The Femicide Act (Law 119/2014) is analysed in its scope of criminal policy law and its meaning as a first (allegedly) legislative step towards a comprehensive, articulated and funded intervention to prevent and combat gender-based violence against women. We criticise the choice of decree law and analyse the individual content, which is criminal in nature: rules that tighten the punitive treatment of authors; protection and protection, provided for ‘weak’ individuals and now extended to women, as well as early and enhanced protection. The latter are considered to be the most significant: the Questore’s warning of cases of ‘domestic violence’, the urgent removal of the family home by the judicial police and the irrevocability of the stalking complaint (in the most serious cases). The (penal) measures provided for are aimed at exposing and putting an end to male-violence against women as far as possible; however, they can enter into friction with women’s empowerment pathways, because they can squeeze the will of women who have suffered gender-based violence; his consent, opinion and, in short, its autonomy are met: they either do not or go beyond it, limiting the self-determination of women. An interventionist public line has prevailed, acted through penalty instruments and priority has been given to repressive institutional logic over women’s freedom: not with the woman, but also against her herself.