Women’s Role in the Society

Women do not have the same position as men, though much progress has been made in the society to bring women to a stage where they have equal rights, equal pay, equal independence but still it is not achieved. Though it may seem that women have a great deal of freedom and independence, the overall condition of women in the world of today is not as it should be. Still the bird flies with only one wing as the other is hampered and not fully functional.

Equality requires that those women who are the most liberated from bondages come forth in the world in all spheres of life and make themselves known, make their values known, influence the society. It is changing quickly but it must change more quickly for it is bringing up the feminine qualities and characteristics that will save the human society from annihilation.

From this feminine quality and characteristic rising to the forefront the human society will grow and thrive in the future. Without this development the human society will move to destructive actions. Those possessive and territorial qualities and characteristics that are normally associated with masculine vibration are much less with the balancing of the feminine, with her influence and leadership.

Of course there are many variations among men and women so that a generalization will not apply to all. But it is true that, in the main, the masculine has certain qualities that are stronger than those of feminine nature. Those of feminine nature have certain qualities that are stronger in the main will be stronger. It can be said that those in female form have more capacity for emotional bonding and attachment. This is the result of the nurturing role of women with children. It is a biological factor.

What mother wants a war? What mother with sons wants a war? The mother’s desire is always that her children be safe and have the best life possible. So a woman is bound to bring peace to the world. As those of feminine quality become more influential in human society, they bring care for the aged, care for the ill, care for the young and strong desire not to allow harm to their sons and daughters.

These are the qualities of the feminine. These qualities are in dire need in the human political arena, in the development of the society. The qualities of the feminine personality are needed and the sooner they come forward the better.

So the women’s liberation movement sought to give equal employment to women. But then the women had to be like men, to forsake their time with their children, forsake their strong desire to be with the family and children in order to achieve financial success and status. Then, when their menses comes, they must pretend they have no pain and no need. When they go into menopause, they are not to show signs or symptoms. This is seen as a weakness, both to have pain with the period and to have signs and symptoms of menopause.

By whose values are these weaknesses? Who has said this is weakness? This arose in the world based upon the work of men. When women enter that world, their needs are seen as weaknesses. So women are the weaker sex and they get emotional before their period, another feminine weakness. By whose standard is this a weakness? By whose standard are women the weaker sex?

You see women leaving the captivity at home where they are dependent upon the working men for bread and butter. They leave to earn their own living in the male-dominated work force where they are expected to be like men. Then what happens to the children? What are those children with their mothers gone? What happens when the mothers have a hard-hearted boss who thinks it is a weakness if the mother must take time to be with her child?

This is not liberation. The women in this society are not as liberated as you may think. The true liberation of women requires the values and standards of women, the sweetness, the softness, the association of care and nurturance. Why is it a crime to need a day, a week, and a month off the work? Perhaps it should be the standard. The values of women and the needs of women must be incorporated into the society, the sooner the better and the more the better because it is when this comes forward that balance will occur in the human society. It is not for women to become men ignoring all of their own needs, trying to suppress them so that they don’t show any weakness. It is for women to come forward and all these things that are natural to stop being defined as weaknesses. These are natural to the feminine body and to the feminine mind. They are to be seen as a natural flow, respected as such, and given due time and accordance.

When this occurs, change in human society will occur of a great magnitude. War will become a black mark in human history. Human services and the care for living beings will become more prominent as women come to the front. There are women who are charging ahead of the crowd to take a post that requires them to adopt the standards, methods and values of men but this has a great cost to themselves. It is not inherent to their nature. It is not natural or happy. It is true as I have said that this may vary from individual to individual. But you will find when you analyse many women who have gone far in their carriers or in their political position having to adopt many masculine traits and practices, that they are feeling some pain, longing for something, missing or fearing they missed. This is because they have been oppressed even though they may be very successful, they have been oppressed as women and they have not been taught to value their sweet and softer side. They have been taught to suppress their feminine cyclical nature, their emotional variations to be successful in the world of man. Perhaps they have had to sacrifice having children or nurturing and knowing their children. Perhaps they have had no time for them and they feel a great loss.

These are hardships of women in society today where the women appear to make a better stand for themselves in the working world. But to truly make a better stand, it is not only to be in the working world, but to be proudly a woman, carrying forward the values and standards with pride, respecting the cycles of a woman’s life, of your life, your changes, the ups and downs, ebbs and flows, days when you must rest, days when you should go out into the world, days when you feel slightly irritable. The cycles of menopause, the cycles of a woman’s life are like the rhythms of nature. They are a part of the rhythm of the earth and the moon. They are great. They are not weaknesses. They are the tides of nature.

Be women in the working force, in the world! There must be made a place for women so that success in the world will be on your terms in the tides and rhythms of your body, your mind, your feelings, and your relationships. None of this should be forsaken, sacrificed. No, it is time for this to end because the greatness that women have to offer is not to be another man in the man’s workforce but to bring the feminine heart to change that masculine force, to soften it, modify it, dance with it in a rhythm that will soothe it and shape it and put an end to the strains that now rest upon the world.

The religious role of women in Igbo traditional society

The religious role of women in Igbo traditional sociey
In the Igbo society, women played and still play significant roles in the religious activities of their communities and villages. It is very certain in Igbo land that women both participate in the religious activities of their society and make their own contributions to the spiritual welfare of their families and society at large. The women in traditional religions, and in Christianity have the diverse ways through which they played and still play active roles. In some Igbo communities women were and still are women Priests (Priestesses), known amongst the Igbos as Eze Nwanyi and as Nne Mmanwu. A good number of the women belonged to the various masquerade cults and play very active roles. The women priestesses offer prayers for their families and communities and consult the oracles to seek for direction and instruction for the society. Women were and still are traditional healers, and some of these female traditional healers handle women and children’s ill health. They have also delievered pregnant women of their babies
Amongst the Christians in Igbo land, the women played and still play very active roles in the churches, the welfare of the priests in charge of the churches are more often than not taken up by the women. It is well known that amongst the Pentecostal Churches, the women Ministry take the welfare of the Pastors as their responsibility. In the 1980s, as a young child, I witnessed first hand the shared responsibility amongst women in my local Church to send in cooked food to the Priests and church workers especially the single ones amongst them.
In the contemporary Igbo society especially amongst the towns in Anambra State, women are very actively involved in church projects and all sorts of levies ranging from Church hall building fund, Church building fund, children church fund are imposed on and collected from the women by and amongst themselves. The popular and annual August General Meeting of some of the Churches have been turned to avenues of raising funds for the Church projects through the women thus giving room to unhealthy competition and rivalry, which are very common and noticeable during such meetings.
Furthermore, a good number of modern day churches are beginning to support women’s ordination as Pastors and Ministers of the gospel and encourage women to hold positions of leadership, unlike in some of the churches introduced by the colonial masters who still treat women in accordance with St. Paul’s instructions in the Bible. In the Anglican communion in Nigeria, women are not ordanied as priests, rather they could become lay Readers, while in the Catholi Church pre
Thus in the religious sphere, the position and roles of the Igbo woman cannot be overlooked as they are like the pillars holding the structures.Read more

