Conference Program

Despite the significant progress achieved in recent decades toward greater gender equality, social stigmatization of men who engage in roles traditionally associated with femininity—such as childcare, education, and domestic work—continues to persist. Empirical evidence consistently shows that care work, both paid and unpaid, remains largely feminised. Within this context, many men experience social pressure to distance themselves from what is perceived as feminine in order to conform to binary gender norms and reinforce a socially recognised masculine identity. This distancing from femininity does not merely involve the rejection of specific roles, but also entails the devaluation of qualities culturally associated with care, such as empathy, emotional attentiveness, and relational responsibility. As a result, fields in which these qualities are central—particularly early childhood education and caregiving—remain marginal within dominant representations of masculinity. These dynamics contribute to the reproduction of rigid gender divisions, reinforcing occupational segregation and the unequal distribution of domestic and emotional labour. Addressing these patterns requires the active involvement of families in a critical reflection on the social construction of femininity and masculinity. Encouraging a more flexible and relational understanding of gender roles can help reveal how the sharing of care responsibilities represents not a loss of identity, but an opportunity for individual and collective enrichment. In this perspective, the recognition of so-called “new fathers”—men who actively engage in childcare and household management—is particularly significant. These fathers embody alternative models of masculinity that challenge hegemonic norms and offer younger generations more inclusive gender references. Educational initiatives within schools and family contexts play a crucial role in promoting awareness of gender stereotypes and fostering more egalitarian representations of social roles. At the same time, media and cultural narratives can contribute to normalising the image of caring and emotionally involved fathers, moving beyond persistent stereotypes of masculinity based on distance, authority, or control. Social policies, particularly those supporting paternity leave and work–life balance, are also essential in creating the structural conditions necessary for a more equitable sharing of care work. Importantly, these transformations are closely linked to the prevention of gender-based violence. Research has widely shown that rigid and hierarchical models of masculinity—grounded in dominance, emotional suppression, and power over others—constitute significant risk factors for violent behaviours. Promoting masculinities centred on care, empathy, and shared responsibility can therefore contribute to challenging the cultural foundations of gender-based violence and fostering more respectful and non-violent relational models.Only through a broader cultural shift that dismantles gender stereotypes at both symbolic and structural levels will it be possible to envision a society in which care is no longer considered a “female domain,” but a shared space of social responsibility, personal development, and the construction of more equal and violence-free gender relations.

Despite the growing international attention to the issue of gender-based violence and the framework of commitments outlined by the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which identifies the elimination of all forms of violence against women among its priorities, the experiences of women with disabilities, in relation to this issue, continue to occupy a marginal space within both the scientific and political context. The available scientific literature suggests that gender-based violence against women with disabilities is shaped by multiple determinants, including restrictive gender norms, social stigmatization, dynamics of dependency within care relationships, and intersectional discrimination in access to support services. National and international published studies, although limited, have long converged in recognizing women with disabilities exposed to a higher risk of violence, in all its forms, than women without disabilities; however, the phenomenon remains largely invisible, both in more intimate and interpersonal contexts and in social and institutional settings, such as health and social care services and gender-based violence prevention and response centres.
Starting from a critical re‐reading of a selected corpus of studies on gender-based violence against women with disabilities – identified within a scoping review aimed to map the literature on the identity construction process of women with disabilities – The present contribution aims to analyse some of the main reasons underlying the invisibilization of gender-based violence against these women. Adopting an intersectional and socio-ecological perspective, the analysis offers a critical reflection on the need to promote further research lines aimed at deepening the understanding of cultural models and educational practices oriented toward the recognition of hidden violence. At the same time, it highlights the urgent need to strengthen the network of services engaged in the prevention of and response to violence, with particular attention to accessibility and the protection of the rights of women with disabilities.

Gender-based violence is rooted not only in social structures but also in symbolic imaginaries formed from early childhood. Biography for young readers, as a genre structured around role modelling and exemplarity, plays a decisive role in shaping gendered representations of agency and professional legitimacy. The BIBI Programme (Biografie e Biofiction d’Infanzia) responds to this challenge by developing a national model based on co-research networks and cultural prevention.

The programme is a biennial national research and educational initiative funded by the Italian Presidency of the Council of Ministers – Department for Equal Opportunities through a competitive public call for research and intervention projects aimed at preventing violence against women and promoting effective institutional networking practices. It brings together universities, local authorities, schools, socio-educational services, and specialised publishers across Italy within a structured, multi-level collaborative framework grounded in participatory research.

