Anti-Gender Campaigns and Feminist Mobilization in Italy: The Role of Anti-Violence Centers

The contribution analyzes the political conflict through the topic of gender-based violence. In particular, it focuses on the role of Anti-Violence Centers (CAV) as actors in the regeneration of the democratic project, which is at risk of progressive erosion due to the advance in Italy of anti-gender movements. Anti-violence centers represent a necessary force for the realization of genuine models of democracy. They work to uncover gender-based discrimination and inequalities and promote awareness and empowerment processes for women.

The aim is to identify the configurations that the political role of Anti-Violence Centers assumes today in Italy and their transformative horizon. This is done in relation to, on one hand, the conservative ideology of Giorgia Meloni’s government and, on the other hand, the anti-gender ideology that attacks the two key principles of the Istanbul Convention: the idea of gender as a social construct and that violence against women is a product of gender power asymmetry. This ideology tends to produce cultural and political backlash, challenging liberal democracy.

Using qualitative data from in-depth interviews with operators of various Italian CAVs, predominantly belonging to the D.i.R.e network, this contribution attempts to reconstruct some of the best practices in prevention, education, and awareness by Anti-Violence Centers. It particularly focuses on their practices of defining a public discourse on violence that contrasts with its stereotyped and prejudiced social representation, within a patriarchal, anti-gender, and populist ideological framework that tends to influence Italian political culture on gender issues.

The reflection presented here is part of the research of the Messina unit within the PRIN 2020 project “Stereotypes and prejudices: the social representation of gender-based violence and contrast strategies ten years after the Istanbul Convention” (PI Prof. Flaminia Saccà, Sapienza University; local unit leader Prof. Milena Meo, University of Messina).