2023-09-15 01:47:01
While the Council of Ministers of the Meloni government approves the Caivano Decree, which accentuates repressive measures against young people and poor families, many women’s associations report that to date no serious measures have been taken to combat gender violence. We publish here an article written for the summer edition of Communist Project which analyzes the recent Decree regarding violence against women (the website’s editorial staff).
Por: Laura Sguazzabia
The latest report published by the Department of Public Security took stock of the homicide situation in Italy as of May 28: from January 1 to May 28 of this year, 45 femicides are included in the calculation, of which 37 They occurred in the family or emotional environment. According to the Women in Network Against Violence (DiRe) association, registration continues a feminicide every 2 days. So much so that a few days after the publication of the report it was necessary to update the number of victims with the tragic deaths of Giulia Tramontano and Pierpaola Romano. In the midst of the media storm and the emotional wave generated by these last two femicides, on June 7, the Council of Ministers, at the proposal of the Minister of Family, Birth and Equal Opportunities, Roccella, the Minister of Interior, Piantedosi, and the Minister of Justice, Nordio, approved a bill aimed at “introducing provisions to combat gender violence against women and against domestic violence.”
What the Decree Law (DDL) says (and what it does not say)
According to the ministerial website, “the objective of the intervention is to strengthen the protection of the victim by increasing attention to “espionage crimes” and tightening preventive protection measures.” Regarding the prosecution of the crime, the provision establishes strict deadlines for the adoption of precautionary measures, such as the more rigorous use of the electronic bracelet, and also provides for detention in “delayed flagrante delicto”, that is, based on the acquisition of video documentation. photographic or derived from computer or telematic applications. Furthermore, the bill favors the specialization of the magistrates who hear about this crime and provides for the obligation of “information circulars” so that appropriate measures are adopted to protect victims in the event of extinction, ineffectiveness, revocation or replacement in better of coercive precautionary measures for perpetrators of violence. Establishes the overcoming of recovery paths with a favorable result verified by the judge to access the conditional suspension of the sentence. Finally, a provisional amount of compensation is introduced (before the sentence is handed down) in favor of the victim or, in the event of death, of those who are entitled to it, under conditions of need. However, the 15 articles that make up the text essentially take up what was already contained in the Code Red of 2019, constituting nothing more than an integration.
The draft law (DDL), welcomed with greater or lesser enthusiasm by the political community, was criticized both for its method (little or no participation in the different phases of the drafting process) and for its merit by the national network against violence. I will say. In particular, the organization highlights the systemic nature of violence against women, which would require interventions that go beyond the legislative sphere. For example, it would be essential to provide financial resources to associations that care for victims on their way to escape violence: anti-violence centers have long complained of a lack of funds, blocked and without a distribution plan, useful for maintain continuity of interventions and not leave women alone. Or the allocation of funds that allow us to continuously work on prevention activities: it should be noted that violence against women is often not recognized primarily by justice operators, as represented by the acquittal of the school worker accused of violence. sexual assault by a student who said she had been groped by the man at school. The judges considered that “the act does not constitute a crime,” since, in addition to the objective conduct of the janitor, there was no subjective intention to commit violence; In short, the Court accepted the defense’s thesis according to which the act could be considered a joke, although “inappropriate in the context in which it was carried out, due to the nature of the place and the relationships between student and assistant.”
Regarding funds, the text still includes, as in 2019, the expression “financial invariance”, that is, without additional appropriations that could justify significant changes.
Emergency or structural problem?
To try to answer, we quote the words of Susanna Zaccaria, president of the House of Women of Bologna, who in her statements highlights the lack of a global vision of the problem, highlighting the problem of an emergency and non-structural attitude towards to the issue of violence against women: «I am not surprised that a right-wing government sees the approach only in repressive terms. On the other hand, we know very well that gender violence must be addressed organically, trying to combat everything in society that leads to violence against women. It does not seem to me that there is an approach to rights to protect women […] Violence against women cannot be considered as something different from their freedom of choice: such freedom is threatened by the anti-abortion movement and by the obligation, still in force, to share custody of children with violent husbands.
We are also convinced, and we have been saying it for a long time, that the wave of violence that hits the global feminine universe is not the result of an emergency, but the consequence of precise decisions made by a system in crisis, the capitalist one, which seeks to self-preserve. using chauvinism, xenophobia, racism to exploit, oppress and generally discriminate against the weakest in society, in this case women. In particular, within the family, the fundamental cell of capitalist society, the economic crisis that capitalism is going through spills over and to a greater extent onto women due to the fundamental role they play.
As Engels had already highlighted more than a century ago, in the modern family the slavery of women is carried out and the social dynamics of clashes between classes are reproduced, where the woman embodies the proletariat and the man, more endowed with economic power, plays the role of the bourgeois, even physically dominating women. Therefore, it is no coincidence that most episodes of violence concern the family context and have their origin in the conditions of hardship in which the majority of Italian families find themselves. Conditions of misery and poverty are the ideal terrain for family violence and mistreatment of women to be exacerbated.
A class program
The fight against sexist violence does not go through the laws of bourgeois governments, but through a clear program that must be carried out and defended by the entire proletarian class and its organizations.
Nurseries and kindergartens, schools open full time, public hospitals that function and do not require families to contribute materially for assistance, laundries and public canteens are indispensable conditions to free women from the burden of domestic work that oppresses them and that they must balance with work outside the home.
Equal remuneration for equal tasks, a correct job placement without precariousness and flexibility, maternity protection, public and free mass education according to the real inclinations of each one are essential conditions to guarantee women economic autonomy and independence and allow them a real participation in political, union and cultural life. Access to public and counseling services, the possibility of deciding about one’s own sexuality and reproductive capacity are essential conditions to guarantee women’s self-determination.
Article published in www.partitodialternativacomunista.org9/9/2023.-
Translation: Natalia Estrada.
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