Gender Violence in Latin America and the Caribbean: Legal Challenges for the Protection of Vulnerable Women

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to analyze the problem of gender violence, with emphasis on the Latin American and Caribbean context, considering the legal challenges involved in confronting this human problem. It highlights the complexity of this social pathology, which goes beyond physical aggression to include sexual and psychological aggression, control, manipulation and other subtle ways of coercing and affecting the lives of women and girls. This scenario reveals the multiple adverse effects of gender violence on its victims, including mental disorders, physical and intimate injuries, abortions, sexually transmitted diseases, and even death in the case of femicide. In this sense, the Latin American and Caribbean context, together with its structural problems, becomes a scenario that makes gender violence proliferate, as a consequence of the widening of social gaps and inequalities throughout the region. However, the legal responses and regulatory frameworks are presented as opportunities to prevent, punish and eradicate all forms of violence against women, being a constant challenge for the transformation of society. The method used is hermeneutic-documentary. t is concluded that the fight against gender violence is everyone's task, and that it deserves a comprehensive approach that attacks the underlying causes of this problem through joint actions that lead to social change.