Equality and Gender Violence

Abstract

The enactment of the 'Integral Law Against Gender Violence' has enhanced penalties for several behaviors like threats or coercion when these are done against the female partner. It has also established a different prison sentence in the crime of occasional minor violence when the author is the man or when it is the woman. This produced a heated discussion in order to see if the equality principle was infringed. This paper deals with the discussion that arouse from this law and with the sentence of to the Constitutional Court in order to find out when different punishments are justified in criminal law. I present the reasons based on the different seriousness of the offense and try to suggest an accurate interpretation of the offense of occasional violence.