In the first ten months of 2020, one woman was killed every three days in Italy, for a total (unfortunately partial) of 91 victims. This figure represents a slight decline compared to the 99 of the previous year, but there is very little to celebrate on the occasion of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, which falls today, 25 November. Reading the VII Eures report on femicide, published on the eve of the day, only bad news emerges: the decrease in fact concerns mostly common-crime homicides — just 3, against 14 in 2019 — while all the others fall squarely into the category of femicides, which are not declining at all. And almost all of them, precisely 89 per cent, occur in family contexts.

In this respect, the lockdown that the coronavirus forced on Italians for several months only exacerbated the problem of domestic violence, and in particular violence within cohabiting couples, which accounted for 80.8 per cent of cases in the period between March and June: figures over which Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte himself expressed regret yesterday at an event in the Senate — he being head of the very government that was compelled to impose the lockdown — describing the situation as "dramatic".

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A chiedere aiuto sono in più del 90% dei casi le persone vittime della violenza, ma le chiamate arrivano anche da parenti, amici e conoscenti e da operatori. #giornatacontrolaviolenzasulledonne

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♥ 12💬 5 24 nov 2020 · Apri su X →

Many laws passed, still few results

Yet in recent years politics has done no little to try to curb, at least from a legislative standpoint, the phenomenon of violence against women:

• in 2013 parliament ratified the Istanbul Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence and passed the consequent femicide law, introducing precisely the specific offence of killing a woman on grounds based on her sex.
• in 2017 the Senate established within itself the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry on Femicide and Other Forms of Gender-Based Violence, to analyse the phenomenon in Italy and find solutions to curb the problem: designed to remain active for 12 months, the Commission was renewed and is still active today, producing reports, inquiries and initiatives.
• in 2018 a further step was taken with the passing of a law creating forms of protection for minors left orphaned as a result of femicide.
• in 2019, last summer, the Codice rosso was finally approved — a new law that further toughens penalties for gender-based violence and also introduces the offence of revenge porn, the online distribution of intimate material involving a former partner for retaliatory purposes.

And yet, as Valeria Valente, president of the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry, explains: "if the regulatory framework Italy has equipped itself with has by now reached a significant level of solidity and robustness, but femicides are not declining, perhaps we should reflect a little." And find the reasons for this impasse which, according to the senator, are two. The first "is that the laws in place must be interpreted and understood, in the right spirit and with the right culture, by those delegated to apply them: from the officers who take reports to magistrates and technical consultants, through to emergency departments and social workers, in cases where violence against a woman also involves a minor."

An issue that also runs up against the lack of reliable data, despite the reports from Istat, Eures and the Commission itself: the fight against gender-based violence is severely hampered by "hidden" episodes that go unreported (out of fear, shame, the risk of social stigma, or lack of protection) or because they are often not officially attributed to the phenomenon in question. It is in order to obtain cleaner data that another proposed law is expected to arrive in the Senate today, aimed at guaranteeing an adequate flow of information — in terms of both frequency and content — on violence against women, essential for designing appropriate prevention and response policies and for ensuring effective monitoring of the phenomenon, by requiring the police, the judiciary, medical personnel and the Istituto nazionale di statistica itself to investigate every possible case of violence detected or reported, so that no case of femicide goes unnoticed.

Culture against stereotypes and appropriate language on violence

The second reason, according to Valeria Valente, is that "no law alone is sufficient to tackle the phenomenon; the problem cannot be solved simply by toughening penalties or increasing protection. What is needed is a cultural education that dismantles prejudices." The challenge, in particular, "is to invest in educational and media institutions to help them move beyond stereotypes that always portray women as fragile subjects, because violence is a product of culture: I am thinking of the family, the school and above all the university, because it is the university that trains the educators and practitioners within the system — by introducing dedicated hours of study that help people understand that the issue is not the equality of the sexes but a difference that brings value."

Two open questions remain — pressing and very much in the news. One concerns communication and the way in which gender-based violence and the relationship between men and women are presented by the Italian press, which is often tempted to minimise male violence on the one hand, and to stigmatise female behaviour on the other: an issue that has forcefully returned to the spotlight in recent days with the case of the teacher who was a victim of revenge porn, or the young woman who reported a sexual assault during a party at a private flat. On the eve of the day against violence against women, members of parliament from the Partito democratico sent an open letter to the Ordine dei giornalisti, calling for a new language, a new way of communicating, because "all too often ill-considered, stereotyped headlines do not tell the story of women — they tell a wrong and harmful story, and on some occasions convey a misogynistic, male-chauvinist, sexist vision."

An extra effort on anti-violence centres

The other concerns material and psychological assistance, and the protection of women in difficulty — women who have suffered violence, who may have found the courage to leave the home they shared with their partner but have nowhere to go: Europe recently reprimanded Italy for its lack of support services, which, despite the provisions of more recent laws that called for strengthening anti-violence centres and refuge houses (which in fact increased from 232 to 272, equal to 0.04 per ten thousand inhabitants, between 2017 and 2018, according to Istat) and for offering psychological support in prison to perpetrators of violence, have suffered, like all other sectors, from the cuts to local welfare services in recent years.

Yesterday, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, speaking before representatives of several anti-violence centres across Italy, promised new forms of financial support for these facilities, describing them as "fundamental". Even so, he explained, "the government is committed above all to implementing positive policies, in particular to combating Italy's unfortunate record of female unemployment: systematic actions are needed that address the indirect drivers of violence, which act on the lack of female emancipation." The hope is that, on the next 25 November, there will no longer be any need to say it again.