Gender-based violence as a challenge to constitutional democracy

Abstract

The article deals with gender-based violence, considering that its increase, during the COVID-19 pandemic, does not represent a novelty. Notwithstanding the flows of legislation in the last decades, both at domestic and international level, this dramatic human rights violation has not been eradicated within the constitutional democracies. The article points out that gender-based violence represents a triple challenge to the founding values of constitutional democracy: a) as violence; b) as an expression of a hierarchical conception of the society; c) and, finally, as an extreme form of silencing and marginalizing the most peaceful component of society, the women. It considers that the difficulties in eradicating gender-based violence are related to the difficulties that constitutional democracies are experiencing in the XX century. Therefore, it concludes that the struggle for women’s rights and against gender-based violence is nowadays more crucial than ever.