Sex Scandals in Italy Fuel Discontent of Women - Building Gender Balanced Business

As Italy’s Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi treads water in the wake of his latest under-age sex case, the scandal is quickly becoming a rallying point for those discontented with the state of gender politics in Italy. While Italian women struggle against the constrictions of a traditionally patriarchal culture, they are also struggling with their own identities, and the power of the culture at large to shape their images of themselves. A recent New York Times report on women-led anti-Berlusconi protests explores the nature of the discontent, and how Italian women see themselves reflected in the glossy, sensationalist coverage of the Prime Minister’s latest legal troubles:

• Thousands of Italian women have been pushed into action by the sex case, protesting and signing online polls, showing their anger over predominant cultural attitudes toward women that are aptly symbolized by the power- and sexual-dynamics of the scandal.

• There is a sense of frustration over the constricting images of idealized womanhood that they see in the culture around them, particularly the dichotomy of the subdued housewife vs. the sexualized showgirl, a split that has been magnified on television shows operating on Berlusconi-owned channels for decades. In the space of this dichotomy, critics argue, the image of the professional woman is crowded out by the greater association of women with family and sex.

• The chronic professional and societal repression effected by the dichotomy is apparent in Italy: the country ranks 74th out of 135 European countries on the World Economic Forum’s Gender Gap Index, which measures equality between men and women.

• Italian women face difficulties in employment, and despite the fact that they hold a majority of the university degrees in their country, less than half of all Italian women (46 percent) are employed.

• Estimates from financial institutions posit that raising the employment percentage of women to 60 percent could increase the growth of Italy’s economy seven-fold.

• Professional difficulties for women are magnified at the top levels of power and industry, with very few women holding positions of clout, and even those coming into their positions relatively recently. Most of those women come from families that are already wealthy and influential.

• Employment and advancement for Italian women is crippled by cultural expectations, which assume that women fall naturally into the role of family caregiver, and that they will fail to meet their professional obligations if they have children.

• The assumptions are magnified by a society that lacks the infrastructure to deal with caring for young children when both parents work.

• Some critics are concerned that the opportunity for female advancement in Italy has been sullied by decades of sexualization and objectification by cultural powerhouses like Berlusconi’s networks, which suggest that a woman’s most powerful asset is her body, not her mind.

You can read the entirety of this article in the New York Times.