Gender Expectations

It is clear that gender roles and expectations become linked to broader cultural beliefs and prejudices. Some occur due to culture and religion, others due to the prejudices through the hetero-patriarchal normativity of gender roles and expectations. As evident in the documentaries “Gender Against Men”, “Gay Witch Hunt in Iraq”, “Life at Any Price” and “Guatemala: Killer’s Paradise,” if surely gender-based expectations and norms are explicitly defined and manifest into violence, war, murder and prejudice. This paper will decide whether or not the state plays a key role in all of the above cases. Being a country pressured by Catholic fundamentalism, in El Salvador, abortions are unlawful because of state’s role through directed legislation and the incorporation of religious influence in the constitution. This overbearing non-secular

This is visible in Guatemalan case, where impunity is prominent as there are many unsolved and untouched investigations of women, who were raped, tortured, or murdered. In this case, it is not religious or cultural beliefs that have altered the violence; rather, it is a misogynistic prejudice. This is evident because police deem victims wearing makeup, fingernail polish, or supposedly revealing clothing to be prostitutes and decline to investigate their murders. Even something as simple as being a women being unaccompanied during movement can presume rape. Additionally, a law persists whereby a convicted rapist can be acquitted if his victim agrees to marry him, meaning that many victims of solved rape cases are coerced into abusive marriages for fear of their lives. With that being said, it is not surprising that a large number of women who are beaten or murdered by husbands and boyfriends are rarely