ROME — It was a demoralizing few days for women in Italian courts.

A man who stabbed his wife to death was sentenced to a reduced term of 16 years in prison by a judge who cited the killer’s “anger and desperation, profound disappointment and resentment” over the victim’s relationship with another man.

The judge’s reasoning was made public on Wednesday.

The Friday before that, as Italy’s highest court rejected an appeals court’s decision to clear two men of rape charges, it emerged that the judges in the previous appeal had doubted the accuser’s account in part because they considered her “too masculine” to have made an attractive victim.

The men will now face a retrial.

Both cases, which involved female judges, provoked angry comments about entrenched gender stereotypes in Italy.

According to the National Institute for Statistics, violence against women is slightly going down in Italy, but the number of women seriously wounded by their partners is rising. The number of reported rapes seems to be holding steady.