Students, staff and alumnae of the University of Cambridge are among the signatories of an open letter calling on Italian prime minister Matteo Renzi to introduce sex education in the country’s school system in order to address the problem of sexual assault.

The open letter is featured on an Italian feminist blog, F Come, of which several of the alumnae are founders. The blog seeks to address “a lack of feminist discussions and content in Italy, as well as an absence of discussions around sexual consent, rape culture and domestic abuse.”

Among the 110 signatories are Lilia Giugni, a PhD candidate at Cambridge's Department of Politics and International Studies (POLIS), Cambridge graduate student Lorena Gazzotti, Cambridge alumnus and masters student at SOAS Giulia Nicolini, Emrys Travis of the Cambridge University LGBT+ campaign, Newnham College PhD candidate Marto Musso, and Ellen Davis-Walker, also an alumnus, as well as former Head of Media at Cambridge African Film Festival and a former Varsity contributor, who is currently pursuing a PhD at the University of Edinburgh.

The letter calls upon the Italian government to introduce “sexual and emotional education” for young people, with a specific focus on “the themes of gender, informed consent and every form of violence.”

The letter notes that the government did go some way towards recognising the necessity of sex education with its 2015 Good Schools Bill, which, the letter states, “marked an important step in promoting a greater awareness of equal opportunities on the national curriculum”. The Bill created recommendations for local schools promoting aspects of sex education, but does not enforce any specific objectives.

The signatories of the letter believe that the Renzi’s administration must create more concrete guidelines for sex education. Giugni told Varsity: “The national recommendations of the Ministry for Education and Research (MIUR), aimed at school curricula of every stage of education, remain extremely vague and lack clear references to any objectives, timeframes or procedures for putting these into practice.”

Sex education for young people is increasingly thought to be the key to counteracting unhealthier impressions of sexual activity that have become increasingly accessible online and in the media. A 2015 study by WomenNC, based in North Carolina, found that children received just 16 per cent of information regarding sex and education from schools and family, with the rest deriving from other sources such as video games, music videos, and pornography which often treat consent as ambiguous or even irrelevant.

The letter also notes the ability of sex education to empower victims of abuse, stating: “[t]oo many women suffer violence at the hands of their partners or acquaintances, without the knowledge that their experiences qualify as abuse” and adding that schools have the ability to “teach our children how to label violence with its proper name - be it domestic abuse, cyber-bullying, or peer pressure in a group of friends.”

The letter’s signatories hope that in addition to providing children and young adults with a more positive and comprehensive understanding of sex and sexual consent, sex education in schools and university will draw the attention of wider society to the issue of sexual violence.

One of the measures advocated in the letter is the introduction of consent workshops, which are widely used by UK universities, despite complaints from some media figures that they are condescending towards students. Responding to such complaints, Davis-Walker told Varsity that the workshops were “a great precedent” which “enormously improved the safety and confidence of thousands of students.”

She added that they could provide young people with a broader and more nuanced understanding of sexual activity and particularly young women with more confidence, allowing them to perceive “their bodies as truly bodies” and not mere “objects of desire that they should be ashamed of”, and to regard themselves as “active agents” in sexual activity.