No mother wants to hurt her daughter. That phrase was told to me by a migrant from Gambia referring to forced marriages. Difficult to understand so quickly, but after working on the subject you see that this is the reality they have known. Where were they born and where do they live? It is the “correct” way of life. and the one to follow. We like to think that this violence against women occurs far away. Well no. She is just around the corner. It exists where there are African or Asian communities, places where it is practiced mostly. Now these girls who came from there or were born here have grown up and they have become merchandise for this cruelty. Whether for financial gain or family honor.
forced marriage is an agony that begins years after the wedding, when they compromise. From then on, at any time, coming home late one day, or a simple exchange of words with a classmate, they can lose their honor and be punished, because they are already destined. And if they refuse, they may end up like the young Pakistani woman living in Italy who was killed by her own family for not wanting to marry a cousin she didn’t know. Case numbers are up. Although it is difficult to establish them, because this type of violence is very silenced, it is estimated that since 2017 forced weddings have grown by 60%.
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I get excited the case of a young woman from Senegal educated here, who was sent to their country and their documentation was taken away. She got married and until she had a child she couldn’t go back. She was a bargaining chip for her husband’s papers. She today she is getting divorced. His father has taken the floor from him, his mother has not. But this is not about women, it is about men, because they are the ones who decide and they have little or no room for action. In a talk they told me that the initial solution is not in the police. If a uniformed man comes home, she will take the husband. And when he comes back he’ll beat her to a pulp. No more. A mother will first tell the problem to her nurse or her doctor, and a girl to her teacher or a classmate or workmate.
So, There is no greater web than the one our eyes can weave, our senses in general. Let’s watch. If we intuit that someone may be in this situation, let us ask, or simply listen. If we were born somewhere else, we we could have been them.