Women rights activists discuss human development, call for strengthening a woman's role in society

Over 70 women representing Ukrainian Government, Parliament, law-enforcement agencies, NGOs, academic institutions, business entities, arts and sports have gathered to discuss their opportunities and the ways to change their country for better.

While opening the round table, Joanna Kazana-Wisniowiecka, UNDP Deputy Resident Representative in Ukraine, said that International Women's Day has been observed all over the world and on this day it is important to ponder over the role of women in society, the obstacles that women face to full enjoyment of their rights, and over why it is so important to promote women's capacity and leadership.

UNDP Deputy Resident Representative in Ukraine reminded that one of the Millenium Development Goals is to Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women, and Ukraine has bound itself to ensure gender ratio on the level no less than 30 to 70 of one or another sex in representative state institutions and at the highest ranks of executive power.

As Joanna Kazana-Wisniowiecka mentioned the latest statistics from the Inter-Parliamentary Union show that, as of January 2008, globally, women still hold only 17.8% of seats in both houses of parliament combined. Ukraine stands at 8.2%, while being one of the few countries in the world with a woman prime minister.

She added that female participation in political decision-making bodies has been witnessed to improve the quality of governance. Recent studies find a positive link between women's increased participation in public life and a reduction of the level of corruption.

Deputy Minister of Ukraine for Family, Youth and Sports Tetyana Kondratyuk said the International Women's Day would be celebrated this year under a theme "Women and Men: United to End Violence against Women and Girls". She informed that in line with the UN Secretary General's statement, several public and international organizations appealed to conduct national campaigns "Stop to Violence!" focused on fighting domestic violence.

She added that this year Ukrainian Women's movement would celebrate a 125th-year anniversary.

"Two days ago in Kharkiv, the Museum of the Ukrainian Women's Movement History was opened. Thus, this round table we dedicate to the memory of prominent Ukrainian women. Your current social activity is a contribution into the History too", stressed the Deputy Minister.

Head of Operations Section 1 of the European Commission's Delegation to Ukraine Martin Schieder affirmed that gender equality is a fundamental right, a common value of the EU, and a necessary condition for achieving the EU's objectives of growth, employment and social sustainability.

According to Ella Libanova, Demography Institute Director, women control only 5-10% of economic resources in Ukraine. Women make up 38% of the total number of entrepreneurs doing their own individual business and manage 26% of small enterprises, 15% of medium, and 12% of large ones. Only 2% of industry business managers are women. Women's salary rates are 68.6% of men's on average.

During the round table meeting, the participants analysed the reasons behind under-representation of women in politics and proposed recommendations on women empowerment and giving women space for decision-making.

The meeting attracted Vlada Lytovchenko, President of the Charity Fund "Talented Children are Ukraine's Future", Mariya Burmaka, People's Artist of Ukraine, Olena Govorova, Olympic Prize-winner, Head of the Commission "Woman and Sport" of the National Olympic Committee of Ukraine, Alina Shaternikova, professional boxer, World Champion, Svitlana Maziy, Olympic Prize-winner and other prominent Ukrainian women.

For further information, please, contact Mykola Yabchenko, Equal Opportunities and Women's Rights in Ukraine Programme, tel: +38 067 290 55 01, +38 044 569 40 75, mykola.yabchenko@undp.org.ua.

Lyudmyla Taran, a poetess, literary critic, journalist;

Lyudmyla Taran,

a poetess, literary critic, journalist;

author of Zhinka yak tekst (Woman as a Text, 2002)

and Zhinka and Cholovik (Man and Woman, 2002)

When I am asked, Are you a feminist, I am always at a loss what to say. I ask in return, Which meaning do you put into being a feminist?

So, am I a feminist? I am a person who wants to respect herself. At the age when I became conscious of myself as a person — some time when I was between seven and ten — I began to feel a great desire to control my own destiny. I wanted to solve my own problems all by myself. I wanted to earn money to support myself, I wanted to be as little dependent on anybody as possible. I have always wanted to make my own decisions, to make my own choices — and be responsible for the consequences. This longing for independence is nothing less than a desire to live my own life.

One of the stereotypes about women has it that only women can do monotonous, precise, painstaking work. Maybe there are women who like that kind of work, but I, in spite of being a female, cannot stand any monotonous work, I hate what they call “women’s chores” — tidying, cooking, weaving or needlework. I did do some embroidery in my younger years but did not derive any pleasure out of it — it just annoyed me. I like creative work — anything else for me is just “filling the bottomless hole.”

I was brought up in a family of patriarchal traditions, where women were allotted their traditional roles. My husband comes from a family with similar traditions, and it took me quite some time and a lot of effort to change his opinions — to understand my position and act accordingly. If a woman feels happy cooking, if it gives her satisfaction, if she thinks that’s her calling is to be a housewife, a homemaker, there’s nothing wrong in it either. If such is her free choice, she is absolutely welcome to it.

Are Ukrainian women special or different from women of other nations? I don’t know, but I do think that Ukrainian women have what may be described as “hypertrophied sense of duty” which men use to their advantage. Ukrainian women take too much on themselves, and do too much, and in this way they spoil men. Ukrainian women have adapted to the new economic situation and they have learnt new trades, they earn money doing so many things, and men are just sitting on their hands. Many women think they are so heroic, so powerful, they can do anything — but subconsciously they want their men to try as hard.

