Gendered violence in italy: a cultural problem findings gathered from an action research project
| Autor | Gaia Peruzzi - Raffaele Lombardi |
| Páginas | 586-602 |
586
Gendered violence in Italy:
a cultural problem
Findings gathered from an action
research project
Gaia Peruzzi
1
Gaia.peruzzi@uniroma1.it
Raffaele Lombardi
Raffaele.lombardi@uniroma1.it
Abstract
In recent year public awareness and mobilization against sexual harassment and other forms
of violence against women (rape, domestic violence, stalking) have increased, thanks also to
digital media activism and mass media attention. Yet gendered violence still continues to be
one of the most serious human rights violations in the world today, deeply rooted in everyday
life and directed not only against women, but also against men and the sexual minority
identities.
This paper aims at contributing to the debate on the promotion of awareness against gender-
based violence by presenting the main findings which emerged from the qualitative analysis of
250 social autobiographies written by both male and female students of the Sapienza University
of Rome participating in the 2018-2019 experimental workshop Gender, culture, society.
1
This paper is the result of the joint work of the two authors. For eva luation purposes for the call
for bids, however, a distinction can be made regarding the following attributions: Gaia Peruzzi wrote
sections 1, 2 and 4; Raffaele Lombardi section 3. This contribution was presented at the
"International Day for the Elimination of Violence agains t Women” at Sapienza University of Rome,
Italy (November 25, 2019).
Gendered violence in Italy: a cultural problem. Findings gathered from an action research project
587
1. The political and socio-cultural scenario
In recent years, at least in Western societies, public awareness of, and
mobilization against, sexual harassment and other forms of violence against females
(rape, domestic violence, stalking) seems to have grown, thanks also to digital media
activism and mass media attention. Nevertheless, gender-based violence continues
to represent one of the most serious and most widespread human rights violations
worldwide. It is a “global pandemic” which, according to the most recent estimates
published by the World Bank
2
(estimates similar to those of other supranational
institutions, such as the European Union and the Pan American Health Organization,
but lower than those reported, for example, by the Asia-Pacific section of the United
Nations Fund) directly affects one in three women, at least once in their lives.
Gender-based violence knows no geographical, class, or cultural boundaries: it is
deeply rooted in everyday life, in all spheres of society, and it imbues discourse, both
common, everyday language as well as that of science and politics. Furthermore, it
is more diversified than is commonly believed: gendered violence is not only
conducted against women and girls, but also against men and minorities of identity
and sexual orientation. Namely, against anyone who does not fall into the dominant
category in the gender hierarchy of patriarchal societies: the heterosexual (white)
man, at his worst, manly and virile, to the point of machismo.
Gendered violence is also one of the most difficult forms of violence to
investigate, both on the part of the police force and also of researchers, because the
setting is often the domestic or family environment, where the relationship between
the victim and the perpetrator of the physical and/or psychological abuse is an
ambiguous mix of sentiment, fear, power and prejudice (Hirigoyen, 2005; Porro,
2
For this and for the other international institutions mentioned below, reference has been made
to the reports periodically published in the sections on d iscrimination and gender-based violence of
the sites dedicated to data and statistics. Owing to space restrictions we reserve the right not to list
the individual publications. These are generally large-scale surveys based on the most up-to-date
national censuses. Albeit in full awareness of the inevitable approximations in such large -scale
comparisons, the homogeneity of the reported data is striking.
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