The massacre does not stop. Every day a victim, blood, grief: women killed as in a war bulletin. And all while the bill presented in December that introduces a new package of anti-violence rules - such as the strengthening of the use of the electronic bracelet and the arrest even without the flagrant crime in cases of mistreatment, injury and stalking - is still under discussion at the Commission. justice in the Senate.

"Gender-based violence is reaching levels of inhumanity before which our country cannot remain inert." The Minister for Equal Opportunities Elena Bonetti, in Sardinia for a short vacation and to participate today at the conference at the Teatro Massimo in Cagliari on the PNRR, answers the phone when the agencies have recently beaten the tragic news of yet another femicide: in Lecce a 38-year-old was killed by her husband who then committed suicide, leaving two orphaned children.

Minister, have you read? Another woman killed.

"Unfortunately, yes, a new case even today, the news tells us of the increase in brutal and unacceptable violence against women that increasingly leads to femicide. Behind this chronicle there are interrupted lives, raped lives, destroyed families with their children who are themselves victims. Faced with this, we have a duty to act ».

Maybe accelerating on the new bill, don't you think?

«The bill, signed by me and by the Ministers Cartabia and Lamorgese, was strongly supported by the whole Government and by President Draghi. I am confident that we can proceed as quickly as possible because it is truly an urgency to which we cannot but give an answer. We need to accelerate and I know the commitment that the speakers, Senator Giuseppe Luigi Cucca and Senator Julia Unterberger, are making in this direction ».

Will it help counter this plague?

"I am convinced of this: in addition to the strategic plan for combating gender-based violence which provides for integrated and extensive prevention actions, we have deemed it necessary to reinforce the regulatory instruments that allow immediate intervention to avoid the escalation of violence and to protect the women both after the report and when there is a danger to which these women and their children are exposed ».

You mentioned prevention, don't you think it's important to start doing it from schools?

«The educational action at school is fundamental as well as the training towards those who take care of women victims of violence, from the police, to the judiciary, to health workers, to the teachers themselves. But the theme of prevention is the more general one of a change of cultural paradigm that eliminates any subculture of prevarication of the male over the female. Only with the full achievement of equal opportunities, as required by the Constitution, can we create the preconditions for violence against women to be removed. However, strategic action is needed and that is why with the Draghi government we wanted to consolidate an integrated process that engages all administrations at all territorial levels by building a network also with third sector associations, anti-violence centers and shelters ».

For this reason, are equal opportunities a strategic objective in the NRP?

“It is a decisive issue. Let me say that in addition to physical violence there is also economic violence: many women in our country find themselves in a condition of total financial subordination with respect to their partner and often remain silent in the face of abuse out of fear or uncertainty about how to maintain themselves independently. It is this matrix that must be removed by affecting all sectors and by investing in gender equality and in women's work. Important tools that we have introduced are the income and the micro-credit of freedom to help the women victims to support themselves in the path of exit from violence and to activate the job placement. The road is long but we are determined to follow it to the end ».

Massimo Ledda

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