The project is situated within contemporary scholarship that conceptualises biography for young readers as a complex and historically regulated genre shaped by tensions between documentation, narrative construction, visual mediation, and reader positioning (Beauvais, 2020; Douglas, 2022). Historically structured around dynamics of exemplarity and normativity (Eaton, 2006), biography functions as a powerful device of symbolic modelling, contributing to the construction of gender imaginaries and professional role representations. Recent research has demonstrated how contemporary biographies, particularly those dedicated to women, oscillate between empowerment narratives and new forms of responsibilisation, while also reproducing subtle normative expectations, meritocratic individualism, and depoliticised accounts of structural inequality, thereby revealing the complex ideological implications embedded in gendered constructions of authority, agency, and professional recognition (Couceiro, 2022; Campagnaro, 2025; Filograsso, 2025; Malpezzi, 2024).

Within this framework, BIBI adopts illustrated biography as a transformative pedagogical device aimed at reshaping children’s gender imaginaries between the ages of 3 and 14. Through corpus-based iconotextual analysis, participatory reading practices, teacher training, and structured classroom experimentation, the programme works on the pluralisation of professional aspirations and the deconstruction of stereotypical associations between gender and social roles. In dialogue with approaches that interpret biography as an interplay between modelling, iconicity, and symbolic construction (Malpezzi, 2025), BIBI promotes narrative forms that include vulnerability, conflict, error, and identity negotiation, thereby moving beyond purely heroic and idealised representations (Jurich, 1972).

A distinctive feature of the programme is its co-research architecture. The network functions as an epistemic infrastructure in which researchers, educators, and institutional partners collaboratively design, implement, and evaluate educational interventions. This model enables comparative experimentation across territories, systematic pre- and post-intervention data collection, and the integration of literary analysis, empirical research, and policy-oriented dissemination (Campagnaro & Ferrari, 2025).

The paper will outline the programme’s theoretical foundations, describe the structure of its participatory research network, discuss the iconotextual and pedagogical criteria guiding corpus selection and classroom implementation, and present preliminary findings emerging from experimental phases. It will argue that biography-based symbolic modelling can operate as a structural mechanism of primary prevention by intervening on the cultural roots of gender inequality and expanding the horizon of professional roles perceived as socially legitimate and attainable.

The paper presents the results of the participatory action research project "Gender education, fight against stereotypes and prevention of gender violence", developed by the FORLILPSI Department of the University of Florence in collaboration with the Municipality of Livorno as part of the Memorandum of Understanding for the prevention, contrast and taking charge of gender-based violence. The research was created to accompany the Municipal Anti-Violence Network in the systematization of organizational and communication processes, supporting the construction of a theoretical-operational model aimed at implementing the interdependence between partners necessary to operate in a systematic and reticular way.

The first phase of the project (June-December 2024) involved the analysis of the context and the needs of the partners, carried out through monthly meetings of the Operational Table. These moments have fostered mutual knowledge, the reconstruction of the skills and practices of the different bodies and the development of shared tools, including the Grid of Competences, the Map of Intervention Actions and the Map of Relations between Partners. This work has made it possible to start drafting the Guidelines, conceived as a guideline device to define collaboration methods, criteria for taking charge and common strategies for prevention and contrast. The Guidelines aim to direct the actions of each actor with a view to interdependence and collaboration and to support the entire path of women, from the emergency moment to social and work reintegration.

The second phase (January-September 2025) involved evaluation, monitoring and training within the network. Through a questionnaire administered to all partners, feedback was collected on collaborative processes and the impact of the actions taken, which were then discussed in plenary. At the same time, training and self-training initiatives have been activated aimed at strengthening the professional and relational skills of the members of the network, with particular attention to inter-institutional communication and integrated case management.

The third phase (October-December 2025) included a specific training course on risk assessment, divided into three steps: mapping of the tools used by the partners; days of theoretical and methodological training and participatory workshops; development of shared communication strategies to ensure effective and timely transmission of information. This work responds to the need to overcome the fragmentation of approaches and to build a common language, an essential condition for coordinated and coherent care.

