{"id":11242,"date":"2010-11-18T10:54:54","date_gmt":"2010-11-18T09:54:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pietroichino.it\/?p=11242"},"modified":"2018-03-15T11:58:52","modified_gmt":"2018-03-15T10:58:52","slug":"le-bambole-della-tv","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pietroichino.it\/?p=11242","title":{"rendered":"ITALY’S WOMAN PROBLEM"},"content":{"rendered":"

PER L’ITALIA LA PARITA’ SOSTANZIALE TRA I SESSI E’ UN OBIETTIVO ANCORA LONTANO RISPETTO AGLI STANDARD DEGLI ALTRI PAESI DEL MONDO; E ANNI DI TELEVISIONE E POLITICA DOMINATA DA BERLUSCONI NON HANNO FATTO CHE PEGGIORARE LA SITUAZIONE<\/span><\/p>\n

Editoriale di Barbie Nadeau<\/strong> pubblicato su<\/em> Newsweek il 15 novembre 2010 –\u00a0V. anche, in proposito,\u00a0il documentario televisivo di Lorella Zanardo “Il corpo delle donne”<\/a>
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

It\u2019s 8:30 p.m., and all eyes turn to Italy\u2019s most popular satirical news program, Striscia la Notizia<\/em> (Strip the News). Two middle-aged men stand under a strobe light, one of them holding a belt from which dangles a vaguely phallic string of garlic. A woman slides across the floor on her stomach, wearing a sequined costume with a thong bottom and a deep-V neckline that plunges below her navel. As she stands up, one of the men dangles the garlic in front of her open mouth. She takes it in her hands and rubs it across the side of her face. \u201cGo, turn around, let\u2019s give you a little look,\u201d the other man says, and touches the model\u2019s derri\u00e8re. \u201cThank you, doll.\u201d
\nThat\u2019s how prime time is in Italy. The parade of prurience is inescapable, an expression of the rot that\u2019s now manifest at the very top of the Italian government, a reflection of the society\u2019s deeper problem with the evolving role of women. While headlines tell an endless tale of teenage models, paid escorts, and Moroccan belly dancers cavorting with 74-year-old Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, the media make it clear that men are men, and women are window dressing. Boycotts, protests, and even complaints are rare, and when they\u2019re voiced, few listen. So while Berlusconi may well be acting like a dirty old man these days, it has to be said that a goodly number of Italian women have been willing to play his demeaning games for a long time.
\nHe might have planned things this way. Long before Berlusconi won his first stint as prime minister in the 1990s, the scandal-ridden media mogul owned 45 percent of Italy\u2019s television market. He gained control of state television\u2014another 50 percent\u2014as head of government. With 95 percent of the TV market now under Berlusconi\u2019s umbrella, his cumulative influence on the way Italian women are seen and see themselves is hard to overstate. So are the negative results for Italy: while other European lands actively promote gender equality as a builder of national prosperity, Berlusconi has led the charge in the opposite direction, effectively stifling women by creating a world in which they are seen first and foremost as sex objects instead of professional equals.
\nAn appalling portrait of Berlusconi\u2019s Italy emerges from the World Economic Forum\u2019s October 2010 Global Gender Gap Report<\/a>. The WEF looks at such issues as wage parity, labor-force participation, and career-advancement opportunities for women, arguing that closing the gender gap Europe-wide could boost the euro zone\u2019s GDP as much as 13 percent. But as things stand now, Italy would be left leering on the sidelines. In every category but education, Italy lags badly: in labor participation, 87th place worldwide; wage parity, 121st; opportunity for women to take leadership positions, 97th. In the report\u2019s overall ranking, Italy now places 74th in the world for its treatment of women\u2014behind Colombia, Peru, and Vietnam, and seven places lower than it did when Berlusconi returned to office in 2008. \u201cItaly continues to be one of the lowest-ranking countries in the EU and deteriorate[d] further over the last year,\u201d the report says.
