture.
From Dr. Pichardo’s lecture, we learned that in the Dominican Republic if a woman seeks a restraining order against her abuser, the physical restraining order is GIVEN TO THE WOMAN to give to the abuser, and then she has the option to leave him. This approach is very different from how a restraining order is processed in the United States where the police serve the restraining order to the man and can escort him off the property, so the woman is not harmed. There is nothing protecting a woman here in the Dominican Republic from her husband/abuser. According to Dr. Pichardo, the abuser will most likely not obey the restraining order or he will kill her if she decides to leave. This puts women in a vulnerable and dangerous place by making them give the man the restraining order. Many women stay because they believe praying and giving their man more love will stop the cycle of abuse, but the truth is that in most cases these approaches will not stop the abuse. Dr. Pichardo talked about an intervention he has been working on with men. The intervention focuses on masculinity and how men can reflect on what he calls the ‘Paradigm of Masculine Solidarity’ which includes how men perceive the body, sexuality, risks, and relationships. The intervention uses these foci in a way to not destroy a man but build them up and keep them from committing acts of violence against others. Topics of violence need to be addressed in an appropriate, but respectful manner so as to not provoke the man into feeling anger. Dr. Pichardo’s approach states that rather than accusing the man, they should be questioned about their reasons and reflect on what could have been done differently.