The modern State was founded on a sharp separation between the public and private spheres and on a hierarchical gender order. Politicizing the private (in the twofold sense of making it an object of policy and conceiving it as a space of power and negotiation) is part of the equality agenda we are proposing here. This is an extreme expression of discrimination against women and of their lack of autonomy, not only physical autonomy, but also economic and decision-making autonomy. Violence against women cannot be analysed and tackled in isolation, but must be considered bound up with the economic, social and cultural inequality that operate in the power relations between men and women, which are in turn mirrored in inequality of resources in the private and public domains and are directly related to the unequal distribution of labour, especially unpaid domestic work.