The results obtained so far highlight a network in progressive consolidation, capable of improving the quality of care and awareness of the roles of individual partners. The project is therefore configured as a transformative process in the making, aimed at strengthening the network as an integrated and responsible system, capable of promoting a territorial culture based on collaboration, effective communication and the empowerment of women.

Thanks to the Istanbul Convention, violence against women has been explicitly recognised as a serious violation of human rights (Art. 3); a violation that often occurs silently and is difficult to detect, particularly within family settings and intimate relationships.

This difficulty can be attributed not only to structural factors – such as economic dependence, feelings of shame or fear of retaliation – but also to the presence of distorted cultural representations of care, love and emotional relationships, which contribute to normalising or rendering invisible the many facets of violent behaviour.

From a pedagogical perspective, one of the elements that needs to be addressed is the parenting models learned by women who are victims of violence. The ways in which one learns to care for others, to experience emotional relationships and to interpret gender roles are, in fact, deeply influenced by the models observed and internalised through family experiences. These models can also lead to an inappropriate (uncritical) interpretation of certain behaviours that risk being perceived as “normal”, as signs of love.

This paper is part of the PRIN PNRR 2022 Phoenix research project. In particular, it draws on an analysis of interviews conducted with mothers who are victims of violence and who took part in the project’s activities. The narratives shared, and subsequently analysed, highlight how (and to what extent) learned and internalised parenting models can significantly influence the processes of attributing meaning to relational experiences, sometimes contributing to a distorted or partial interpretation of emotional dynamics. From this perspective, there is a clear need to promote educational programmes capable of making these learned models visible –and thus subjecting them to critical scrutiny – fostering processes of awareness and the development of new concepts of care and love, this time based on mutual recognition, respect and dignity.

In line with the literature on the topic (Cyrulnik, Malaguti, 2005; Malaguti, 2005) and within an ecosystemic perspective (Kumpfer, 2002; Richardson, 2002), resilience is understood as a process that is activated in the presence of adversity and that can be supported or hindered by different factors at the individual, relational, and contextual levels. These elements may function as either risk or protective factors depending on a person’s life history and on the subjective meanings attributed to life events.

This paper aims to highlight the main risk and protective factors related to resilience (Fernández-Álvarez, Fontanil, Alcedo, 2022) identified through a thematic analysis of interviews conducted with mothers who are victims of violence and who participated in the PRIN “Phoenix” project (Lopez, 2026).

On the one hand, the findings highlight the need to strengthen the cohesion of the relational and inter-institutional network supporting mothers who are victims of violence; on the other hand, they underscore the importance of promoting self-awareness and self-love throughout women’s lives. These issues place social justice and responsibility and the direction of educational policies at the center of efforts to combat this phenomenon.

In recent years, the term "patriarchy" has urgently returned to public debate, for reasons that are clear to everyone. But what are the deeper meanings of this term today? There is certainly an often overlooked and underestimated patriarchy in the dynamics of care and family relationships, where hegemonic representations of the relationship between masculine and feminine shape them. These hegemonic representations are not always easy to detect, including those that allude to a generic “equality” effectively modeled on the masculine order as well as to a “complementarity” that is, upon closer inspection, only a combination of stereotypes.

The aim of this contribution is, first of all, to address some of these neglected forms of hegemony within affective relationships, also referring to recent research on adolescence (Istat 2025; Save the Children, 2025, 2026; Vinciguerra 2024; Pasta-Santerini 2025; Toffanin, Gius, Cremonesini 2026). Furthermore, since in pedagogical perspective it is necessary to design innovative educational paths to overcome hegemonic logics in the direction of reciprocity, the contribution intends to argue how this overcoming requires a deepening of the philosophy of education that helps to rethink embodiment, fragility, and dependence. These can be meant as human co-existentials in a phenomenological sense (Heidegger 1976 – Fink 2018), that characterize our human condition and that, however, are today deformed by widespread neoliberal ideologies that reinforce logics of domination and oppression. On the other hand, new logics of mutual recognition are to be implemented.

In this perspective, to deconstruct hegemonic and patriarchal logics, the contribution proposes a parallel reading of the texts of Rita Laura Segato, bell hooks, and Eva Feder Kittay. Although their theoretical paths are different and distinct, their common effort is to address the rethinking of human embodiment as the first tool for struggle and overcoming the various forms of patriarchal hegemony in contemporary society.