Revies

In the last 25 years, women’s movements, governments and international bodies have been active in awareness-raising on and reduction of violence against women (VAW). The main aim of this issue is to providean overview of comparative perspectivesof policies and services, which offer an innovative point of view to evaluate action. A comparative outlook on VAW initiatives can show acceleration or deceleration in decision-making, proliferation or scarcity of regulations, high or low effectiveness of plans and services in reaching set goals, and reasons why this is the case. The four articles of this issue present original research conducted on firearm policy on a global scale, comparative analysis of services in Italy, accessibility of VAW services in Israel and perceptions of VAW after film screening in Tunisia. The articles illustrate the level of interest that elicited by VAW, the complexities of the analysis and the local and global actors that play a role in action against this global problem.

Globally, firearms are the most frequent means of committing homicide with young males most likely to be victimized with guns. However, within the context of intimate partner violence and family violence, females’ risk of lethal gun violence rises significantly, supporting the need to pay more attention to firearms to reduce lethal VAW. One way to protect women from firearm violence within the private sphere is to regulate access to guns based on the risk of family violence. This study examines the extent to which gun availability and gun regulations affect lethal violence against women in a relatively large sample of countries, controlling for established structural predictors of macro-level homicide rates. We find that the civilian gun ownership rate is positively related to lethal VAW. However, background checks do not have a direct effect on female homicide rates, although domestic violence background checks are significant under certain conditions.

The paper analyses the extent to which institutionalisation processes are gendered in the context of violence against women (VAW) policies in Italy. Specifically, through a comparative analysis of VAW policies in three regions (namely, Emilia-Romagna, Apulia, and Lombardy), the paper aims to depict anti-violence centre (AVC) advocates and workers’ representations of VAW policies in their daily practices. In this paper we will focus on the regulation processes of the selected regional administrations, while trying to answer to the following questions: To what extent has a policy that originated from feminist movement activities and practices ended up in very strict bureaucratisation processes? What are the consequences of this processin the selected regions? To what extent does the institutionalisation of VAW policies have an impact on the activities and practices of AVCs, from the perspectives of the centres’ advocates and workers?

The obligation of the establishment to protecting women against violenceis non-consensus andis sometimes conceptualized as a struggle for women-human rights. The present article deals with domestic violence against women from the minority groups of Palestinian and Ethiopian women in Israel,both part of patriarchal, collectivist societies,who suffer from poor civil status. Semi-structured interviews were held with Palestinian and Ethiopian women, as well as professionals in the social services regarding violence against women, including physical and economic violence, and accessibility to resources for protection against violence. Our findingsexpose both patriarchal repressive practices and official public policies that exacerbate the situation of women violence victims, expressed as hollow citizenship among Palestinian women and partially exclusionary citizenship among Ethiopian women who are part of the Jewish majority.Thus, policymakers should consider adapting violence prevention and treatment programs to minority populations, to make these resources available to all citizens.

Thanks to the Centenary, a renewed interest has undoubtedly affected the landscapes of the memory of the First World War, moving away from the aims of past patriotic pilgrimages because it includes different perspectives. Over time, a broader and disenchanted view of the conflict has allowed a narrative of memory that also contains counter-memories and meets the different needs of visitors, in which the practices of commemoration and the duty of memory aspire to a universalist dimension. The article focuses on some findings of a field research aimed at analysing the existence of commemoration and remembrance practices in the memory tourism of the Great War in Friuli Venezia Giulia. One of the goals is also to explore how memory tourism can transform the collective memory of this war into a shared and participatory representation, overcoming national memory policies.The interviews highlighted general trends concerning the processes of individualisation of memory and growing post-national dimension, because a different awareness is present in memory mediators, influencing the same purposes of the memory tourism of the Great War, which is so anti-rhetorical and transnational.