Iryna Hrabovska, a literary critic, author of essays dealing with the gender issues

Iryna Hrabovska,

a literary critic, author of essays dealing with the gender issues

The issues that the feminist movement deals with are of a great topicality for Ukrainian society. But their topicality is not determined by the social need widely understood and supported by Ukrainian society. This need is formed by the compliance with international documents which Ukraine has accepted and ratified in order to move toward being admitted to the European Union. Besides, the gender issues are popular to be dealing with — you can receive grants and develop interesting projects.

Ukrainian women are sometimes said to have always been rather independent. It is a myth rather than reality. It happened many times in the Ukrainian history that the nation was threatened with destruction, and the men left home to fight the invader. So many of the fighters died in battles and it was the Ukrainian women who were to save the nation from extinction. They were the actual Protectresses of the family and of the people as a whole.

Ukraine was indeed a borderland between the wild steppe in the east, the Tartar south and the civilized Europe in the west. In the absence of men who were either fighting or dead, the women raised children, took care of the households and upheld the traditions. And it led to another problem — the image of the Ukrainian father did not get properly formed. In fact, it is absent both in Ukrainian folklore and Ukrainian literature. We have Ukraine-Mother, Ukrainian Woman-Protectress. Ukrainian women protected their children, they were responsible for them, and they could not help forming their own views on life; they had to make decisions all by themselves and decision making developed their sense of independence. They were forced, as it were, to be independent — it was a matter of survival. On the other hand, Ukrainian women did not have any social options, they did not have a choice of wanting to be independent, or not wanting it. And their independence was limited to a close circle of their families.

I am of the opinion that the problem of Ukrainian women and men is a problem of deeply ingrained servileness of the public mind, of slave psychology — the Ukrainian women seem to be lacking any desire to ponder things, to arrange things in a better, purposeful way (incidentally, the same can be said about the Ukrainian men as well). Ukrainians in Ukraine continue to be, similarly to the way it was in the Soviet times, little cogs in the machine. The machine, the political system that is, has fallen apart and is in a chaotic state, and the woman’s mind is also in a state of chaos. You can hear from one and the same person contradictory opinions expressed within a short time — at a conference, delivering her report, a feminist says that women in Ukraine should struggle for better social and family position for herself, etc., but during the break, in a private conversation, she would say that everything is all right, women are not discriminated against, there are many ways to get their opinions heard, there are grants to be used for conducting research and writing books.

However there are several problems that the women in Ukraine face. The problem number one, as far as I am concerned, is violence, and it is not violence only in the family against women, it is violence perpetrated by society — manipulation of the mind.

Even according to the official statistics, there are over 120,000 children abandoned by their mothers. Mother and child is another problem.

In many spheres, it is much more difficult for a woman than for a man to find a job. Women are forced to go into all kinds of “shady” businesses or into prostitution.

The present-day Ukrainian society does not give women much of an option — 95 percent of average Ukrainian families cannot survive without women contributing to the family budget. Perversely, the mass media propagate the image of a happy housewife in an opulent household, and the official demographers call for women “to produce more children.”

Prof. Vira Aheyeva, Ph.D., author of Zhinochy prostir (Female Space), published in 2003

Prof. Vira Aheyeva,

Ph.D., author of Zhinochy prostir (Female Space), published in 2003

The feminist movement has a long and rich history in Ukraine. It was not introduced to this country from the west, as it seems to some of our contemporaries. The feminist movement began to gain momentum at the end of the nineteenth century. It was a mild form of feminism, Ukrainian style. At the early stages of the feminist movement we find such prominent writers as Olha Kobylyanska and Lesya Ukrayinka; a little later, Milena Rudnytska and Natalya Kobrynska founded the feminist Union of Ukrainian Women. The Union was far more than a creation of intellectuals to promote their ideas — it was a force that found a response in popular support. In Western Ukraine, particularly in Halychyna, branches of the Union could be found in many villages. The Union did a lot of work and had a political influence as well.

Unfortunately, much of what was gained has been lost. Let’s have a look at the issue of equality, for example. From the formally legal point of view, the full equality of men and women is proclaimed. But in reality, the situation is quite different. Recently the Ukrainian president had the cheek to openly and blatantly declare in one of his public statements that Yuliya Tymoshenko, one of the opposition leaders in parliament, could never become president of the country simply because the Ukrainian people would never elect a woman for president! It hardly needs any further comment.

Gender studies conducted these days in Ukraine are the most noticeable and remarkable phenomenon in the Ukrainian literary criticism and the reverberations from these studies are felt far beyond the narrow boundaries of literature.

There is a popular opinion that it is women who have failed to find happiness in their personal lives, who become feminists. There is no grain of truth in it. Back in the mid-twentieth century, Simone de Beauvoir noted that when unemployment was on the rise, women were called upon to confine themselves to their traditional roles as wives, mothers and homemakers, allegation being that it was what Nature designed for them. Simone de Beauvoir once brilliantly said that “you are not born a woman, you become a woman.” Similar to other brilliant but ambiguous statements, it can be interpreted in different ways.

Starting from their young days, Ukrainian girls are brought up to be gentle, yielding, non-aggressive and placid. They are prepared for the role of homemakers, to be decorative elements of the interiors. And boys are brought up to function in a wide world. So in this sense, one does not become a woman. Once I showed our Ukrainian ABC books to foreigners and they begged me to give them these books as presents, so much were they impressed with some of the pictures they saw in them — Moms at home cooking and dusting and Dads at work. No one in Ukraine would be surprised — much less get indignant — to see a picture or a sequence in a film of a typical situation: father and son watching TV or building something with a do-it-yourself kit, and mother doing the dishes.

There also exists an opinion that the issues the women’s liberation movement addresses itself to are not urgent or topical for Ukrainian society, the argument being: there are many women who successfully work in all the spheres of social, scientific and political endevour. Some (or very few in certain spheres) would be a correct word. But even for those women who did get through into the once totally male domains, it became possible thanks to a long struggle that had lasted all through the twentieth century. The women of today are different from the women of yesterday; young girls have become cleverer, smarter and more ambitious; they have discarded many stereotypes. Luckily enough, young men had also become different; they have begun to unburden themselves of the traditional principles of what “a true man” should be. The women of today are no longer as placid and complacent as the old principles required them to be. Many of them are achievers on a par with men. Can a woman who is a manager of a big enterprise or chief doctor of a big clinic be gentle and complacent? Hardly. We should not require women to be “gentle and complacent”; neither should we ask provocative questions of the kind “Do women-feminists want to be loved and caressed?” I wonder what a macho man wants, at least once in a while?

