Book review: Femicide, gender and violence: discourses and counterdiscourses in Italy

Intimate partner violence (IPV) was routinely ignored before the 1970s unless it escalated to homicide, during a time that has now been labelled the “age of denial” (Dutton, 2006; p16). However, when Erin Pizzey opened the first women’s shelter in 1971, it started a movement of research that aimed to understand violence against women, and was a key moment in the development of the gendered model of IPV. This model attributes the causes of IPV to be related to gender inequality, patriarchy and male privilege, and describes it a as a gender-based violence. As a model, this became the dominant narrative within research and practice at the time; there exists now a wealth of research within an alternative body of work that suggests it is not fit for purpose, and ignores evidence of women’s violence, bidirectional abuse and other risk factors for IPV. Yet despite this evidence, it remains the most influential model with IPV practice informing policy, and interventions for both perpetrators and victims. By remaining as the dominant approach to addressing IPV, it is unsuccessful in providing for the treatment needs of those involved with the criminal justice system. It fails to tackle the systemic nature of IPV by ignoring its multifarious causes (including social, developmental and intergenerational origins), and does not recognise the heterogeneity of perpetrator and victim groups (see Bates, Grahan-Kevan, Bolam & Thornton, 2017 for further discussion). Not only does it not provide viable interventions for violent women, and male victims, but it also attempts to hold abusive men accountable through a confrontational process of shaming, which further fails to provide motivation for behaviour change.