How to progress in the fight for women’s freedom and gender equality: legal proposals in face of objectification, hipersexualization and pornification of contemporary society

Abstract

The fight for women’s equality and freedom through the repression of genderbased crimes and sexual assaults offers a discouraging result. Far from experiencing any improvement, the issue seems to be worsening. This may be due to the irruption in our contemporary societies of the phenomena of hypersexualization and objectification of women. But it may also be due to the increasing availability of pornographic contents that are more violent and vexatious against women. In the face of this, the legal approach based on the prosecution of criminal conducts must be accompanied by preventive or anticipatory measures: better control of certain web content; an effective system for limiting Internet access; application of the legal tools of inducement or apology of crime for the dissemination of illegal content; application of the specific type of gender-based hate crime; an extension of the liability of those who host such content on the network.