Being a women in Ukraine

A poll conducted by the Ukrainian Institute of Social Studies last year, showed that most of the Ukrainians polled — 61 percent of women and 51 percent of men — were of the opinion that the social status of men was higher than that of women. At the same time, 81 percent of women were determined to champion more actively the cause of women in their struggle against social injustice and traditions favouring male dominance.

A cursory look

A cursory look at the women’s position in the Ukrainian society of today and in the past may give one a wrong impression that a women’s liberation movement of the kind that has been so aggressive in the past several decades, is hardly needed in Ukraine. Or so the male chauvinists will claim. They will provide a plethora of examples from the Ukrainian history and folklore, substantiating their point of view. Take, for example, they will say, such Ukrainian women as Princess Olga, the wise, tenth-century ruler of Kyiv and the first Christian in the land of Kyiv, whom even the Byzantine emperor treated with respect and even offered his hand in marriage (she sagaciously turned down the emperor’s proposal); or Nastya Lisovska, a girl from Polissya, who in the sixteenth century became a beloved wife of Suleiman the Magnificent, the Sultan of Turkey (1520–1566) under whose governance the Ottoman Empire reached the height of its power, not without advisory help from Roxolana (Nastya’s Turkish name); or Lesya Ukrayinka, the prominent Ukrainian author of the late 19th-early 20th century, who was called “the only true man in Ukrainian literature” by a leading literary critic and poet. And of course some of the Ukrainian rural traditions will be mentioned which seem to point out to a relative independence of Ukrainian women even in the times of old — a girl, for instance, who despite the insistence of her parents, did not want to marry someone who had proposed to her, would send the suitor a pumpkin, a sign of rejection, without succumbing to the parental pressure.

The Ukrainian women are described as being beautiful, excellent housewives, clever with her hands, doing marvellous embroideries, needlework, weaving — you name it. The Ukrainian women seem to be held in high respect by politicians of varying rank, from top to bottom, who, in their speeches call them “keepers of the hearth,” “hope and saviours of the state.” Women are called upon “to be guarantors of peace and goodwill in the family,” to devote themselves “to raising the new generations of Ukrainians, the future of the nation,” “to be active participants of the social life,” “to…” The list is too long. Incidentally, who are the women called upon by?

A closer look

A closer look at the social and family position of Ukrainian women will reveal quite a different picture. In their absolute majority, Ukrainian women are run-down, worn-out, with very little time left after work and house chores to take care of herself. Ukrainian women are accustomed to suffer and being resigned to their fate for the sake of their children, they have a heightened sense of duty and responsibility, they take on so much on themselves, they do so much for the family and for society, but they find that the proverbial “man’s shoulder” on which they supposedly can lean for support in most cases turns out to be either not strong enough or absent altogether.

The many issues connected with the position of women in Ukrainian society began to be raised and looked into much more vigorously than ever before after Ukraine’s independence. In the context of “the national revival,” such roles, “most natural for women” and “sanctified by God and history,” as “mother,” “wife,” “guardian of traditions and spirituality” were proclaimed as “inviolable” and “eternal.” And the newest feminist theories which come to Ukraine from the west are mostly dismissed as “not applicable to the conditions that exist in Ukraine.”

Literary critics — female critics, of course, rather than male — were the first to begin to advocate the applicability — and necessity — of feminist theories in Ukraine. In 1990, Solomiya Pavlychko, a remarkable person, literary critic and translator, initiated a feminist seminar, the first of its kind, to be held in Ukraine. The venue, ironically, was the arch-conservative Institute of Literature. The Osnovy Publishing House that Pavlychko had founded, published translations of such important feminist works as The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986; French writer, existentialist, and feminist) and The Sexual Politics by Kate Milet. International grants began to be awarded for conducting gender research; seminars, social surveys and polls, dealing with the role and position of women in Ukrainian society began to be held; feminist centres began to be set — characteristically, most of these things with the help of western money.

“By God, I’ll divorce you!”

Odarka, the main protagonist of Hulak-Artemovsky’s famous opera, Zaporozhets za Dunayem (A Zaporizhian Cossack beyond the Danube), written in the nineteenth century and based on the events of the previous century, sings, in a heated argument with her Cossack husband Karas, “By God, I’ll divorce you!” Obviously, very few of her contemporaries in other countries could get rid of their husbands in such a legal way — the right to initiate divorce and break the marriage bonds at that time was still denied to women in practically all European countries. A scrutiny of the Ukrainian history does reveal that the legal status of women, at least at the level of the upper and middle classes, provided them with rights not available to women in other countries.

In the early periods of Ukrainian mediaeval history, marriages were agreed upon by the parents or close relatives of the future husband and wife, with the bride excluded from the final decision, but there is enough historical evidence that suggests that the bride’s interests were taken into account. During the reign of the Kyiv Prince Yaroslav the Wise, the Civil Code was drawn and the articles dealing with the position of women in the then society, marriage and dissolution of marriage show that women were given a certain degree of freedom in marital matters. A monetary fine was imposed on a woman’s parents not only in case of her committing suicide to avoid being forced into marriage, but also in cases when the parents refused to allow a daughter to marry someone of her own choice.

In contrast to Western Europe, in the Ukraine of the 16th–17th centuries, it was the material status of women themselves that determined her social position rather than the social position of their husbands. Women-landowners paid taxes and this fact indicated that they enjoyed the full rights of membership of the then society. Women were entitled to filling official posts, such as starosta (local administrator or governor), they even could inherit the office of starosta. Women took an active part in local self-government and were influential in the social and political life of Ukrainian cities.

When Ukraine was incorporated into the Russian and Austrian Empires with the last vestiges of independence completely gone in the eighteenth century, the legal status of women in the Ukrainian lands went through a drastic change. In the lands dominated by the Russian Empire, the Russian laws were in force, and some of the articles of the Criminal and Civil Codes were openly discriminatory towards women. The system of serfdom robbed the women serfs of any rights whatsoever.

