Ni una Menos

Gender violence in Argentina

In Argentina feminicide, the killing of women, it’s a new category of crime recorded in the Criminal Code in 2012 and it’s punished by life imprisonment. Despite the tightening of legislation, murders of women are increasing in the country. Currently, according to statistics, a woman is killed every twenty-eight hours. In the spring of 2015, there had been a succession of atrocious crimes in all the country. In those days it was created by a group of journalists and communicators the feminist collective ‘Ni una menos’, a protest movement against violence towards women. It was first manifested in eighty cities of Argentina on June 3, 2015, repeating itself from that day 4 times a year (every March, June, October and November).

Since 2015 this movement, with unprecedented success, is mobilizing the masses against gender violence reaching an incredible result during the 2018 historical women’s international strike where half a million women marched in Buenos Aires and millions in more than 50 countries all over the world. Every time, like never before, more women joined the march starting to claim their rights. The movement has spread to other Latin American countries, recently also in Europe and USA.

The phenomenon is so massive as to be transversal: from childhood to adulthood, no social class and no conditions is excluded, even pregnant women aren’t spread. Particularly serious in the many Villas Miserias of the cities, slums located sometimes also very close to the city centers where people live in poor condition, criminality is very high and the youngster are in danger. In these places traditional domestic rules and patriarchal composition of society support the violence. Often young girls leave family home in which they suffer domestic violence for a love a air with people belonging to gangs who introduce them to the world of drug or they become victims of the human traffic, kidnapped and forced to prostitution. Only In Buenos Aires there are 1500 brothels, 40000 in the country. Frequently girls between 13 and 16 get pregnant. Often police doesn’t take the reports, corruption is very common and women suffer domestic and psychological violence for several years.

The movement is fighting against gender violence on many different aspects. It marched alongside families of murdered women, victims of physical and psychological violence, women discriminated in the workplace, due to precarious economic or social conditions, to be migrants or to belong to ethnic minorities. A historic victory achieved by the movement was on the fight for legalization of abortion that was discussed and then finally approved by the Congress on Dec 30,2021 after a campaign started in 2003 in the country. The green scarf worn by thousands of women in the country has become the symbol of the struggle for the right to decide for themselves on their own body during the massive demonstrations but also in daily life.

'Ni una Menos' is part of a larger on going project on gender violence called 'Vivir para contarlo / Live to tell'. My goal is to continue documenting this topic in the world. The common line that sadly connect many countries is violence in all its different aspects. I strongly believe that it’s very important to give visibility and voice to victims who doesn’t have it, inspiring more of them to come forward to tell their stories and put pressure on governments.


Info
The main part of this project was self-produced by me. Some parts were produced on assignment for Marie Claire France with article written by Celia Mercier, for Stern and Geo Magazine with articles written by Jan-Christoph Wiechmann

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Awards
- Finalist at the Prix 6Mois du Photojournalisme 2021
- Shortlisted at the Leica Oscar Barnack Award 2021
- Shortlisted at the Alexia Foundation Professional Grant 2019
- Winner 1rst prize at Valencia Photon Grant 2019
- Winner 2nd prize at the Days Japan International Photojournalism Award 2018
- Winner 3rd prize at the Luis Valtuena Humanitarian Photography Award 2018
- Winner Visas del ANI 2019
- Finalist in the current affairs & news category at the SONY World Photography Awards 2017
- Honorable Mention at the Hansel-Mieth-Preis 2021
- Finalist at World Report Award 2020
- Winner 2nd prize in the Documentary category at the KOLGA Award 2017
- Winner 1rst prize in the Editorial/General News category at the Tokyo International. Photo Award 2017
- Winner 3rd prize in the Problem category at the Moscow Direct Look Photo Contest 2018
- First Runner-Up at the Focus on the story grant 2020
- Finalist at the Hansel-Mieth-Preis 2020
- Finalist at Meitar Awards 2019 for excellence in photography
​- Finalist at Head on Photo Awards 2018
- Finalist at Lugano Photo Days 2017
- Shortlisted in the Documentary at the Kolga Award 2019
- Shortlisted in the One Shot category at the Kolga Award 2019​
- Honorable Mention at Perugia Social Photo Festival 2018
- Honorable Mention at the SIPA Awards 2019
- Shortlisted in the One Shot category at the KOLGA AWARD 2018
- Shortlisted at the Gomma Grant 2017