Laws and codes  are definitely not enough to defeat gender based violence in academia.  In the case of the Universtiy of Padua, Italy (UNIPD), one of the first  university in our country to introduce a specific code of conduct against sexual harassment in 2004, there are three institutional organisms dealing with the equal opportunities and anti-discrimination procedures in the academic environment. In my intervention I intend to point out that such tools, although formally sophisticated, are not enough to address such a problem. Without adequate tools and  resources for the evaluation and dissemination, but most of all without an adequate education of the people in charge to disseminate the code and to provide its effectiveness, instruments are vane. In the framework of FP7 EU projects  2013-2017 to which the University of Padua participated with a project called Gendertime, we have developed specific and tailored tools, addressing first the lack of data and then demonstrating that a lack of awareness on gender related discrimination and violence does exist at university level. In the paper I will present the results of a big survey run during the Gendertime project (2015-2016)  among UNIPD professors, pointing out their severe lack of awareness of the problem.