In the Soviet times, a sort a feminist movement did exist in Ukraine but it was very much different from what it was in the west. Soviet society, in which everybody was obliged to work (“those who don’t work, do not eat”) viewed women mostly as “mothers” and “workers,” combining these two functions. The Soviet Constitutions of 1936 and of 1977 declared equal rights for men and women but any unbiased and even perfunctory study immediately reveals that these Constitutions are based, as far as women are concerned, on the deeply ingrained patriarchal stereotypes — the men were treated as the driving force and model for society, whereas women were relegated to being solely the homemakers and caretakers of the family.

The “Constitution of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic” of 1978 did contain articles dealing with “full equiality of all the citizens,” but even the official propaganda could not completely hide the outrageous facts of discrimination against women in all the spheres of life. The ruling stereotypes remained traditionally patriarchal — women should concern themselves with their families, and the official ratification in 1980 of the UN Convention “On Doing Away with All the Forms of Discrimination against Women” did not change anything.

Woman-Protectress and Ukraine Viewed as Woman

For the Ukrainians, “the family” and “the idea of national sovereignty” have always been among the top values. In this context, Ukrainian Berehynya (Protecting goddess) carries the features of Ukraine-Woman, the mythical notion that views Ukraine as a woman-figure. This view was actively promoted by certain circles of the Ukrainian men from the upper classes in the period from the eighteenth to the early twentieth century.

By the end of the seventeenth century, the myth of Ukraine-Woman had come to supplement the myth of the Cossack Republic, viewed as an Orthodox brotherhood of free men, the brotherhood built the principles of honesty, comradeship, undaunted courage and chivalrous valour, and love of nenka-Ukraine (nenka — term of endearment for mother-tr). At the time when Ukraine lived through a period of political strife and loss of independence, the myth of Ukraine-Woman acquired negative features; a woman — mother, sister or sweetheart — raped, mistreated or even killed. The themes of the destruction of the Cossack Brotherhood and the ruin of Ukraine that had lost her sons — her defenders and support, entered the Ukrainian folklore. The plight of Ukraine is compared, for example, with the fate of a seagull whose nestlings are trampled underfoot, and who, abused and helpless, is left, all alone, to suffer on the windswept beach — or on the crossroads of history.

The image of the abused woman is recurrent in the works of Taras Shevchenko (1814–1861), the charismatic figure of Ukrainian culture. It was he who introduced into the public consciousness the image of Ukraine-Kateryna as a symbol of love that has been denied and of death that results from love violated.

Shevchenko’s poem Kateryna soon after its publication acquired a status of a cult work in Ukraine, and women in the countryside often recited it like a prayer (briefly, the plot of the poem: a young Ukrainian girl falls in love with a Russian soldier who soon leaves; Kateryna is pregnant and when she is delivered of a child, her father throws her out of the house, thus punishing her for the shame and dishonour Kateryna has brought on the family; homeless and rejected, Kateryna dies, leaving her son an orphan).

At the end of the 20th century, a new term, mental rape, gained wide currency (it was borrowed from the theory of colonialism). The contemporary Ukrainian author Oksana Zabuzhko writes: “Shevchenko did not talk the language of terms, he talked the language of symbols, the language of archetypes. But the things he describes perfectly fit the category of mental rape. In the second quarter of the 19th century, the number of Ukrainian women who were violated and who gave birth to bastard children, is estimated to have reached 20,000, and Shevchenko, of course, knew of this poignant problem resulting from the social vices of the time and involving thousands upon thousands of women and their fatherless children. Probably he realized that it signalled the beginning of colonization of Ukraine — colonization as opposed to foreign occupation; colonization understood as internal subjugation — social and mental rape through sexual rape.”

Like any myth that possesses the full set of characteristics of a myth, the myth about Ukraine-Woman, is multifaceted. It carries in itself not only the historical codes of the raped, subjugated nationality, but also positive notions of winning eternal love — love of Mother-Protectress. In the hardest times of the Ukrainian history, the Ukrainian women played a very significant social role as a stabilising factor — they were the Protectresses and continuers of the nation threatened with extinction. The persevering tenacity and fertility of the Ukrainian women contributed to the survival of the Ukrainian nation. On the other hand, the Ukrainian complexes of being victimized, of searching for an external enemy responsible for the domestic failures, of servility and of conformity flourish on the fertile soil of such myths.

Gender and politics

Nowadays, the myth of Ukraine-Woman finds its reflection in the unbalancing of the gender harmony in the social and political spheres, with the male principle being self-suppressed and the female principle being pushed toward a domineering position. Today there are few women in Ukrainian politics — in the biological sense, as it were, with most of the politicians being biological males. But these political males behave in a way traditionally associated with a female type of behaviour — these political males are weak-willed, spineless, disoriented, and puerile. If one wants to give examples of the outstanding, colourful figures who — and it is of a particular importance — have been unwaveringly consistent in their stance in the Ukrainian politics of the past few years, women-politicians immediately come to mind — the late Yaroslava Stetsenko, Yuliya Tymoshenko, Natalya Vitrenko and Valentyna Semenyuk, to name a few of them. A similar situation is observed in the Ukrainian political journalism — Yuliya Mostova, Tetyana Korobova, Olena Prytula. These figures are of different political affiliations and their role is not necessarily unequivocal, but they are definitely personalities of a towering stature. It would be difficult to find men of the same stamina and fortitude among Ukrainian politicians, except for a few. The main thing that differs them from male politicians is their staunch adherence to their positions, in having views all their own, even though these views are sometimes expressed in hysterical tones.

Unbalancing of the gender harmony can be observed at the level of ideology as well. For instance, the recently introduced “multivector” strategy in international priorities of Ukraine is based on the purely female principle — it is a search for a better partner: should we be with Europe? Or the USA? Or Russia? Or someone else? The Ukrainian politicians, for some reason, do not seem to find it necessary to rephrase the question and ask: And who wants to be with Ukraine?

Or let’s take the decision to scrap the nuclear weapons. In a symbolical — or even in a strategic-sense it is but self-emasculation, unmanning, a symbolical castration of a nation.