This paper reports on a 2019 study about female perception of violence against women (VAW) in post-revolutionary Tunisia triggered by their viewing of the Tunisian film, The Beauty and the Dogs (La Belle et La Meute). The two-phase study includes a one-time, in depth interview with the female filmmaker, Kaouther Ben Hania, and eight film screening sessions and post-viewing protocols with small audiences of Tunisian women and adolescents living outside of main metropolitan areas in the southern region of the country. In the first phase, the interview elicits the filmmaker’s thoughts about her motivation behind making the film and her ideas about the role of art in society. In the second phase, a post-viewing survey queries participants’ background and reactions to the film; small focus group interviewing expands upon the broader themes of VAW and connect them to their everyday lives. Slightly more than 100 females, whose ages range from 11 to 63, participated in the study. Film was chosen because this artistic medium remains among the most popular media choices for Tunisians. The analyses of the surveys and focus group interviews from this study, using SPSS and InVivo respectively, suggest that Tunisian women have very particular opinions about what actions constitute gendered violence; how women are treated at home and in public; what women and young girls’ behavior should be; and what kinds of initiatives are really working to protect them from physical and sexual violence since the 2011 Revolution. Women also appear to be questioning the overall societal impact of the newly adopted constitutional reforms and the changes to the Penal Code through their personal reflections that reveal the some of the conservative leanings of its citizenry.

Howard’s Garden city tradition is central in American urban planning and it has had great influence, also in its interpretations that were most distant from the original utopian model, on the ways in which the American city has grown. The approach defined by Howard rejected the English industrial city of the 19th century and proposed a model based on the values of local communities. The American translation of this approach has had great success and has brought after the second world war to the creation of suburbia, i.e. to a gradual process of suburbanization of the nation. This article sets out to investigate the evolution of the application of Howard’s model, the ways in which this model has had an impact on the growth of the American city and the reasons that have determined its success among planners, architects and other decision-makers throughout the 20th century.

How and why to interrupt and redirect our understanding of the histories and cultures of the Mediterranean? As a result of temporal and spatial relations, its geographies and histories are never neutral. They are the outcome of contestations, and are elaborated and practiced, above all, by those who have the power to impose their maps and chronologies. Reasoning with the historical and cultural impact of the mobile, migratory and mutable configurations of the Mediterranean, the prospects proposed here seek to dismantle the authority of the established archive. In its place the authors propose a series of interdisciplinary and transcultural considerations that would permit another Mediterranean – subaltern, repressed and negated – to emerge and interrogate the habitual narrative.

This contribution deals with the topic of: violence against women in Algeria: causes and public policies on violence against women. The violence against women in Algeria has represented a social phenomenon that affects Algerian women of all ages, single and married, whether those residing in cities or rural areas, as well as concerns either working or non-working. This phenomenon is most often carried out within families by the husband against the wife. However, the Algerian authorities have adopted a range of policies in order to face this violence against women; like persuasive measures of awareness and sensitization through the family, school and the media, as well as providing protection to women in centres. In addition, over the last twenty years, the Government of Algeria has promulgated policies, programs and a series of laws has been enacted to punish harassment of women, and tighten the punishment for men, even husbands, who engage in physical and moral violence against women. Indeed, a husband who practices any form of coercion or intimidation on his wife in order to dispose of her property or financial resources will be punished by imprisonment from six months to two years, and anyone who deliberately injures or beats his wife shall be punished by imprisonment from one to 20 years, depending on the severity of the injury, and in case of death, the penalty is life imprisonment. Finally, the government created a national committee that has an aim the implementation of the National Strategy to Combat Violence against Women was formed and the mechanisms for its implementation were evaluated through the preparation of an action plan related to this area in 2013. This contribution deals with the causes and the statistics about the violence against women, then the different policies developed by the Algerian government to fight against this phenomenon.

Smart working is defined as a new managerial philosophy characterized by higher flexibility and autonomy in the choice of working spaces, time and tools in return for more accountability on results.The health emergency related to Covid-19 helped the spread of smart working and public administrationsare experimentinga frequent and intensive use of smart working practices and technologies.Through a survey on 52Italian municipalities and 26 other public administrationswe have explored the level of adoption of smart working andexplored its correlation with work-life balance, autonomy,and innovation.Findings show that: (1) before the spread of coronavirus and the consequent lockdown, workers used to work in the office just for half of their working time; (2) women are more likely than men to part-time work; (3) part-time work is an effective tool to promote work-life balance, which is easier for those who do not have relatives to take care for; (4) smart working adoption results in larger autonomy, which promotes confidence and so propensity towards innovation.The main contribution of this work is to draw a first overall picture of the effects of smart working on innovation in Italian municipalities. This work presents some first results of a research still in progress and can be the basis for further research, both as regards more extensive research and for more in-depth research. The work also provides some useful working ideas for setting the exit route from the health emergency.