Image of the woman in the proverb gallego and Prizes Elisa Pérez 2012

The examples speak for themselves: “To muller and to galiña, tórcelle or pescozo you will see that it is mansiña”; “Unto muller festeira créballe perna”; “Dor muller morta lasts ata a porta”. The “popular wisdom” expressed in the proverb gallego, transmitted from generation to generation, justifies and legitimizes gender-based violence and the subordination of women with respect to men. Is the conclusion at which he arrived Stephanie Lodeiro after analysing the treatment of the female sex dozens of sayings. The work, presented as a final investigation in the master of gender-based violence of the UNED, has been awarded with the Prize Elisa Pérez Vera , with which the distance university celebrated the Day of the Woman.

In your tracing, this worker of the Information Centre to the Women of the city Council of Teo, has met with many such, supposedly clever, who have nothing innocent, since for centuries it functioned as vehicles of transmission of the patriarchal system dominant.

In this sense, the study stands at the paremias in the reflection more clearly of the reality of life and system of values of the society that enacts them. Today, he explains, have been relegated to a marginal use only by older people, mostly in rural areas. However, Lodeiro believes that these models of conduct, macho is still playing in some media.

If, in fact, the saying is an indicator of the culture of a society, the galician was up for at least a few decades —when it was declining in its use— deeply androcentric. Not only covers physical violence, sexual, and psychological cons the women, but that these are drawn with a heavy battery of negative features. Habladoras, prying, false, fickle, lacking in intelligence, stubborn, selfish, manipulative. In the balance-to the contrary, just a handful of those that extol their virtues, but always associated to what the patriarchal system expects of them, that is, that they are good and demure wives, diligent housewives, caste, unmarried.

So, a resource which is very common is the comparison with animals. The formula is valid both to justify the violence as for endosarle any negative judgment. All in all, Stephanie Lodeiro detects an explanation of the background to the recurrent parallelism: the objectification of women, its presentation as a mere property of the man, that, like the rest of the beasts, tamed through punishment when they do not play their role. Nor is it trivial to the insistence of the sayings on censorship by course character talker of the feminine gender (“Vale máis unha muller guisando (doing a job that cen latricando”reads one of the many statements on the subject). The author borrowed the reflection of the researcher Anna Maria Poncela to conclude that it is an “invitation to silence”, a way to forfeit the use of spaces and relationships between them. So also interprets the disqualification of mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law.

These pills of “popular wisdom” prevent on the educated women and educated, because knowledge could lead them to rebel against their subordinate position, and because the man should always maintain a status higher, in both economic and cultural. It is also striking the “double standards” with regard to sex which underlies many sayings. In this way, you assess male sexuality, and it is understood that the woman must be available to satisfy their desires (“Is feita a half, because although als non queira, eu quero xa”). At the time, it asks married women to be demure and even offer some resistance as part of the rite, but some such show through a fascination with the eroticism open prostitutes.

Lodeiro points out that these sayings are carriers of a feminine stereotype of the past, and warning of their use today, though minority, “responds to the persistence of those values.” And even though they play in a “spontaneous and unconscious,” constitute a model of conduct “aimed not only to the internalization and acceptance of the patriarchal system, but rather to its perpetuation”. In this schema, gender-based violence is both a consequence and an instrument to “build, nurture and give strength” to the inequality. Now, the researcher wants to complete the results with an analysis of the portrait is male that throws the proverb galician to be able to compare it with the feminine, although in the work already done is sketch out some notes. Your goal is to, once translated into local language, post it.

Stephanie Loderio, next to Ziortza Moreno and Susana Garcia played the central act of the Day of the Woman at the UNED and were awarded with the Prize Elisa Pérez Vera 2012.