Man and Woman:

Myths and Realities of Today

The present day Ukrainian women have been saddled with “a special mission” in the fate of the Ukrainian state, Ukrainian nation, and Ukrainian culture. And the Ukrainian women continue to bear the main responsibility for the maintenance of the family. This mission entails a duty to make this fate happy. And if it is unhappy — accountability for it. Too much was expected of Ukrainian women, too many fatal failures occurred in the long course of the Ukrainian history — and these much too high expectations and these failures have led to the emergence of “the guilt complex,” and to the “weaker but more beautiful” part of the Ukrainian nation feeling intimidated and frustrated — women feel they have failed to fulfil “the mission to save the nation” imposed upon them. One of the most pernicious and destructive ideas that was being pushed upon the Ukrainian women was the idea of self-sacrifice in the interests of others. Self-sacrifice of this kind is incompatible with the democratic principles in general, and with the feminist principles in particular, because it robs the woman of the free will and reduces her to being a puppet. Another sequence of this ruinous idea, which is not given as much attention as it should be, is violence at home and sexual abuse which so many women in Ukraine suffer from. Characteristically, the Law “On Prevention of Violence in the Family” was passed by parliament only in 2001, that is full ten years after Ukraine had gained independence.

The tendency to reduce women to their biological function of motherhood is evident in the traditional Ukrainian culture. It remains a wide-spread attitude today. “Happy motherhood” is no doubt a great and wonderful thing, but in Ukraine there is a crippling addition to the ideal of happy motherhood — ideally, the woman is supposed to be a working mother. It makes women strive to achieve success in two separate and not at all overlapping domains — work and motherhood. There were some feeble attempts in the Soviet times to increase the birth rates and encourage women to have children but they did not amount to much since they were mostly confined to “resolutions” and promises. The independent Ukraine borrowed this approach. Women were given the right to stay at home raising their children until they are six years of age (“looking-after-children leave”) instead of three years as it used to be, but the support money the state pays women is so little that it is absolutely impossible to support a child on it.

Men: Higher Wages, Better Jobs

There are more women graduates from high schools than men (57 percent); there are more female students in colleges than male students (52 percent); only at the level of postgraduate studies there are more men than women (47 percent are female graduate students). But there are more women in Ukraine than men with technical or higher education (43 percent and 34 percent correspondingly).

However, when it comes to employment and wages, it is the same old story again — men, as a rule, get higher wages, better and more prestigious jobs, and women are left with routine, less interesting and less prestigious jobs with lower wages. “The gender imbalance” is particularly evident in the higher echelons of management and political power.

In the late 1990s, 57 percent of able-bodied men were employed (the rest, presumably were self-employed, ran their own businesses or were unemployed); by contrast, only 43 percent of able-bodied women were employed. In the countryside, 70 percent of able-bodied men and 80 percent of able-bodied women were engaged in work at their plots of land; 13 percent of able-bodied men and only 7 percent of able-bodied women had their own businesses.

In other words, the only sphere of work where Ukrainian women predominate is the toiling at the plots of land in the countryside — the work of minimal prestige and maximum labour intensity. And of very little profit. The private business sector is much less accessible to women than to men. There are very few women — if any — among the managers and owners of big enterprises, and even in small — and medium-sized businesses there are many more men than women.

In the past few years, the number of women in jobs requiring high qualifications and skills has been diminishing, and the other way round, their share in jobs requiring little or no qualification has been growing. At the same time, the number of women among managers, heads of departments, etc., has declined. Among the top managers there are only 5.8 percent of women, and among managers of lower levels there are less than 20 percent women.

In the sphere of political life, the same picture is observed — women are prevented from reaching the higher echelons in decision making; there are very few women in the leadership of political parties; the number of male MPs is far greater than the number of female MPs in the Ukrainian parliament — 95 percent of Verkhovna Rada deputies are men (out of 450 deputies, 426 are men, which reduces women MPs’ share to only 5.1 percent).

In the 1970s, Vasyl Stus, the prominent Ukrainian poet (and dissident; for his championing of the Ukrainian national cause and for views incompatible with the Soviet ideology, he was imprisoned and he died in a concentration camp — tr.) called the Ukrainians “a nation of sergeants.” Now, in the independent Ukraine, this definition no longer applies, but it still can be used as reference to the position of the Ukrainian women in society — they are always ready to take on any tasks imposed upon them; they are held accountable for everything and anything; they are always badly needed at work and in the family; however, they must always remember that they are only “sergeants” with men being of higher ranks, they must always remember where they belong, and must never aspire to become generals. They are free though to indulge in daydreaming.

Nataliya Rudnichenko has used the following sources in compiling this article:

Chy dovho shche kvylyty “chaitsi-nebozi” by Iryna Hrabovska,
Suchasnist magazine, #5, 2000.

Genderni studiyi v Ukrayini: stan, problemy, perspektyvy,
a report delivered by Oksana Kis at a seminar held by Ji magazine in September 2000.

Problemy zhinok v Ukrayini,
a report on the survey conducted by Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, 1999.

Genderny parytet v umovakh rozbudovy suchasnoho ukrayinskoho suspilstva,
a study conducted by the Ukrainian Institute of Sociological Studies, Kyiv, 2002.

Istorychni aspekty gendernoyi polityky v Ukrayini by V. Dyahilyev,
a report made at the international conference, Kyiv, 2002.

Department of Women's Studies at the University of Albama

Mission Statement

The mission of the Department of Women's Studies is to provide a forum for interdisciplinary teaching, research, and service in order to facilitate the critical investigation of the status and roles of women in society and to promote research by and about women.

History

The Master of Arts program in Women's Studies at The University of Alabama is an interdisciplinary program working cooperatively with other departments to provide knowledge of the cultural history and status of women, and to conduct research on th eforces which shape women's role in society. In 1972 a group of University of Alabama students initianted a project to introduce courses in women's studies into the curriculum. They identified faculty who would be willing to develop courses on women and, by the the spring of 1975, a women's studies -- the first in the Southeast -- was launched. The Master of Arts degreee program was established, with the first graduate students enrolled, in 1988. The Department of Women's Studies inclued a core faculty, a graduate adjunct faculty, and participating faculty from almost every descipline.

