Italy on Thursday marked
International Women's Day with a range of events across the
country.
Actress Asia Argento, one of the first to denounce Harvey
Weinstein, appeared in a Rome square calling for women's rights
to be boosted.
"It's time to join our voices," she said.
Anti-establishment 5-Star Movement (M5S) leader Luigi Di
Maio, the big winner in Sunday's general election, was among
those marking the day at the presidential Quirinal Palace in
Rome.
In Milan, women taking part in a Women's Day march promoted
by students and the 'Non Una Di Meno' (Me Too) movement threw
eggs filled with pink paint at banks and shops selling furs.
'Non Una Di Meno', which translates as Not One (Woman) Less,
is the equivalent of the movement that grew out of the Harvey
Weinstein-spurred sexual harassment and rape revelations.
There was also a flurry of strikes linked to the movement
which gridlocked traffic in Rome and also hit the air, school
and health sectors.
Lawyer Rita Mione of the Women Difference Association told
ANSA in an interview:
"In order to fight violence against women no new laws are
needed, but a cultural revolution, more anti-violence centres
and a greater specialisation for operators who come into contact
with a women who reports a man, from doctors to police, to avoid
dangerous underestimation, as sometimes happen".
There has been a string of headline-grabbing cases of
'femicide' of women who had reported their partners or
ex-partners to the police.
A woman was shot and critically injured in Cisterna di Latina
by a Carabiniere who killed their daughters before turning his
service revolver on himself.
The woman, who was in then process of separating from him,
had reported him for violence.
The woman, Antonietta Gargiullo, has just come out of a coma
in a Rome hospital but has not yet been told her daughters were
murdered by her husband, Luigi Capasso.
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