The Devil in the Details: Changes Under Stable Trends of Femicide in Italy During COVID-19 Lockdowns

• Published date: 01 May 2024
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/10439862241245890
• Author: Edoardo Cocco,Clara Rigoni,Federico Bolzani,Yuji Z. Hashimoto,Stefano Caneppele
• Date: 01 May 2024

https://doi.org/10.1177/10439862241245890

Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice

2024, Vol. 40(2) 397 –423

© The Author(s) 2024

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DOI: 10.1177/10439862241245890

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Article

The Devil in the Details:

Changes Under Stable Trends

of Femicide in Italy During

COVID-19 Lockdowns

Edoardo Cocco1, Clara Rigoni1, Federico Bolzani1,

Yuji Z. Hashimoto1, and Stefano Caneppele1

Abstract

In recent decades, the issue of violence against women has increasingly drawn

the attention of international and national legislators and policymakers. The term

“femicide” became widespread in the early 2000s and was incorporated into the

criminal codes of several countries. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and

the subsequent social distancing measures raised significant concerns about their

impact on women’s safety. This study examines the effect of COVID-19 confinement

measures on femicide trends in Italy, a country which adopted stringent COVID-19

confinement measures and, since 2019, implemented new legislation to counteract

violence against women. Using two data sets—one from the Italian Ministry of

Interior containing 1,382 cases of female homicides (2013–2022) and another from

Italian NGOs detailing 1,253 femicides according to media coverage (2012–2022)—

the study employs autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) analysis to

assess monthly trends alongside the stringency index for COVID-19 containment

efforts. The findings reveal that, although overall femicide rates remained stable

during lockdowns, there was a significant shift in victim–perpetrator relationships.

Specifically, from March to May 2020, there was a decline in femicides by former

partners, offset by an increase in those by cohabiting partners. These results

underscore the complexity of femicide and the need for further research on various

facets of violence against women. This includes the potential escalation of physical

and psychological violence during lockdowns, influenced by forced proximity and

substance abuse in domestic environments.

1University of Lausanne, Switzerland

Corresponding Author:

Edoardo Cocco, School of Criminal Sciences, University of Lausanne, Sorge—BCH, CH-1015 Lausanne,

Switzerland.

Email: edoardo.cocco@unil.ch

1245890CCJXXX10.1177/10439862241245890Journal of Contemporary Criminal JusticeCocco et al.

research-article2024

398 Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice 40(2)

Keywords

femicide, COVID-19 impact, Italy, stringency index, gender-based violence

Introduction

In the past few decades, the issue of violence against women and girls has been given

increasing attention by supranational and national legislators and policy makers.

Numerous international conventions and policy documents have addressed the need

for national systems to reinforce gender equality and the protection of women from

any form of abuse, including homicide. Within the United Nations, the first and fore-

most milestone in this field has been the introduction, in 1979, of the Convention on

the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), followed by

several initiatives undertaken by UN Women, the UN Human Rights Office for the

High Commissioner, and the UN Economic and Social Council and the UN Office on

Drugs and Crime (UNODC). These initiatives included, among others, the Femicide

Watch Initiative (OHCHR, 2015), and the Statistical Framework to Measure Gender-

Related Killing of Women and Girls (UNODC & UN Women, 2022b).

At the regional level, the most punitive instruments have been adopted by the

Organization of American States (OAS), most notably the Inter-American Convention

on the Prevention, Punishment, and Eradication of Violence against Women (OAS,

1994) and the work of the Committee of Experts of its Follow-up Mechanism. In

Europe, the most comprehensive initiative in the field of violence against women has

been The Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence

against Women and Domestic Violence (Istanbul Convention) which, in 2011, set forth

a far-reaching set of legal standards to ensure the prevention of violence against

women, the protection and support of victims, and the prosecution of perpetrators.

Although the Convention itself does not explicitly refer to femicide, and its implemen-

tation monitoring body (GREVIO) has not given a precise definition of the latter,

several member states have included measures aimed at combating this phenomenon

within their national legislation. With respect to the European Union, the European

Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) regularly issues reports and guidelines on how to

define, recognize, classify, measure, prevent, and combat femicide (EIGE, 2021).

The word “femicide” was used for the first time by Diana Russell in 1976 and

appeared in her later writings to describe the “murder of women by men motivated by

hatred, contempt, pleasure, or a sense of ownership of women” (Caputi & Russell,

1990, p. 189). This definition, as all other definitions of the term that have been given

in the following years, refers to the social context in which the homicide takes place,

a context characterized by patriarchy and misogyny (Iaccarino, 2019). It was at the

beginning of the year 2000s that the word “femicide” started spreading in the feminist

debate, especially in Latin America, thanks to the Mexican anthropologist and femi-

nist activist Marcela Lagarde y de los Ríos (Grzyb et al., 2018). Lagarde y de los Ríos

used the Spanish term “feminicidio” and proposed a broader definition of this term,

which saw homicide as the culmination of a situation of systematic and repeated viola-

tion of women’s human rights (Lagarde y de los Ríos, 2004).1 This term,