\nAn entire generation has grown up in a society where demeaning soft-core porn is an acceptable addition to the daily news. It\u2019s been 23 years since Berlusconi\u2019s Canale 5 introduced Striscia la Notizia, with its voluptuous women known as veline\u2014literally \u201cscraps of paper\u201d\u2014parading through the segments. Today, showgirls don\u2019t only appear on every channel; some are even in government, appointed by Berlusconi. Polls show that more young Italian women want to be well-paid TV veline than doctors, lawyers, or business owners.
\nOthers are convinced there\u2019s nothing they can do about gender discrimination. Berlusconi\u2019s harem culture sends a signal that seduction counts more than an impressive CV. \u201cOur only form of protest is changing the channel,\u201d says Concetta di Somma, a 30-year-old aerobics instructor. \u201cBut when even the weather girl is showing her cleavage, if you protest with the clicker, you miss the news.\u201d Underrepresented in government and corporate life, women have little hope of changing the system from within. \u201cIt\u2019s a male-dominated society from the church on down,\u201d says Marina, a 57-year-old jewelry-store owner who asked not to use her last name for fear of hurting her business. \u201cWomen look like whores in advertising and on TV because that\u2019s what men want to see. Men make the advertising, make more money, and thus drive how the products are displayed.\u201d
\nDocumentary filmmaker Lorella Zanardo <\/a>recalls meeting with a top bank manager in Milan recently. On his desk in clear view was a calendar with each month represented by a bikini-clad babe. A magazine with a seminude woman sprawled on the cover was displayed on his coffee table. \u201cThis is a man who has to decide how many women will be in decision-making positions in his company,\u201d she says. \u201cHow does he separate these subliminal messages from reality when he makes these decisions?\u201d
\nAny recent steps toward gender equality have come only as a result of international pressure. Moves to fill the country\u2019s public-administration offices and boardrooms with women were either drawn up during the previous, short-lived, center-left administration or forced into place by European Union corporate-governance codes. Measures to stop discrimination, especially against women of reproductive age, are largely ignored because there\u2019s simply no one to enforce them. Berlusconi \u201chas weakened institutions aimed at addressing women\u2019s issues by narrowing mandates and decreasing budgets, and also by appointing women who are often inexperienced and have few ties to existing women\u2019s-rights organizations,\u201d says Celeste Montoya, an associate professor of women and gender studies at the University of Colorado who has written extensively about Italy.
\nThe Berlusconi government has focused its women\u2019s-rights efforts primarily on the country\u2019s rising reports of domestic violence. But even there Berlusconi seems to miss the point: last year he apologized for not being able to combat growing rape numbers by explaining, \u201cWe don\u2019t have enough soldiers to stop rape because our women are so beautiful.\u201d
\nThe cumulative impact of all this has made the workplace an unwelcoming if not downright hostile environment for women with even moderately serious ambitions. Only 45 percent of all Italian women work outside the home, the lowest rate in the European Union, and that rate has been stagnant for the past five years. By comparison, 80 percent of Norwegian women and 72 percent of British women work outside the home. When Italian women do have jobs, they earn on average 20 percent less than men, and they hold only 7 percent of Italy\u2019s corporate-management positions, versus an average of 33 percent in Scandinavian countries.
\nItalian women with jobs outside the home still spend more time on housework (21 hours a week) than any of their European counterparts except the Poles and Slovenes. (American women spend just four hours a week on housework.) And Italian men aren\u2019t much help. \u201cTo understand an Italian woman, you have to understand Italian men,\u201d says Maria Silvia Viti, 59, a retired teacher who raised her daughter as a single parent. \u201cWe do not have the same partnerships and division of domestic labor as women in other countries seem to achieve.\u201d
\nAn Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development<\/a> survey calculated that Italian men have 80 minutes more leisure time per day than their female counterparts, more than males from any other OECD country. (In Norway, men have just three minutes more leisure time a day than women.) A recent report by the Italian Association of Househusbands (a rather small group) found that 70 percent of Italian men have never used a stove, and 95 percent have never run a washing machine.
