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25 Giugno 2026
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Gender based violence is a persistent issue worldwide, only considered as a state responsibility in the past few decades, while civil society organizations have been at the forefront to support victims. Here, we compare two approaches for state-civil society partnership in providing care, one top-down and one bottom-up. We find limitations of both cases and discuss a balanced approach.

This article is part of a series and has been written by the Master’s students in Global Politics and Society at the University of Milan. As attending students of “The Welfare States and Innovation” course, they explored the connection between Social Innovation and new forms of Welfare in contemporary societies. The articles highlights the development of new synergistic partnerships among actors involved in multi-stakeholder networks and innovative multi-level governance models for social policies.

Violence against women: a persisting and complex problem

Affecting 1 in every 3 women in the world, violence against women is widespread, with lasting physical and psychological effects as well as social and economic consequences. Despite varying prevalence in different countries, with regional agreements, campaigns, and policies to address it, gender based violence persists.

Brazil and Italy are both cases of high and persistent incidence with 23% and 25% of women aged 15-49 experiencing partner violence over their lifetimes, respectively (WHO, 2021). The countries’ different paths to address gender based violence created opposing approaches: while in Brazil the government was mandated to implement public protection, the Italian government did not take initiative and civil society had to intervene. Both in Brazil and in Italy, collaborative governance in anti-violence policies is structured as a multi-actor system involving public institutions, territorial services, law enforcement, the judicial system, and civil society organizations.

A Top-Down Approach: The Casa da Mulher Brasileira in Brazil

The Brazilian case was shaped by an Organization of American States (OAS) ruling mandating safeguards for women. The ruling followed a domestic violence case that ran for 18 years in national courts while feminist organizations mobilized. This pressure resulted in the creation of a comprehensive legal framework to address gender-based violence, shifting state response from family mediation to prevention and protection (Bandeira, 2018). The Maria da Penha Law established multidisciplinary centers and partnerships with NGOs (Brazil, 2006).

A strong demand prompted the state to establish a structure to assist victims. After a few years running on fragmented services, the program Casa da Mulher Brasileira (House of the Brazilian Women) was created in 2013 as a one-stop shop, combining all services necessary to support victims: police, legal advice, emergency stay, health care, and even professional capacitation with training provided by private partnerships (FIEC, 2023; Brazil, 2015).

Based on the general law regulating civil society partnerships (Brazil, 2014), municipalities took the route of issuing public calls to contract entities to deliver services in their Houses and reference centres. These organizations bring know-how, personnel, and community experience, following policy guidelines. This created a ‘plug-in’ collaborative franchise, enabling rapid municipal implementation through local partners rather than through lengthy public hiring.

However, this model may limit genuine cooperation: grassroots organizations deliver services but do not co-design them. They must follow rigid contract guidelines from the municipalities, losing flexibility. Furthermore, it sparks concern about the perceived outsourcing of state care responsibilities. Contract design may be unfit for local contexts, requesting insufficient personnel and prioritizing delivery targets over service quality (Maciel, 2021). In fact, since the contracts are rigid, they are not adapted to demand in real time, and may request too little personnel, resources, or unrealistic targets before implementation.

A Bottom-Up Approach: Donne in Rete contro la violenza in Italy

In contrast to Brazil, anti-violence centres in Italy developed from the bottom up. Starting from consciousness-raising groups, women in feminist movements understood that state institutions would not take on what they saw as an urgent political issue.

Thus, from the mid-1980s, the first anti-violence centres were established, and from the early 1990s, the first shelters emerged. With their spread across the country, the National Network of Anti-Violence Centres was created in 1991, opening up the possibility of exchanging experiences and expertise (D.i.Re, 2023).

In 2006, the Charter of the National Network of Anti-Violence Centres and Women’s Houses was drafted, and in 2008, the most important Italian association, D.i.Re (Donne in Rete contro la violenza) was founded, which today comprises 118 anti-violence centres and 60 shelters.

While from the late 1990s and early 2000s there was a first, partial, and segmented integration of these centres and shelters into the state welfare system, formal institutionalization came in 2013 with the ratification of the Istanbul Convention. Through what is commonly referred to as the “femicide law,” no. 199/2013, a definitive and solid institutional recognition took place, with the allocation of funds, the definition of minimum requirements, and the establishment of a national strategic plan.

However, the institutionalization of anti-violence centres and shelters, while bringing many advantages and state recognition of the problem, also entails several disadvantages. In addition to delays in funding distribution, underfunding, strong regional disparities, and a lack of data collection, reports by GREVIO – the Group of Experts on Action against Violence against Women and Domestic Violence, an independent body monitoring the Istanbul Convention – and feminist NGOs highlight a significant weakening of civil society.​

GREVIO shows that in both the development and implementation phases of national plans, only 3 of the 30 members of the monitoring group come from women’s organizations that originally addressed the issue (D.i.Re, 2024; GREVIO, 2025).

​Moreover, institutionalization has led to the setting of standards and requirements and often to the neutralization of the issue, depoliticizing its gender perspective and risking the homogenization of these centres into generic services (D.i.Re, 2023). 

Way forward: towards a hybrid balance?

In the Brazilian case, the innovation came from creating a structure that can incorporate existing knowledge from civil society operations into a highly scalable and adaptable model, solidified by public management. Nevertheless, the collaboration is limited by the design of the public call. Despite the inclusion of a shared management model in the state policy framework for Casa da Mulher Brasileira (Brazil, 2015), this is difficult to translate into service contracts. The contract model needs to move from a rigid, results-based logic to a collaborative, care-focused- logic, allowing adaptation to improve service quality

In the Italian case, innovation arises from recognizing the role of civil society, with its inclusion in government decision-making processes. However, even with a bottom-up approach, collaboration faces critical obstacles. Grevio, D.i.Re, feminist NGOs call for genuine collaboration, identifying, as a crucial point in their policy recommendations, a mandatory consultation for the codesign, coproduction, and coevaluation process (GREVIO, 2025). At the same time, in the policy-making process, the government must recognize the roots of these centres, which differ from other types of multi-purpose services and aim at achieving political and cultural change (D.i.Re, 2023). They should not be confined to purely administrative frameworks.

A balanced approach to violence against women calls for a governance framework that harmonizes robust state accountability with the substantive engagement of specialized civil society entities. The Brazilian and Italian cases show distinct strengths and weaknesses: one emphasizes scalable state-led delivery, while the other emphasizes feminist expertise and bottom-up engagement. Nevertheless, both also have limits when working together is either too strict or too symbolic. A more effective approach should ensure flexible cooperation, genuine inclusion of civil society decision-making, and recognition of the specific expertise of women’s organizations.

 

References 

Foto di copertina: Hector Ramon Perez, Unsplash.com