When the former European Commissioner and long-time Radical Party exponent, Emma Bonino, was rushed off to a Milan hospital last week because of illness brought on by her self-imposed hunger and thirst strike, she would seem to have achieved at least one short-term aim. She had won some hard-to-get media space both for the Radical Party and for the issues it is promoting during the current Italian general election campaign, issues that include freedom of scientific research, the availability of the "morning-after" contraceptive pill and Italy's relations with the Vatican.
In the longer term, however, Bonino's dramatic hunger-strike, which she ended at the weekend, but resumed yesterday, probably struck an even more telling blow for that perennially endangered species, Italian women politicians. As someone prominent in the Radical party's campaigns for divorce and abortion in the 1970s and 1980s, and as one of the most energetic and innovative European Commissioners in Jacques Santer's cabinet, she long ago established herself as a powerful force for change notwithstanding her diminutive physique.
Her extreme gesture, too, served as a necessary reminder that Italian women have a voice in political life, even if it is a voice that has been in danger of going largely unheard during the razzmatazz of the current US-style electoral campaign, dominated by the two major centre-left and centre-right coalitions at the expense of "third-party" independents like the Radicals.
It says much about modern Italy that neither of the major coalitions has given huge priority to winning the woman's vote, notwithstanding the fact that women represent 52 per cent of eligible voters. The electoral campaign continues to be dominated by obvious issues such as unemployment, taxation, immigration, crime and education, not to mention the infamous "conflict of interests" regarding centre-right leader, media tycoon Silvio Berlusconi.
The party "spin doctors", it seems, believe that Italian women will vote just like Italian men, motivated by obvious factors that range from the cost of living to family tradition and party loyalty.
In a sense, there is nothing new about this. When it comes to the role of women in political life, Italy is a late starter, at least by the standards of Western democracies. There are, of course, both cultural and historical reasons for this.
For a start, take "Il Duce", Benito Mussolini. In the course of an interview with an English newspaper in 1921, Il Duce spelt out his message regarding universal suffrage loud and clear:
"I'm not going to give women the vote . . . A woman's role is to obey."
The Duce was as good as his word. Italian women had to await the fall of his regime and the end of the second World War before they were allowed to vote in national elections, exercising their democratic franchise for the first time in 1946. By that same date, women in Britain, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Ecuador, India, the Philippines, Spain and Uruguay had long since obtained the vote.
As Italy prepares for this Sunday's vote, you could argue that Italian women still lag behind their sisters in other first world democracies. The parliament that has just wound up its business was one of the most male-dominated in Europe, with only 11 per cent of Lower House deputies being women. A comparison with European Union partners is hardly flattering. In Sweden, 42 per cent of its Lower House deputies are women; in Germany, women constitute 31 per cent; and even in Italy's fellow-Mediterranean country, Spain, women make up 28 per cent. In Dail Eireann, the figure is 7.85 per cent. According to the Inter-Parliamentary Union, Italy ranks No. 56, along with Cape Verde and Santa Lucia, in terms of the percentage of women parliamentarians.
The history of women (or lack thereof) in government paints the same negative picture. No woman has yet served as either Italian State President or Prime Minister. By 1991, only four women had served as ministers in government cabinet. In more recent times, however, progress has undoubtedly been made, as evidenced by the fact that six out of the 25 ministers in Prime Minister Massimo D'Alema's short-lived October 1998 and December 1999 governments were women. And there's the cultural rub.
The position and role of women in modern Italian society is complex, based on a divided-self-type national psyche which seems to have no problems juxtaposing six women cabinet ministers with the (politically very incorrect) need to use glamorously half-dressed or even totally naked women to promote and advertise everything from beers and cars to leftist weekly magazines, not to mention TV soccer programmes.
The complexity of the issue was revealed by the howl of outraged protest, from women and men right across the political and cultural spectrum, engendered by an infamous court decision on a rape case in February 1999. On that occasion, the Supreme Court ruling overturned a rape conviction on the grounds that the alleged female victim had been wearing jeans. According to the Supreme Court's judgement, it was "common knowledge" that jeans cannot be removed without help from the person wearing them. Since the woman was wearing jeans, she cannot have been raped, the Court (420 judges, only 10 of whom are women) concluded, thereby acquitting the alleged rapist.
Yet, even before foreign commentators had re-hashed their critiques of backward Italy, a number of prominent Italian women, including politicians from across the political divide, had signed a public condemnation of the ruling. Their names and the roles they occupy in Italian life make it clear that Italy is much more than just a bastion of male chauvinism.
Among those who supported the initiative were Nobel Prize-winning scientist Rita Levi Montalcini, Jewish community leader Tullia Zevi, actress Franca Rame, novelist Dacia Maraini, Olympic Ski Champion Deborah Compagnoni, former Olympic champion athlete Sara Simeoni, designer Miuccia Prada, architect Gae Aulenti and physicist Margherita Hack.
The ability of women politicians to forget party divides for the greater good of the sorority is at the heart of the initiative prompted by Arcidonna, a left-leaning women's pressure group. Arcidonna has brought together more than 50 candidates at this election, ranging across the political divide in an "Electoral Pact Between Women", which pledges them to promote both greater female representation in state institutions as well as the French-style concept of parity of male-female numbers on electoral lists.
It would be foolish to dismiss such a pact. In the past, Italian women have achieved much, even if underrepresented. The Italian feminist movement of the 1970s, for example, was not only one of the most radical anywhere, but also one whose pressurised lobbying prompted important legislation, including the setting up of state nursery schools (1972), state birth control clinics (1975), equal pay for equal work laws (1977) and, symbolically most important, the right to abortion (1978).
Yet, even if Italy has some of the most advanced social legislation in the world with regard to protecting the role and rights of women (e.g. statutory five months' maternity leave on full pay), women still have some way to go before they get their hands on the levers of Italian power. Given the example of women like Bonino, however, they are on the way to catching up.
