ABSTRACT
From 2009 to 2013 the authors have worked as a volunteer in a help centre for women in difficult situations. They realised that most women who needed their help were not happy to have to ask for it and were not at all sure that they could really be of help and not of harm for them. They felt they could trust the authors only when they realised that as women, the authors knew they were in the same boat, intent in negotiating their course in a society in which currents and winds are definitely not in our favour. Italian public institutions do not seem to have acknowledged either the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) adopted by the United Nations, signed and ratified by Italy since the 1980s, or the Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence by the Council of Europe (Istanbul 2011), approved by Italy in 2013.
