The figures and their absence

This is not a book about violence against women; it is a book about responses by society to violence against women. However, having figures about violence in your hand is crucial. In fact, only by examining the extent and frequency of male violence can we appreciate the scale, determination and lack of scruples involved in covering up the violence. Only in this way does the importance of figures and statistics also become clear and, conversely, the significance and consequences of their absence. In fact, the lack of figures about violence represents a political choice and one of the means of hiding it. In her book Sisterhood is global (1984), an analysis of the state of the world from the point of view of women, Robin Morgan talks about the ‘policy of not having figures’:

Her whole book is therefore an appeal to increase research work and collect and analyse data, free from patriarchal bias, in order to uncover the truth.

Over 20 years later, we have a great deal of research, enabling us to draw a map of violence against women and children. This knowledge is the result of pressure by the women's movement and work by women in research institutions and international organisations. In many European countries, for example, research into violence carried out at a national level represents acceptance of the recommendations of the Fourth World Women's Conference in Beijing in 1995, in which the need to have statistical information was confirmed.