Facts

• In 1977, The University of Alabama Women's Studies Program became a founder and charter member of the Southeastern Women's Studies Association.
• The M.A. program offers graduate teaching and research assistantships to qualified applicants; recipients are trained in feminist pedagogy and they teach undergraduate Women's Studies courses.
• Opportunities for summer teaching and internships also exist.
• Graduate students have come from every state in the southeast and from as far away as Arizona and California, Maine and New Hampshire, Missouri and Wisconsin among others.
• International students have enrolled from Colombia, Italy, Finland, Germany, Japan, and Thailand.
• Program graduates are employed as lawyers, social workers, college professors, editors, and psychologists. They are directors of university women's centers, and research and development centers.
• Graduates have been accepted into doctoral programs in American Studies, English, Popular Culture, Political Science, Psychology, Public Health, Social Work, Statistics, and Communication Studies.
• Women's Studies encourages its graduates to publish their research and find a wider audience. Our students have published in the following: Asian Journal of Women's Studies; Feminist Issues; International Journal of Public Administration; Yale Review of Feminism and the Law; Nature, Society, and Thought; as well as Women's Studies Quarterly.
• Faculty participation has grown every year, representing many academic disciplines and five colleges of the University: Arts & Sciences, Business, Communication and Information Sciences, Education, and Law.
• Graduate Students are encouraged to pursue interdisciplinary interests and work with a wide range of university faculty.

Women's rights in the 1800s' America

Black women suffered the most in this period. Half of our nation believed in slavery. Its cruelty led frightened mothers to committ acts of bestiality. Fratricide and infanticide rose high among Negro mothers. Some killed their children to save them from lives of bondage. One such act occurred in Missouri (1830s). Slave catchers cornered the woman on her northern flight to freedom. She stabbed her two sons before her pursuers

shot her dead. Women joined slave rebellions at the risk of hanging. Like black men, black women preferred to die fighting than to live in slavery.

In 1855, in Missouri vs. Celia, a slave was declared as property and couldn't defend herself from rape by her master. Biracial children born out of rape were either sold to Indians or killed to conceal the affairs. By the Constitution, African slaves "were 3/5 property" like cattle. They were constantly beaten, tortured, raped or murdered. Very few masters treated their African women kindly. The ones they treated special became mistresses. This gave black women another derogative, job title. They were also chosen as "whores".

White women climbed a little more on society's ladder. In 1839, Mississippi granted women the right to hold property. Women had to have their husbands' permission first.

In 1848, 300 women and men signed a "Declaration of Sentiments". This was a plea to end gender discrimination in all "spheres of society". Before, women's roles in American society were only inside the family home. It took the bravery of black women to give white women their voice.

Abolitionists, Harriett Tubman and Sojourner Truth, put their gender into the forefront. Tubman earned a reputation as freedom fighter in the Norther press. She received scorn from Southern newspapers. Tubman led hundreds of slaves to freedom. In the Civil War, she distinguished herself as a nurse and a spy for the Union army. Truth composed the piece "Ain't I a Woman". She wrote about the ills of slavery, the cruelty done to her African race and the disrespect done to her gender. It was a composition that attacked the hypocrisy of America's so-called freedom.

In 1869, the Wyoming territory passed the first women's suffrage law. In the following year, a sexually integrated, grand jury heard cases in the territory's capital of Cheyenne. Territories and Northern states offered more for women than Southern states.

In 1879, a special Congressional legislation allowed a woman to try a case before the Supreme Court. Her name was Belva Lockwood. Over a decade later, Wyoming showed it was more socially advanced than the South. The state granted women their right to vote in all elections. The rest of the country granted that right in 1920.

America in the 1800s was about war, slavery, Tammany Hall corruption and Indian extermination. White women took their concessions and slowly moved forward. Black women suffered through years of slavery, racism and discrimination. Their fight for freedom has yet to end.

Russia The Role of Women

In the post-Soviet era, the position of women in Russian society remains at least as problematic as it was in previous decades. In both cases, a number of nominal legal protections for women either have failed to address the existing conditions or have failed to supply adequate support. In the 1990s, increasing economic pressures and shrinking government programs left women with little choice but to seek employment, although most available positions were as substandard as in the Soviet period, and generally jobs of any sort were more difficult to obtain. Such conditions contribute heavily to Russia's declining birthrate and the general deterioration of the family. At the same time, feminist groups and social organizations have begun advancing the cause of women's rights in what remains a strongly traditional society.

The Soviet constitution of 1977 stipulated that men and women have equal rights, and that women have equal access to education and training, employment, promotions, remuneration, and participation in social, cultural, and political activity. The Soviet government also provided women special medical and workplace protection, including incentives for mothers to work outside the home and legal and material support of their maternal role. In the 1980s, that support included 112 days of maternity leave at full pay. When that allowance ended, a woman could take as much as one year of additional leave without pay without losing her position. Employer discrimination against pregnant and nursing women was prohibited, and mothers with small children had the right to work part-time. Because of such provisions, as many as 92 percent of women were employed at least part-time, Soviet statistics showed.

Despite official ideology, Soviet women did not enjoy the same position as men in society or within the family. Average pay for women in all fields was below the overall national average, and the vaunted high percentage of women in various fields, especially health care, medicine, education, and economics, did not hold true in the most prestigious and high-paying areas such as the upper management of organizations in any of those fields. Women were conspicuously underrepresented in the leadership of the CPSU; in the 1980s, they constituted less than 30 percent of party membership and less than 5 percent of the party Central Committee, and no woman ever achieved full membership in the Politburo.

Most of the nominal state benefit programs for women continued into the post-Soviet era (see Social Welfare, this ch.). However, as in the Soviet era, Russian women in the 1990s predominate in economic sectors where pay is low, and they continue to receive less pay than men for comparable positions. In 1995 men in health care earned an average of 50 percent more than women in that field, and male engineers received an average of 40 percent more than their female colleagues. Despite the fact that, on average, women are better educated than men, women remain in the minority in senior management positions. In the Soviet era, women's wages averaged 70 percent of men's; by 1995 the figure was 40 percent, according to the Moscow-based Center for Gender Studies. According to a 1996 report, 87 percent of employed urban Russians earning less than 100,000 rubles a month (for value of the ruble--see Glossary) were women, and the percentage of women decreased consistently in the higher wage categories.

