What is Cretcheu Project?


Cretcheu is a project led by the University of Santiago de Compostela and funded by the European Commission under the Erasmus programme. Its aim is to design, in the European higher education field, a joint educational offer, at Master’s level, in which, through a Consortium, 4 European higher education institutions and another 4 higher education institutions of third countries not associated to the Programme are committed. The Project focuses on the issue of different kinds of violence against women in rural areas.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) it is estimated that 736 million women are in some way victims, at least once in their lives, of violence in intimate partner relationships or outside of them. This is an extremely serious problem that particularly affects the most impoverished countries: the prevalence of domestic violence in these countries among women aged between 15 and 49 is as high as 37%, according to the WHO. Rural areas, which are spatially marginalised and deprived, suffer the most from this problem. The consequences affect aspects such as mental and reproductive health, but, above all, human rights. The United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) include Gender Equality and establish as a target the elimination of all forms of violence against women and girls.

This serious problem, which also affects European society, has a very limited specific training offer. Our proposal aims to fill this gap by incorporating the specific territorial scope of rural areas as an innovative approach. The abandonment and marginalisation of the rural world has generated impoverishment and has accentuated economic and social problems. The treatment of many of these problems from an urban perspective and with homogeneous solutions has not always contributed to solving the unique problems of these territories.