La violenza sulle donne. Definizioni e caratteristiche di un fenomeno globale.

[Machine translation] Violence against women has always been a phenomenon that has always been present and widespread in society. The International Community, however, began to highlight and analyze the problem systematically only starting in the early 90s., The first universally recognized definition of violence against women dates back to 1993, when the United Nations Declaration on the Elimination of Violence against Women established in art. 1 that “... the expression 'violence against women' means any act of gender-based violence that results in, or is likely to result in, physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering for women, including threats of such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of freedom, that occurs in public or private life.” In addition, the same document specified in art. 2 that “... Violence against women must include, but not be limited to, the following:, a) physical, sexual and psychological violence that occurs in the family, including beatings, sexual abuse of girls in the domestic place, violence related to dowry, rape by a husband, female genital mutilation and other traditional practices harmful to women, non-marital violence and violence related to exploitation;, b) physical, sexual and psychological violence that occurs within the community as a whole, including rape, sexual abuse, sexual harassment and intimidation in the workplace, in educational institutions and elsewhere, trafficking in women and forced prostitution;, c) physical, sexual and psychological violence perpetrated or conducted by the State, wherever it occurs”., The Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence 2 (Istanbul 11 May 2011, signed for Italy on 27 September 2012 and ratified on 10 September 2013) specifies in art. 3 that “... the expression 'violence against women' means a violation of human rights and a form of discrimination against women, including all acts of violence based on gender that cause or are likely to cause physical harm or suffering, sexual, psychological or economic, including threats to commit such acts, coercion or arbitrary deprivation of freedom, both in public life and in private life; the expression 'domestic violence' designates all acts of physical, sexual, psychological or economic violence that occur within the family or family unit or between current or former spouses or partners, regardless of whether the perpetrator of such acts shares or has shared the same residence with the victim”., With these definitions well imprinted in mind, we will develop in the following chapters the theme of violence against women, paying particular attention to the spread of the phenomenon in our country, to the consequences that violence has on the health of women and their children, to the economic repercussions of the phenomenon, with a look at international literature in the description of the different forms of abuse.