Justicia con perspectiva de géneroanálisis cuantitativo de estereotipos y revisión de la imparcialidad judicial en procesos por violencia sexual

Resumen

This doctoral thesis aims to analyse the existence of gender stereotypes in sexual violence proceedings. To that aim, the implementation of a gender perspective and empirical studies led us to find mechanisms to protect due process of law, especially the judge’s impartiality, and guarantee the principle of state’s due diligence. The critique of legal androcentrism by feminist critical theory highlights the invisibilisation, often to the point of oblivion, of women as political-legal subjects and reconceptualises law as subjective, partial, and irrational if its development exclusively caters to the demands and needs of men. Women’s presence on the legal scene has been achieved because of a constant demand to be constituted as a political-legal subject. However, it is complex to recognise the individuality of women from an intersectional perspective when gender roles and stereotypes determine the place of women in the world. In this respect, in sexual violence, the configuration of an ideal of a victim of sexual violence by the judicial system and the collective imaginary, in a process of mutual feedback, allows us to begin an analysis of judicial gender stereotyping. In particular, the widespread image of the female victim of sexual violence is described as an injured, traumatised woman who has been assaulted by a stranger in a public place and has suffered extreme violence. The power of the “real sexual violence victim” template affects how sexual aggression is defined and understood by the experts involved in the judicial process. Stereotypes are shortcuts to dealing with a complex social reality. Although they facilitate the perception of the world, sometimes the vision they offer does not fit people’s lives. After analysing 500 rulings of the Provincial Court of Valencia, we note the permeation of gender stereotyping in current judgements of sexual assaults in Spain. As stereotypes are generalised repeating pattern schemes and algorithms can find sophisticated relationships between variables, we show how Artificial Intelligence can be applied to predict gender stereotypes and outcomes. Gender stereotyping in Courts makes it necessary to develop an anti-stereotyping approach to articulate a set of proposals aimed at achieving effective equality between women and men. Stereotyping is redefined as a manifestation of institutional violence and, consequently, as a cause of secondary victimisation. Due to the presence of bias in the process, it is tackled the possible violation of the right to effective judicial protection (with special reference to the motivation of sentences) and the guarantee of impartiality. Given the detection of stereotypes by statistical and automatized analysis, we discuss new mechanisms aimed at avoiding stereotyping in court to guarantee the Spanish state’s responsibility to prevent, investigate, punish, and redress acts of violence against women.