\nItalian women do have a generous state-mandated maternity leave\u2014six months, with the guarantee of a job for up to a year after the birth\u2014much like their European counterparts, but that hasn\u2019t exactly empowered them. Even though the law forbids it, employers don\u2019t hesitate to ask job candidates if they have any intention of starting a family, and many small to midsize companies shun women of childbearing age, rather than risk having to keep a job open so long. For the minority who do work and also have children, finding adequate day care is such a challenge that more than half of all working women rely on grandmothers as the primary caregivers.
\nIn Italy more than most other countries in Europe, there\u2019s still a stigma attached to being a working mother. In rural areas especially, a working mom sending the kids off to a day-care center\u2014if there is one\u2014is frowned upon and seen as negligent. \u201cMany traditional Italians feel that mothers are the best caregivers for young children,\u201d explains University of Turin economist Daniela Del Boca, and that may translate into a situation where they are the only caregivers. Even when the father is unemployed, the working mother often ends up bearing the entire burden of child rearing.
\nIronically, despite this idealization of the Italian mother, Italy\u2019s birthrate is the lowest in Europe, at 1.3 children. Women who must work feel they have to choose between the job and children. \u201cIf we want a career, we cannot easily manage it with more than one child,\u201d says Viti, the retired schoolteacher. The low birthrate is a huge problem for an aging country where 15 percent of the GDP already goes to paying the pensions enjoyed by a staggering 22 percent of the population. Making it easier for mothers to work could make the difference between a viable economy and an inexorable decline in the quality of life for all Italians. The WEF report suggests that if even several hundred thousand of the country\u2019s 6 million women were to enter the workforce, it could boost the nation\u2019s GDP by 1 percent.
\nBut for Berlusconi the idea of an educated female workforce seems to be more of a joke than the key to economic progress. He appointed an ex-showgirl, Mara Carfagna, to be Italy\u2019s minister of equal opportunity. Her topless-photo calendars still hang in the back halls of the Italian Parliament. Although she makes speeches promoting \u201cequal rights and equal dignity\u201d for women, Berlusconi himself is unapologetic on the topic. At a recent rally he said there was one way for women to ensure their future happiness and financial security: \u201cLook for a wealthy boyfriend,\u201d he told a shocked crowd. \u201cThis suggestion is not unrealistic.\u201d
\nA year ago, more than 100,000 women signed a petition titled \u201cBerlusconi Offends Us.\u201d He laughed it off, asking, \u201cHow can anyone say I don\u2019t love women?\u201d While some in the Catholic press have at last condemned Berlusconi\u2019s escapades, calling him \u201cill,\u201d such criticism is not tolerated in the vast swaths of media interests that the prime minister controls. When the soon-to-be ex\u2013Mrs. Berlusconi, Veronica Lario, publicly protested her husband\u2019s behavior, the response was swift. Several right-wing newspaper headlines called her an \u201cungrateful showgirl,\u201d and splashed topless pictures of her from her former career on their front pages. (Yes, the nation\u2019s first lady was also a topless actress.)
\nIt\u2019s clear that Berlusconi\u2019s ouster\u2014were it to happen\u2014would weaken the toxic link between politics, the media, and gender discrimination. \u201cHis departure would send a relevant message,\u201d says Del Boca. But it will take Italians of both genders to reprogram their way of thinking if any real progress is going to be made. And just changing the channel won\u2019t be enough.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

PER L’ITALIA LA PARITA’ SOSTANZIALE TRA I SESSI E’ UN OBIETTIVO ANCORA LONTANO RISPETTO AGLI STANDARD DEGLI ALTRI PAESI DEL MONDO; E ANNI DI TELEVISIONE E POLITICA DOMINATA DA BERLUSCONI NON HANNO FATTO CHE PEGGIORARE LA SITUAZIONE Editoriale di Barbie Nadeau pubblicato su Newsweek il 15 novembre 2010 –\u00a0V. anche, in proposito,\u00a0il documentario televisivo di […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-25-temi-diversi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pietroichino.it\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pietroichino.it\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pietroichino.it\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pietroichino.it\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pietroichino.it\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pietroichino.it\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11242\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pietroichino.it\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pietroichino.it\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pietroichino.it\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}