Home > News > Seminar "Sexual Harassment, Sexual Abuse, and #MeToo: The United States and Italy" - International day for the Elimination of Violence against women.
Seminar "Sexual Harassment, Sexual Abuse, and #MeToo: The United States and Italy" - International day for the Elimination of Violence against women.
This presentation is a multidisciplinary and cross-cultural consideration of sexual harassment and the development of #MeToo in the United States and in Italy.
Prof. Natalie Nenadic (philosophy) will discuss the birth of the term and concept of “sexual harassment” in the United States in the 1970s and historical-cultural sources of this development. She will describe how this concept formed the basis for creative interpretation of Civil Rights law, which got sexual harassment recognized as a form of sex discrimination (MacKinnon, 1979), in an approach that was affirmed by the US Supreme Court in 1985 (Strebeigh, 1991). She will then take us through key subsequent historical moments in the US that facilitated wider public understanding of sexual harassment, culminating in exposure of decades of sexual harassment and assault by Harvey Weinstein and triggering #MeToo. This lays a foundation for explaining why #MeToo gained traction in the United States and was received relatively positively. Prof. Nenadic will also discuss how the current political climate imperils these developments.
Prof. Silvia Moscatelli (psychology) will discuss the mixed reception of #MeToo in Italy and historical-cultural sources for this reception. In Italy, the exposure of Weinstein drew immediate recognition. Italy formed its own #MeToo, the #quellavoltache hashtag, which preceded #MeToo by two days, and went viral. However, this success was quickly quashed as #MeToo was then smeared in the Italian media, including as an American oddity, survivors were attacked and not believed, and finally the topic was silenced over. Prof. Moscatelli identifies sources of this attack. She focuses on decades of the intersection of strongman politics and television (and other) media in eroding women’s status through mainstreaming extreme, culturally-altering, sexual objectification of women (Moscatelli, 2025) and the internalization of this damaging norm (Moscatelli, Golfieri, Tomasetto, & Bigler, 2021). She also identifies #MeToo’s positive impact despite this interference. Prof. Moscatelli concludes by discussing the current wider understanding and legal understanding of sexual harassment in Italy.
Chair: prof. Carlo Tomasetto (Dipartimento di Psicologia).
Discussant: prof. Susanna Mancini (Dipartimento di Scienze Giuridiche), Università di Bologna
Students, professors, and general public are invited to participate.
Published on: November 19 2025
