Italy marks Women's Day

(ANSA) - Rome, March 8 - 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.