A campaign launched by Italy's
health ministry to raise awareness around fertility in a country
with one of Europe's lowest birth rates has been branded sexist
and offensive to young people struggling with high unemployment
and poverty levels.
Advertisements for the "Fertility Day" initiative planned
for September 22 circulated on social media this week, including
one which showed a young woman holding a timer next to the words
"Beauty has no age but fertility does". Another showed water
dripping next to the slogan "fertility is a common good".
Health Minister Beatrice Lorenzin from the New Centre Right
party said she could not see any problem with the campaign and
said the day was a chance to discuss a range of issues from safe
sex to fertility treatments. But her initiative faced criticism
from across the political spectrum.
Roberto Calderoli from the anti-immigrant Northern League
urged Lorenzin to resign for the lack of sensitivity to the
problems facing young people.
"It is really peculiar that a government which has let
families go hungry, leading 5 million Italians into conditions
of absolute poverty...decides to invest resources in a publicity
campaign on Fertility Day," Calderoli said.
"Maybe (Premier Matteo) Renzi and Lorenzin are really
convinced that everything is going well, that citizens have a
ton of money in their pockets and that the crisis does not
exist," he said.
Delia Murer, an MP for Renzi's left-leaning Democratic
Party (PD) said she was firmly opposed to the campaign and that
it was the wrong way to approach the sensitive subject of
fertility.
She said rather than lumping more pressure on young women
with a poster campaign, a wider discussion needed to be had,
including the economic angle and the time it takes in Italy for
young people to leave home and enter the labour market.
Italian author Roberto Saviano was among celebrities on
social media slamming the initiative as insulting, saying that
it ignored all the difficulties for young people to find stable
work and paid no attention to the importance of finding the
right partner to start a family with.
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