From the maternal to the Self: psychodrama for the promotion of female agency in overcoming the internalized victimary role.

In this chapter we consider the problem of motherhood’s psychological role with respect to their daughters that are victims of domestic violence. We assume the gender perspective which judges this question as a psychosocial problem determined by cultural causes. In spite of the fact that cultural explanations of gender violence are contested because they are used to excuse individual actions, we assume the perspective of Messing and Adelman (Messing, Adelman & Durfee, 2012; Adelman, Haldane & Wies, 2012) in whose opinion, the contestation of this idea can be found in the strategies of defense of gender violence linked to the re-traditionalization of family. We admit that this cultural perspective has been used to defend or excuse gender violence and is therefore seen as a barrier to the elimination of gender violence, but, in concurrence with the authors, we equally consider how culture may also be mobilized strategically as a resource in the struggle against gender violence. From this perspective, we think that any social program aimed at changing the actual situation must firstly modify the cultural background and related stereotypes, since culture is often responsible for how the problem of violence against women is viewed and addressed. In particular, we believe that domestic violence results from the traditionalist maintenance and/or restoration of separation between natural and social tasks that are divided between males and females. Indeed, the social versus the household’s gender division of labor, which is the fundamental aspect of public-private gendered split, determines gender wage gaps resulting from a comparative advantage of men over women in work outside the family (Burker & Feiner, 2004; Beneira, 1979), in the process thereby making, men inept in family relationships and women in social ones. The reinforcement of the female expectation of getting married and becoming a mother, which again characterizes most women even in the Western contemporary crisis, has a huge influence on women’s socialization and occupational choices. To this effect, the preferences for jobs that are more readily available to women are conservative ones, such as teaching, nursing, and secretarial work. Gender segregation in the labor market and the glass ceiling are the result of cultural variables which determine the inferior status of women and, as a consequence, their subordination both in intimate and social relationships. Indeed, gender inequality is embedded within the social hierarchy, thus affecting how women and men are perceived in power management, and in everyday relationships, both social and domestic. Moreover, domestic labor plays an important role in creating and maintaining women’s subordinate status (Barker, 2003; Ridgeway, 2001) since those skills that are culturally required in female domestic activities, of which care-giving and motherhood are among the most important, are in contrast with the skills of the masculine Homo Oeconomicus Model, according to which men must organize their chosen pursuits in a rational life plan, allowing them to decide which of their desires are most urgent and how they might more efficiently achieve them (Walker, 1998).