On the 10th Anniversary of the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence, it urges to verify the European scenario. In this frame, it must be underscored the importance of this international document and verified the state of art of its implementation. It will be easy to detect that, in spite of the manifold structure of the Istanbul Convention, the Italian legislation has counteracted the phenomenon by mainly using the criminal law. Conversely, the action so far taken in order to prevent violence against women by cultural change is too weak and ineffective, while a gender-sensitive approach is needed for any protection to be effective.