I maltrattamenti domestici durante la pandemia: le donne vittime e protagoniste di un futuro diverso

[Autom. eng. transl.] The research presented here is the continuation of a qualitative survey that began in Milan in the first months of the Covid-19 pandemic (March / May 2020) which had the aim of mapping the places of reception and care that, from the 1970s onwards , they saw the women protagonists. A year later (February / April 2021) I resumed the research, collecting a series of interviews often made with the same people, with a goal that was reoriented in a slightly different way, inevitably influenced by the crisis situation in which Milan, as the whole country has lived for the past twelve months. In fact, although starting from the desire to investigate and emphasize the Milanese female protagonism, I found myself exploring a particular social emergency. An emergency that has seen women victims and protagonists at the same time: I am referring to gender-based violence often stemmed (or rather "treated") by highly feminized services, in which professional and voluntary commitment, especially of female workers, is daily. In reality, as we will understand from the testimonies collected, more than an emergency it is a persistence which, however, Covid-19 has highlighted in an even more crude way. In this contribution, through the testimonies of some historical "services" of the city of Milan, I will focus attention on a specific aspect of gender-based violence, namely domestic abuse (or Intimate partner violence) despite the awareness that the pandemic has had a direct impact also on the other forms that this phenomenon unfortunately assumes, such as femicides, stalking, economic, psychological, physical, sexual violence. Therefore, asking whether domestic violence had a resurgence during the pandemic or not corresponded to the desire to highlight some aspects of this phenomenon that tend more easily to be overlooked or diminished in a series of stereotypes and clichés that, in the void and in the silence created by the pandemic, they emerged with a clarity and a deafening noise. I will reconstruct, through the voice of some protagonists, a very singular period, in which from an initial dismay at the suspension of normality, habits and also the certainties of acting and relationships, we have passed to a difficult coexistence with a virus that does not it knows geographic boundaries or social barriers. The picture that emerges is that of a strongly tried city, in which, however, the women and the services that have been at their side have not only been able to experiment with new formulas of care and hospitality (by exploiting, for example, networks of consolidated relationships, the offered by digital technologies, and many other alternative ways to offer services and keep in touch) but also to capitalize on a situation that was hopelessly not only negative. Paradoxically, in fact, thanks to its exceptionality and heaviness, the pandemic context has made it possible to accelerate awareness and choices that in ordinary conditions would have been harmful for too long.