Why are gender+ equality policies framed the way they are in different countries and contexts? Can we talk about ‘quality’ of gender+ equality policies? What are the ‘success’ or ‘failure’ stories about gender equality policies? And according to which criteria do we assess quality, and successes and failures of policies? In this paper we will explore these questions by comparing gender based violence policies in Spain and Italy, two South European countries that have shown different developments in their state feminism, with greater consolidation in the former than in the latter. The paper has three main objectives: first, to explain why gender based violence policies are framed the way they are in both countries; second, to explain what are the successes and failures in the content of these two national gender based violence policies; and third, to further elaborate on the possibility of having quality criteria for assessing gender equality policies. The paper will employ unpublished data from the European QUING research about gender violence policies in Italy and Spain from 1995 to 2007.
