“Femicide” criminalized in Italy: Symbolic or Significant?
On November 25th, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, the Italian parliament voted unanimously to codify the crime of “femicide.” This term refers to the murder of a woman motivated by gender and will be punished with a life sentence.
In 2023, a young Italian woman named Guilia Checchettin was fatally stabbed by her ex-boyfriend. The woman’s sister, Elena, remarked that the murderer was not a monster but the “healthy son” of Italy’s patriarchal society. These words sparked national protests and are believed to have led to the movement to criminalize this act.
Legal scholars in Italy recognize the symbolic nature of the law but fear that it does little to overcome actual inequality. The current definition within Italy defines femicide as murders which are “an act of hatred, discrimination, domination, control, or subjugation of a woman as a woman… or limit her individual freedoms (after a woman terminates a relationship).” Valeria Torre, a law professor at Foggia University, believes this definition is vague and renders implementation difficult as the motive of gender may be challenging to prove. Many believe that this is only a semblance of a solution, and that the Italian government should instead be focusing on economic efforts to end inequality and prevent violence.
Yet, the classification of “femicide” enables a deeper study of these types of killings. Alongside Italy, other EU states like Cyprus, Malta, and Croatia, have a legal definition of femicide. Globally, 29 countries, mainly in Latin America, classify these murders as femicide. However, leaders like Javier Milei, President of Argentina, have vowed to strike “femicide” from the penal code over beliefs that this will legally make a woman's life more worth than that of a man.
Meanwhile, the United States lacks “femicide” as a legal term despite ranking 34th globally in intentional female homicides. According to “Femicide in the United States: a call for legal codification and national surveillance” published by the National Institutes of Health, the reports of female murder are not always categorized as a homicide. Furthermore, the motivations and victim’s relationship to the perpetrator are often undocumented, complicating the surveillance, prevention, and response to femicide. This issue is especially salient when comparing the number of women and the number of men that were reportedly killed by an intimate partner. In 2021, the Bureau of Justice Statistics released data showing that 34% of female victims of murder and nonnegligent manslaughter were killed by an intimate partner in comparison to 6% of male victims.
As far right governments struggle to acknowledge the crime of femicide and seek to strike it from law, other countries lack movements to even introduce the term. Femicide’s recognition as a uniquely violent and reprehensible crime could inspire a larger impact on culture, long-term deterrence, and response.