A historical dictionary on gender-based violence has been published in Italy. Historians Simona Feci and Laura Schettini have edited the Dizionario storico della violenza di genere — a work that traces, through 50 entries, how this violence has changed from antiquity to the present and how those affected and women's movements resisted it. The digital edition is free. On 18 November, the volume will be the focus of a seminar at the University of Pisa.
What is gender-based violence?
Gender-based violence targets people because of their gender or gender identity. It affects women and girls particularly often. It includes physical and sexual assaults as well as threats and financial control. Someone who denies a partner access to her own money, for example, can keep her dependent. Secretly tracking someone via smartphone or sharing intimate images without consent can also be forms of this violence.
How Italy's response to violence has changed
Until 1981, Italian criminal law provided for a lighter sentence under certain conditions for killings justified by the supposed honour of the family. In the same year, Italy also abolished the rule under which marriage to the victim removed criminal liability for certain sexual offences. Such provisions show how ideas of family honour shaped the response to violence.
Alongside laws, the dictionary examines depictions in art and the media and women's resistance. One entry is devoted to 25 November. At a feminist meeting in Bogotá, activists chose this date in 1981 to commemorate the Mirabal sisters. The three opponents of the Trujillo dictatorship had been murdered on that day in 1960 in the Dominican Republic. Today, 25 November is the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women.
