EWL Italian members react to "Fertility Day"

EWL Italian members react to “Fertility Day”

September 19, 2016

[Extract from qz.com “In its battle to get Italians to make more babies, the Italian government has made an embarrassing misstep. Health minister Beatrice Lorenzin recently announced that Sept. 22 would be the country’s first “Fertility Day,” when state-sponsored events in Rome, Bologna, Catania and Padova offer the public information about family planning and encourage parenthood. In anticipation of that special day, the ministry launched a #FertilityDay campaign, with 12 promotional images that quickly went viral in all the wrong ways.”

Fertility Day

Find here a reaction by EWL Italian members “As Italian women we feel offended and devalued by this inappropriate and inconsistent “propaganda” pro fertility that our government, who prides itself of being young, equal, avant-garde and attentive to social aspects, has spread in recent days. We feel offended because as usual this campaign has all the flavours of the umpteenth result of a patriarchal sexist and retrograde society that is not able to implement change from the root. How can you ask women to have more children when pregnancy often lasts more than a labour contract? When to the young women that present themselves for job interviews the first questions are always allusive to motherhood and marriage? The same labour market seems to have still in use the signature of blank resignations Is it legitimate to ask Italian women to have more children, if for the same capacity and education, male workers are chosen with the perspective of a full career at the expense of equally capable women and in addition alluding to the public ownership of their uterus? Statistics tell us that women who are in employment, having children, leave the labour market. How should they keep their children? How can they ensure a proper education and fulfil their need for their full growth? And what about the non-existent services, and whether there are, scarce or too expensive? And so far an equally important aspect: Women have the right to self-determination and Italy seem to forget it: many and humiliating obstacles are encountered in the implementation of the law 194 on abortion, which make it almost impossible to apply. As usual, the impossible is requested to the Italian women, without tackling the real Italian: the lack of an equal access to the labour market. The Government must implement equality policies that introduce the equal access to the labour market It is first needed to ensure that women have rights and services without which everything becomes impossible. Men have to be empowered in order to share care responsibilities. Education on this issue has to be introduced already from the primary schools. Maybe then it might be possible to make responsible and sensible campaigns on family and motherhood!”

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