SAŽETAK NA ENGLESKOM: Violence against women, including domestic violence, is a violation of human rights and a global phenomenon that is deeply rooted in the historical inequality between men and women, that is, it is a form of gender-based discrimination. It, as a systemic problem, deprives women of the right to equal enjoyment of fundamental human rights and freedoms and appears in many forms and areas of women's lives: as sexual, psychological, economic and domestic violence; violence at work, at home and in public. For decades, there has been a legal and social battle in this area that has led to a certain level of progress. However, despite significant efforts, violence against women in all its forms is a phenomenon that is widespread at all levels of society - both in Europe and in the world. No legal instrument has brought protection to a sufficient level - it has not approached the problem of violence against women in a sufficiently broad, detailed and systematic manner. Recognizing this, the Council of Europe, with the Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence, updated the mentioned topic by approaching the problem of violence as gender-based, thus creating one of the most comprehensive, progressive and ambitious instruments in the field of human rights protection - the "gold standard" of the protection of women's rights. This paper deals with the origin, content, goal and added values of the Convention and the state of its implementation in the Republic of Croatia. Also, in the paper, the problems and statements of the public discourse conducted on the topic of a major stumbling block on the way to its ratification by all signatory states of the Istanbul Convention are dealt with in more detail - wrong assumptions about its very intention and the disputed definition of "gender" as the main basis of resistance to the Convention. Ideological more so than legal divergence of left and right political currents - the problem of the (non)existence of an agenda, i.e. the introduction of the so-called "gender ideology".