Children and youth with disabilities are not only at risk of receiving poorer education than their non-disabled peers but are also more vulnerable to violence, being four times more likely to be victims of violence than their peers without disabilities (Jones et al, 2012). Among them, girls are especially vulnerable in today context. Data shows that gender-based violence is a growing problem in the 21st century that affects girls of all cultures and countries, of increasingly younger ages (WHO, 2018). This is a problem that concerns women with disabilities even more, as they are more exposed to dependency, prejudice, and marginalization and are at high risk of abuse by caregivers, family members, friends, and others (Iudici, Antonello & Turchi, 2019). International data estimate that one in three women and girls with disabilities will be victims of gender-based violence in their lifetime (World Bank, 2019). Also, today these girls and women face a 10 times higher risk of being victims of gender-based violence than women and girls without disabilities.

Given this reality, there is growing evidence on the importance of sexual health education for people with disabilities in order to increase opportunities to ensure healthy sexual relationships, promote positive sexual identities, and reduce the risk of sexual victimization (Murray, 2019). For this, the school is an ideal space as it allows providing prevention and protection from violence to all children, including those with disabilities, and also to do so in consensus with the entire educational community, involving families, teachers, health agents, and community leaders (Elboj-Saso at al, 2020; Walsh, Zwi, Woolfenden, & Shlonsky, 2018). At the same time, there are studies that highlight the urgency of including the voices of women with disabilities in feminist leadership, opening spaces for dialogue in which girls with disabilities can talk about these issues and the causes that provoke them (Iudici et al. 2019).

This paper focuses on the Dialogic Feminist Gatherings (DFG), a successful educational action that has proven to be effective in promoting inclusive spaces of dialogue to prevent gender violence with adolescents without disabilities and in various contexts (Puigvert, 2016; Salceda et al., 2020), and which is based on the theoretical contributions of dialogic learning (Flecha, 2000), preventive socialization of gender violence (Gómez, 2015), and dialogic feminism (De Bottom et al., 2005). DFGs are based on the creation of dialogic spaces for interaction where scientific evidence on gender-based violence prevention is analysed, and where the voices of the diverse participants are empowered. The DFGs favour the creation of a context in which trust, and support are reinforced, as well as relationships of solidarity among the people who participate. At the same time, they create a space that makes possible the inclusion of the voices also of vulnerable women, so that they can be heard on current feminist issues that affect their lives, from a dialogic feminism approach (De Bottom et al., 2005; Puigvert, 2016). Results of research with adolescents show that DFGs help to establish affective-sexual mental models in which attraction is linked to good treatment, friendship, equality, and freedom, opening opportunities to review these models and prevent violent intimate affective-sexual relationships (Racionero et al., 2018). 

The objective of this paper is to present the results of a case study that analyses the impact of the participation of a group of 19 girls with mild and moderate intellectual disabilities between 16 and 21 years old in the dialogic space of the DFGs in relation to creating an inclusive educational space of dialogue and reflection and their protection against gender violence. 

The case study analyses the transferability and impact of DFGs in the context of special education with girls with intellectual disabilities. The study was carried out using the communicative methodology (Redondo-Sama et al., 2020), widely recognized for being useful in achieving social impact through research by making it possible to study not only the exclusionary elements that reproduce inequalities but also the elements that contribute to overcoming them. Specifically, the communicative methodology stands out for its contributions to advance in the identification, prevention and overcoming of gender violence (Puigvert, 2014), also among young women (Ruiz-Eugenio et al., 2020). The communicative techniques used for the collection of the information were two in-depth communicative interviews with the school director and the DFG coordinator, a focus group with teachers participating in the DFG, and a field diary in which all the interventions of the girls who participated in each gathering held during the 2018-2019 and 2019-2020 academic years were collected. The data obtained from the transcripts of the interviews, the focus group, and the field diary were analysed based on the two dimensions of analysis of the communicative methodology: the exclusionary dimension and the transformative dimension (Gómez-González et al., 2010). While the exclusionary dimension identifies the barriers for transformation and social improvement, the transformative dimension includes the elements that overcome such barriers. Thus, in this research, the transformative dimension refers to the elements that would facilitate the participants to appropriate the tools to protect themselves and denounce sexual abuse, ensuring their freedom to be treated with respect, while the exclusionary dimension provides elements that prevent or hinder the appropriation of these tools. Specifically, we sought to know through the analysis of the information the evidence of success that demonstrates that the girls with intellectual disabilities who participated in the case study have benefited from the dialogic environment established by the DFGs, learning to identify, protect themselves and seek help when faced with an abusive relationship.

According to the perception of the participating teachers, the results illustrate that the DFGs have a number of positive impacts on girls with intellectual disabilities. First, dialogic access to information has enabled girls participating in the DFGs to identify gender-based violence, both in general and in particular in their lives. Second, the DFGs are safe, dialogic spaces where participant girls are given a voice, enabling them to break the silence regarding abuse. Third, through the DFGs the relationships between the participating girls transformed because, trust, solidarity, and friendship were generated. Fourth, the DFGs achieve that the coercive discourse (Puigvert, 2014) that promotes gender violence is recognized by the girls in their relationships, and in their contexts. Fifth, according to the teachers' perceptions, the knowledge acquired in the DFGs is transferred to the girls' daily lives. Sixth, there is an increase in participation in other spaces of the school by girls who participate in the DFGs. Seventh, the DFGs space contributes to linking romantic and friendship relationships, promoting messages related to ideal love and that prevent gender violence (Ruiz-Eugenio et al., 2020). Finally, the DFGs have favoured a change in the professionals by recognizing the capabilities of the participating girls, generating more positive expectations. In sum, the study allows us to conclude that the DFGs created an educational space to include the girls with intellectual disabilities in new dialogues that enhanced their learning on violence and its prevention. This suggests the importance of replicating them in other contexts to obtain more evidence regarding the effectiveness of the transferability of the DFGs for the prevention of gender-based violence among vulnerable girls.

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