Of 50 million women aged 18 to 74, 30.7%, or about one in three, have experienced physical or sexual violence, including threats. Italy, where requests for aid increased by 57% in 2024, is above the European average with 31.7% of cases.
On November 25, the International Day Against Violence Against Women, a new report from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in Vienna showed that in 2023, at least 85,000 women and girls will have been intentionally killed around the world.
This represents 140 women per day, or one every ten minutes. Most are killed by their partner or family members, with the home remaining the most dangerous place. Many victims reported the violence they suffered, which “suggests that many murders could have been avoided,” according to the study.
In Europe, one in three women are victims of gender-based violence: 32% because of a violent partner.
In the European Union, a survey on gender-based violence carried out by Eurostatthe European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights and the European Institute for Gender Equality showed that in 2021, out of 50 million women aged 18 to 74, 30.7%, or approximately one in three, had experienced physical violence Or sexual or threatening.
Twenty percent of them reported having been victims of violence from someone other than their partner (24.8% in Italy), while 18% had suffered physical or sexual violence from their partner. partner. But if we also consider psychological violence, 32% of women have been victims of a violent partner.
It is especially young women who experience gender-based violence. Thirty-five percent of women in the 18-29 age group reported experiencing violence, while this figure drops to 25% in the 65-74 age group.
Violence against women in Italy and gender stereotypes
Since the start of 2024, 99 victims of femicide have been recorded in Italy. Between the start of the year and September 30, calls to 1522, the hotline against violence and harassment, increased by 57% compared to 2023, with around 48,000 reports. This is an alarming figure which, on the one hand, highlights the extent of the emergency, but which, on the other hand, seems to show the desire to denounce and emerge from the isolation in which Many women who are victims of violence are placed there.
An important role in gender-based violence is also played by male-female stereotypes which, for some, justify attitudes of control and possession towards their partner. A survey carried out by Ipsos for the Youth Observatory of the Toniolo Institute among a sample of two thousand young people aged 18 to 34 revealed the extent to which gender stereotypes are still deeply rooted among young people.
“In general, the majority of respondents, both men and women, strongly disagree with the main stereotypes about sexual violence,” the report says. But “young people are not yet free from stereotypes of gender. Stereotypes probably conveyed primarily by the family and, more generally, by society, still imbued with “patriarchy“.
11% of respondents (including 15% men and 8% women) strongly agree with the statement “women who don’t want sex can avoid it.” 8.9% of respondents (including 11.7% men and 5.9% women) completely agree with the statement that “women can provoke sexual violence by the way they behave ‘dress”.
Among men, only 47.7% think it is not okay to habitually check their partner’s cell phone and only 49.6% think you should never geolocate your partner or check their location. Only 43.5% of boys (compared to 73.7% of girls) do not think it is right to prohibit their partner from dressing a certain way, and only 47.1% would never prohibit their partner to go out with whoever they want.
Finally, around 39% of boys consider it plausible to prohibit their partner from having their own bank account, compared to 21% of girls, while around 45% of boys consider it legitimate to prohibit their partner from engaging in paid work outside the family.
The study found that “among the young women surveyed, the desire to emancipate themselves from gender stereotypes emerges more strongly, despite the Italian context still culturally fragile and restrictive which slows down several of them. In general, the persistence of gender stereotypes is more prevalent among men.”
Femicides in Italy: life sentence for the murderers of Giulia Tramontano and Giulia Cecchettin
The feminicides of Giulia Tramontano and Giulia Cecchettinthe first killed by her companion and the second by her ex-companion, are those who have had the greatest impact on public opinion in recent years.
During the days dedicated to the fight against violence against women, the Assize Court sentenced Giuseppe Impagnatiello to life imprisonment for stabbing to death, on May 27, 2023, Giulia Tramontano, his partner when she was seven months pregnant. Impagnatiello did not benefit from any mitigating circumstances and was sentenced to three months of solitary confinement and an additional seven years for concealing a corpse and terminating a non-consensual pregnancy.
For Giulia Cecchettin’s murderer, Filippo Turetta, life imprisonment is also on the horizonprosecutor Andrea Petroni having denied the possible defense elements before the Assize Court, but having opened himself to possible mitigating circumstances in the future, given his young age.
ADVERTISEMENT“Turetta went to school, he got good grades, he was about to graduate, he had a car and a moped. He is one of those people to whom the state deserves credit, not like those who use intimidation as the only solution to conflicts. But this is precisely why Turetta had all the possibilities and cultural conditions to choose what he was going to do “said Mr. Petroni, according to whom premeditation and cruelty are both proven.
