Himpathy. a Social Representation of Gender Inequalities

In order to reveal the stereotypes and prejudices underlying the social representation of gender-based violence and lurking in its journalistic and judicial narration, with a research team from Sapienza and Tuscia universities we have analyzed over 70.000 thousand Italian newspaper articles on male violence against women and almost eight hundred court judgements on the matter (years 2017-2024).

Indeed, in seeking to solve problems, societies start by framing them. If the framing is wrong and distorted, the solutions will be inadequate, too.

The results of our research project are quite striking: transversally the material we analyzed shows that our culture, in Italy, is filled with what philosopher Kate Mann called “himpathy”: the flow of compassion, understanding and empathy that is removed from the victim, in favor of the perpetrator. Distributing responsibilities between the two as we will demonstrate with various examples from the Italian press, arguing that this asymmetry in the narration of facts regarding men and women is the outcome of gender inequalities. A manifestation of historically unequal power relations between women and men that survived to our days, distorting public discourse, and, when it comes to gender violence, distributing responsibilities between the culprit and the victim.