As Italians marked Women's Day with the usual bunches of yellow mimosa blossom, the head of state sternly announced on Wednesday that the nation's women were getting a raw deal.
The same point was made to the nation by a survey showing the amount of washing, cooking and household chores faced daily by the average Italian woman. Political debate over the number of female MPs expected to sit in the soon-to-be-elected parliament drove home the point that, by European standards, women are poorly represented in national institutions.
"The right to equal opportunities for men and women is a long way from being translated into reality," President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi said. "We must ignore the rhetoric and look at the reality," he continued, going on to invite couples to find a "new equilibrium" within their shared lives. He then spelled out what he meant, referring to the need for a "better division of tasks" in the home
Italian women spend more time working in the home than any of their European counterparts, according to a Eurostat survey published in Italian dailies on Wednesday.
While the average woman in Rome or Milan puts in five hours 20 minutes a day, in Norway her peers put at least an hour and a half less, the figures showed.
Men all over the EU put in less time in the home, but Italians were bottom of the pile with one hour 35 minutes, two less than the Spaniards and 43 less than the Brits. Meanwhile, political parties were sparring over how many women they have included in their lists of candidates for the April 9 elections.
In general centre-left parties such as the Democratic Left, the Greens and the communists appeared to have made a greater commitment to women, giving them a third or more of the places on their lists.
But the rightist National Alliance also claimed to have made strides, predicting that women would also be a third of its MPs.
Analysts pointed out that the number of candidates in itself was no guarantee because if they were at the bottom of a party lost they would probably not end up with a seat. The issue of women in parliament is a sore point for Equal Opportunities Minister Stefania Prestigiacomo who tried throughout the last legislature to get rules on quotas for women MPs approved by parliament.
In the end many members of her own party Forza Italia deserted her and the bill, although approved in the Senate at the last minute, lacked the nod from the House which would have made it law.
The outgoing parliament contains 96 woman MPs, about 10% of the total. According to political analysts who studied the lists of candidates for the April elections, the new one could contain about 150.
Commenting on the situation on Wednesday, Prestigiacomo admitted that the elections might raise the number "a little" but said the low presence of women remained "a pathology of the system".
Italy's current female presence in parliament put it in 89th position out of 177 countries, she added.
