Why? Gender-based violence and its roots

Gender-based violence is not merely a phenomenon that can be traced back to a simple sum of tragic individual acts; rather, it is also the tip of the iceberg of deep structures within the human psyche, within society, and within the symbolic imaginary that generate it and allow it to persist.

In the face of the spread of violence, we ask ourselves how it is possible, where it comes from; we wonder whether a core of destructive aggression might also reside in those who consider themselves exempt from it. Intuitively, we sense that each individual act of violence has deep roots and represents the most dramatic manifestation of underlying tectonic forces operating beneath the surface.

The French philosopher and anthropologist René Girard, one of the greatest scholars of violence, showed how violence has always been intrinsic to every society. According to Girard, we always desire “through the other”: not objects in themselves, but what we see desired by those around us. This mechanism produces rivalry, conflict, and often the need to discharge collective aggression onto a sacrificial victim. From this perspective, gender-based violence appears as a device that channels social tensions and fears onto the female body, transformed into a scapegoat for male anxieties and contradictions.

Pierre Bourdieu demonstrated that the violence that subjugates is not only physical but also symbolic. Symbolic violence acts invisibly, through cultural schemes, language, and representations that legitimize subordination. In patriarchal societies, women (and, more generally, all dominated groups) tend to internalize their condition as dominated subjects, coming to see it as natural. Male power operates not only through coercion but also—and above all—by presenting itself as an inevitable fact of nature: power becomes embedded in bodily gestures, in language, and in various social devices (urban planning, clothing norms, and so on). Along similar lines, for Judith Butler gender is not a biological given but a performative construction, continuously reiterated through acts and discourses.

This internalization leads to the normalization of subordination and thus of symbolic violence against women. And it is precisely this symbolic and invisible structure of power relations that fuels the various forms of violence, both physical and psychological. From this point of view, gender-based violence is a disciplinary mechanism directed at those who deviate from the patriarchal and heterosexual norm: aggression against women (or queer subjectivities) is today driven by the attempt to reassert a symbolic order shaken by the exposure and progressive overcoming of the subterranean power dynamics inherent in the patriarchal structure.

Unmasking the various forms of symbolic violence is a precondition for overcoming the forms of domination it perpetuates; but this unmasking can paradoxically also increase that violence. It must therefore be accompanied by an institutional framework that fosters the prevention and repression of violence, support for victims, and above all the spread of new social practices of relation—practices capable of breaking the chain of domination and rivalry.

We must be aware of all this when we rightly seek to dismantle these logics in the workplace. Diversity management can help create environments in which symbolic violence is addressed and made visible, thus revealing the costs—both for individuals and for the organization—of cultural models based on domination. At the same time, it should facilitate the emergence of spaces of dialogue and mutual recognition, where desire does not translate into destructive rivalry but into collaboration and the valorization of the plurality of differences.

Finally, it can promote an organizational culture in which the implicit gender norms governing career advancement, access to leadership roles, and the behaviors considered “professional” are deconstructed, freeing both men and women from the obligation to perform a socially imposed role (the very performance evoked by Judith Butler).