Femicide
Updated November 25, 2023, 7:15 pm
The facade of Pallazo Chigi in Rome is illuminated to mark the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. Giorgia Meloni gave a speech in front of Pallazo Chigi on November 24, 2023 to mark the day. © IMAGO/Stefano Ronchini
Every four days in Italy a woman dies at the hands of men. The murder of a student particularly shocked the country. Thousands protest against the country’s patriarchal structures.
Piazza Santissima Annunziata, in Florence, shakes with so much noise. Thousands of young people gathered, banging on pot lids, whistling and clapping. Similar scenes are happening today in Bologna, Turin, Rome and Milan. Students occupy colleges, making noise instead of a government-ordered minute of silence following the brutal death of a student. Her battle cry is the words of the poet Cristina Càseres: “If I don’t come back tomorrow, sister, destroy everything. If tomorrow is my turn, I want to be the last.”
People want to talk, not stay silent: about Italy and its problem with feminicide, the gender-related murder of women. Every four days a woman is murdered in Italy because she is a woman, 87 this year alone. The fate of 22-year-old Giulia causes pure horror. Two weeks ago, the student from Veneto met her ex-boyfriend. He knocked her down and stabbed her hundreds of times. So he put it in the trunk and fled: via northern Italy to Austria, across Germany. On the way, he threw Giulia’s body into a ravine in northern Italy. German authorities found him on a motorway near Leipzig, where he was out of gas.
Not a typical Italian problem
This Saturday, Filippo T. will be extradited to Italy. On the occasion of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, this time the protests in Italy will be particularly noisy. Participants in the national demonstration of the women’s rights organization “Not another one” in Rome want to come from all corners of the country.
The story hits the hearts of Italians because it makes it clear: violence against women is not a marginal problem. The victim and perpetrator come from a middle-class family and met at university. Giulia broke up with her ex-boyfriend twice, the last time in the summer. But Filippo T. pressured her and threatened to hurt himself. Typical harbingers of violence: women die because they defend themselves from obsession, violence and control freaks. However, femicide is still not a crime in Italy – which is not surprising when you consider that Italian criminal law continued to recognize “honour killing” until the 1980s: men received a significantly longer prison sentence. low if they murdered their wives for violating their honor.
More femicides in Germany
Femicides are not a typically Italian problem. Data from German crime statistics shows that even more women die from femicide in Germany, on average every three days. In a European comparison, Germany is in the top third – only in Lithuania, Latvia, Austria, Slovenia and Croatia are the numbers higher. However, one thing stands out in Italy: in almost three quarters of cases, the partner or ex is murdered.
This was also why Giulia’s murder provoked an unusually heated debate. The topic dominated the media for days, with politicians and journalists discussing women’s rights across the country. The victim’s sister puts her finger on the wound. Every femicide is an act “of power”, Elena Cecchettin told journalists, and the State is responsible because it does not protect women enough. Her sister’s killer is “not a monster” but the child of a “rape culture,” she says, born into patterns of behavior that society tolerates.
Make men responsible
Italian feminist Emma Bonini criticizes men. “You should be protagonists of the debate and take responsibility”, she says in an interview with “Il fatto quotidiano”. Violence against women is publicly trivialized in Italy, trying to explain the crime through the psychological problems of the perpetrator and blaming the victims. In the summer, the Prime Minister’s former partner Giorgia Meloni caused a stir when he advised young women not to get drunk if they didn’t want to “run into a wolf”.
Meloni also spoke out and condemned femicide on short messaging service, formerly Twitter, as a “trail of violence that has continued for years”. “Every case in which a woman is killed because she is ‘guilty’ for wanting to be free is an aberration that cannot be tolerated,” she wrote. The famous journalist Lili Gruber then accused post-fascist of being an expression of a “patriarchal culture”. Meloni tried to refute this with a family photo on Facebook that showed a mother, daughter and grandmother.
Stricter laws to protect women
Although the right-wing nationalist government denies blame, the opposition is looking for approaches to a solution. Elly Schlein, leader of the Social Democrats, calls for a new school subject that teaches children to control themselves emotionally. Students must learn to respect women and not resolve conflicts violently. But so far sex education is not even mandatory in Italian schools. Several initiatives on this subject have come to nothing; for the right-wing government, the issue is a private matter for parents.
On Wednesday, the Senate approved a bill that would better protect women. They must be able to seek help at the first signs of violence. The deadlines within which authorities have to act are shortened. A few days after Giulia’s murder, another case shows that this was already expected: on Tuesday, a 24-year-old young man threw hydrochloric acid in his ex-girlfriend’s face. The man had already been arrested in August for attacking and threatening the young woman. However, the judge released him – he had apologized.
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