WHAT IS VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN

According to an unusual tradition, the University of Foggia celebrates the new academic year between winter and spring, that is when the second semester of lessons is already underway. This would have been the case also this year if the explosion of the coronavirus emergency had not forced the postponement of the event sine die. Gender-based violence was the topic chosen to characterize the celebrations of the XXI academic year in the presence of the Minister of the Interior Luciana Lamorgese. With this high symbolic thematic choice, the Magnificent Rector Pierpaolo Limone intended to demonstrate the commitment of the Foggia academic community in combating a criminal phenomenon with cultural complications and very complicated ideological implications.

“One step ahead. Vulnerability, gender-based violence, responsibility, conquests” is the title of the inaugural speech entrusted to Gabriele Fattori, Professor of Ecclesiastical and Canon Law at the Department of Law at the University of Foggia.

After 2019 passed to the news as the ‘Black Year’ of the province of Foggia for the number of femicides, Gabriele Fattori wanted to dedicate his Prolusion to a broader and more transversal gender violence: violence against women.

Starting from this article, FBK Magazine proposes an in-depth study of the theme every two weeks through the presentation of the original text of the Prolusion, divided into four parts:

• In this first part we want to remind you how gender violence affects all of us very closely, that it is the most universal of crimes and at the same time the “next door” crime: a ‘glocal’ crime, that is, simultaneously local and global.
• The second part defines the what, the how much and the how of gender-based violence: that is, the categories that describe the phenomenon, the numbers that quantify it, the trends that qualify it.
• The third part denounces the reason for gender-based violence, i.e. institutional responsibilities and in particular the connivances of law with respect to violence against women.
• The fourth part, the last one, recounts the most recent achievements of the Italian legal system in the prevention and contrast of violence against women and thus goes back to the title of the prolusion: “One step ahead”.

Enjoy your reading and goodbye …

* Gabriele Fattori teaches Ecclesiastical and Canon Law at the University of Foggia and collaborates with the Center for Religious Sciences (ISR) of Bruno Kessler Foundation. At the University of Foggia, he is also Coordinator of the Master of Science in Security Legal Sciences and Rectoral Delegate to the University Library System.