Institutional violence against women during the covid-19 epidemic. Pedagogical reflections

Abstract

Since February 2020, the Italian Government has started to take initiatives to stem the spread of the Covid-19 virus, which have not taken into account the phenomenon of domestic violence (Intimate Partner Violence). The invitation to “stay at home" seemed suitable for almost all the citizens, but it has become a form of additional mistreatment for all those women who found themselves isolated and segregated, together with their persecutor. Other provisions in the decrees did not facilitate their search for aid.

The first objective of the paper is to analyze a particular type of violence against women, the institutional one, and to show how it arose from the various ministerial decrees that followed during the epidemic, what consequences this problem generated and how it was dealt with later, when public opinion mobilized. A second objective is to insert this discourse into the pedagogical studies dealing with the wider phenomenon of abuse against women.