National Research on Domestic Violence Against Women in

Thus, those who are supposed to protect populationfrom domestic violence not only do not have a clear understandingof what domestic violence is (even worse,they may not know that a definition of domestic violenceand relevant legislation exist at all), but also mayhave sexist and violent ideas themselves: “Every womanhas and must have the fear of doing something wrongor something non-traditional...” and may think it is atraditional way of solving a misunderstanding betweenspouses.Indeed, the experts and service providers do complainthat the representatives of law-enforcement bodies donot have sufficient information and are often not awareof what domestic violence is. Although they undergospecial trainings on the issues of domestic violence, itstill does not make sense to them because, as they say,society is not ready for these changes, the “public mentalityis not sufficiently developed yet.”“The police do not know what to do... They even do notknow what kind of job they should do though they havebeen provided with lots of training... I think they don’tunderstand at all what violence is”. (Service provider,Telavi)“Our organization systematically arranges trainingsabout domestic violence for policemen. I attended onesuch training and saw that only three out of 22 policemencorrectly indicated that the presented case was anexample of domestic violence. The rest didn’t agree withthem. And it happens among policemen who are alreadytrained; imagine what happens among those whohave not had such trainings! That’s because the publicmentality is not sufficiently developed yet.” (Service provider,Tbilisi)“The policeman should have more information aboutand be more involved in cases of domestic violence.The policeman should know appropriate law in order toapply it accordingly... Quite often they don’t apply thislaw.” (Expert, Tbilisi)But is the lack of information and insufficient awarenessa problem characteristic to merely inexpert populationand the police? It turns out from the focus group interviewswith experts and service providers that the sameissues are characteristic of them as well. Some serviceproviders, for example, think that things that are perceivedas a part of tradition and have been performedfor a long time, say, when a woman didn’t have the rightto talk first until addressed, cannot be considered asgender based violence. And some experts (especiallyfemales!) think that men have better intellectual abilitiesthan women, and that a family should by all meanshave a single head of family, who makes the most importantdecisions, as someone is always dominant in thefamily and “absolute gender equality” is non-existent.(Presumably, in her opinion, the head of family shouldnecessarily be a man as men have better intellectualabilities, therefore, can make better decisions thanwomen). Besides, she states, it’s the case all aroundGeorgia and she has also grown up in such a family. Immediately,a question emerges: How can these expertscombat gender based domestic violence if they even donot understand what gender equality means and, mostimportantly, do not believe in “absolute gender equality”themselves?Expert N 3: “In equal conditions, men have better intellectualabilities. If we take the best samples of both menand women, even at mathematics, men are much moreadvanced. It happens naturally. A woman’s function isto take care of the future generation. The quality of thework of the brain is different.”Expert N 4: “Take any example - a man is intellectuallyhigher than a woman. You can just list some famous persons.”Expert N 2: “Why, what about female chess players?” 2Expert N 3: “Yes, but let’s make a female champion competewith a male one, what will happen? I want to saythat they are different and, therefore, either one or theother is dominant in a family. There is no family withabsolute gender equality. To some degree one is alwaysdominant - I mean the head of family.”[From a focus group discussion with experts, Telavi]“I think that violence is a drastic deviation from tradition.Traditions are extremely different in various countries.In some countries certain things are accepted and notperceived as violence. We know, for instance, that herepsychological violence is not perceived as violence. So,if we have an average indicator based on a certain tradition,we can consider deviation from this as violence.For example, for quite a long time, in the mountainousregions a woman was not allowed to talk first. How canthis be perceived as violence? It cannot, as it was that2. Georgian female chess players have been the European championsseveral times.66