A Story of One’s Own: Understanding the Role of Agency and Connection in Women’s Narratives of Gender-Related Trauma

This study explores how moments of agency and social connectedness shape women’s narrations of gender-related traumatic experiences. Seventeen semi-structured interviews were conducted with women (M=23.7) from all over the world residing primarily in Padua, Italy, focusing on their lived experiences of gender-related harm, interpersonal relationships, and processes of meaning-making. The findings suggest that women not only transform their narratives through relational support and acts of agency, but also develop a nuanced form of agency referred to as protective agency, in which women act strategically within high-risk contexts to maintain safety and well-being. The analyses further suggest that transformative narrative pathways co-appear most strongly with relational support and active agency, while constrictive pathways are associated primarily with relational barriers and lack of agency. Protective agency occupied a more ambiguous position, emerged within contexts characterized by mistrust and invalidation and functioned as a survival-oriented response rather than clearly transformative or constrictive. These findings indicate that narrative transformation is shaped both by what participants are able to do for themselves and by the responses they receive from others. Although the international sample did not reveal substantial differences across national backgrounds, it highlighted the cross-cultural and widespread nature of these gendered relational dynamics. Overall, the study demonstrates that agency and social connectedness play a central role in how women narrate and transform their experiences of gender-related trauma.