Femicide in Italy, between the years 2000-2012

Abstract

The term “femicide”, or “feminicide”, refers to extreme violence of the physical, psychological, economic, and systemic kind perpetrated by males against women because they are women. The focus of this investigation is an analysis of the most extreme form of the complex and distinct phenomenon of femicide, namely the murder of women. After an examination of femicide in countries throughout the world, this study focuses its attention on the Italian reality. It begins with a statistical analysis of the data produced by the Eures Institute, which in its latest report on intentional homicide in Italy has developed an investigation of all the cases of the murder of women that took place in Italy between the years 2000 and 2012. In it, the authors examine the compelling phenomenon through many different lenses (social, relational, psychological, and criminological). In doing so, the authors construct a reflection accompanied by a reading of the risk factors, the contexts, and the situations associated with it. In this 12-year period, 2200 women were murdered in Italy, an average of 171 per year, or one woman every two days. Femicide in Italy, as in most countries of the European Union, occurs principally in a domestic situation,
with women representing 7 out of 10 victims of domestic homicide. Women murdered by their partners (husbands, boyfriends) or ex-partners represent 66% of family homicides.