The Milan branch of the Northern League will celebrate Women's Day on Saturday by handing out cans of pepper spray in a city square, it said Friday.
Celebrated each year on 8 March, Women's Day is usually the occasion on which Italian men give yellow flowering mimosa sprigs to their women.
But the Northern League will instead distribute 500 cans of pepper spray to women passers-by in the city centre's Largo Cairoli.
''Rather than mimosa, the women of Milan are increasingly in need of safety,'' said local councillor and Northern League member Matteo Salvini.
''We prefer to give a tool of self-defence to the women who come to see us, instead of soothing our consciences with some little flower that's good for nothing,'' he added.
Salvini invited women who chose to accept the pepper spray to ignore any police interference during the gift-giving.
The police have already warned the Northern League against the initiative, saying that pepper spray is not a suitable substance to be distributed freely in the streets.