According to reports, women generally are the first to be fired, and they face other forms of on-the-job discrimination as well. Struggling companies often fire women to avoid paying child care benefits or granting maternity leave, as the law still requires. In 1995 women constituted an estimated 70 percent of Russia's unemployed, and as much as 90 percent in some areas.

Sociological surveys show that sexual harassment and violence against women have increased at all levels of society in the 1990s. More than 13,000 rapes were reported in 1994, meaning that several times that number of that often-unreported crime probably were committed. In 1993 an estimated 14,000 women were murdered by their husbands or lovers, about twenty times the figure in the United States and several times the figure in Russia five years earlier. More than 300,000 other types of crimes, including spousal abuse, were committed against women in 1994; in 1996 the State Duma (the lower house of the Federal Assembly, Russia's parliament) drafted a law against domestic violence.

Working women continue to bear the "double burden" of a job and family-raising responsibilities, in which Russian husbands generally participate little. In a 1994 survey, about two-thirds of women said that the state should help families by paying one spouse enough to permit the other to stay at home. Most women also consider their role in the family more difficult than that of their husband. Such dissatisfaction is a factor in Russia's accelerating divorce rate and declining marriage rate. In 1993 the divorce rate was 4.5 per 1,000 population, compared with 4.1 ten years earlier, and the marriage rate declined from 10.5 per 1,000 population in 1983 to 7.5 in 1993. In 1992 some 17.2 percent of births were to unmarried women. According to 1994 government statistics, about 20 percent of families were run by a single parent--the mother in 94 percent of cases.

Often women with families are forced to work because of insufficient state child allowances and unemployment benefits. Economic hardship has driven some women into prostitution. In the Soviet period, prostitution was viewed officially as a form of social deviancy that was dying out as the Soviet Union advanced toward communism. In the 1990s, organized crime has become heavily involved in prostitution, both in Russia and in the cities of Central and Western Europe, to which Russian women often are lured by bogus advertisements for match-making services or modeling agencies. According to one estimate, 10,000 women from Central Europe, including a high proportion of Russians, have been lured or forced into prostitution in Germany alone.

Independent women's organizations--a form of activity that was suppressed in the Soviet era--have been formed in large numbers in the 1990s at the local, regional, and national levels. One such group is the Center for Gender Studies, a private research institute. The center analyzes demographic and social problems of women and acts as a link between Russian and Western feminist groups. A traveling group called Feminist Alternative offers women assertiveness training. Many local groups have emerged to engage in court actions on behalf of women, to set up rape and domestic violence awareness programs (about a dozen of which were active in 1995), and to aid women in establishing businesses. Another prominent organization is the Women's Union of Russia, which focuses on job-training programs, career counseling, and the development of entrepreneurial skills that will enable women to compete more successfully in Russia's emerging market economy. Despite the proliferation of such groups and programs, in the mid-1990s most Russians (including many women) remain contemptuous of their efforts, which many regard as a kind of Western subversion of traditional social values.

The rapidly expanding private sector offers women new employment opportunities, but many of the Soviet stereotypes remain; the most frequently offered job in new businesses is that of secretary, and advertisements often specify physical attractiveness as a primary requirement. Russian law provides for as much as three years' imprisonment for sexual harassment, but the law rarely is enforced. Although the Fund for Protection from Sexual Harassment has blacklisted 300 Moscow firms where sexual harassment is known to have taken place, demands for sex and even rape still are common on-the-job occurrences.

Women's higher profile in post-Soviet Russia also has extended to politics. At the national level, the most notable manifestation of women's newfound political success has been the Women of Russia party, which won 11 percent of the vote and twenty-five seats in the 1993 national parliamentary elections. Subsequently, the party became active in a number of issues, including the opposition to the military campaign in Chechnya that began in 1994. In the 1995 national parliamentary elections, the Women of Russia chose to maintain its platform unchanged, emphasizing social issues such as the protection of children and women rather than entering into a coalition with other liberal parties. As a result, the party failed to reach the 5 percent threshold of votes required for proportional representation in the new State Duma, gaining only three seats in the single-seat portion of the elections (see The Elections of 1995, ch. 7). The party considered running a candidate in the 1996 presidential election but remained outside the crowded field.

A smaller organization, the Russian Women's Party, ran as part of an unsuccessful coalition with several other splinter parties in the 1995 elections. A few women, such as Ella Pamfilova of the Republican Party, Socialist Workers' Party chief Lyudmila Vartazarova, and Valeriya Novodvorskaya, leader of the Democratic Union, have established themselves as influential political figures. Pamfilova has gained particular stature as an advocate on behalf of women and elderly people.

The Soldiers' Mothers Movement was formed in 1989 to expose human rights violations in the armed forces and to help youths resist the draft. The movement has gained national prominence through its opposition to the war in Chechnya. Numerous protests have been organized, and representatives have gone to the Chechen capital, Groznyy, to demand the release of Russian prisoners and locate missing soldiers. The group, which claimed 10,000 members in 1995, also has lobbied against extending the term of mandatory military service.

Women have occupied few positions of influence in the executive branch of Russia's national government. One post in the Government (cabinet), that of minister of social protection, has become a "traditional" women's position; in 1994 Ella Pamfilova was followed in that position by Lyudmila Bezlepkina, who headed the ministry until the end of President Boris N. Yeltsin's first term in mid-1996. Tat'yana Paramanova was acting chairman of the Russian Central Bank for one year before Yeltsin replaced her in November 1995, and Tat'yana Regent has been head of the Federal Migration Service since its inception in 1992. Prior to the 1995 elections, women held about 10 percent of the seats in parliament: fifty-seven of 450 seats in the State Duma and nine of 178 seats in the upper house of parliament, the Federation Council. The Soviet system of mandating legislative seats generally allocated about one-third of the seats in republic-level legislatures and one-half of the seats in local soviets to women, but those proportions shrank drastically with the first multiparty elections of 1990.

Italy-2009 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices

Italy is a multiparty parliamentary democracy with a population of approximately 59.1 million. The bicameral parliament consists of the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate. Executive authority is vested in the Council of Ministers, headed by the president of the council (the prime minister). The president, who is the head of state, nominates the prime minister after consulting with the leaders of all political forces in the parliament. International observers considered the April 2008 national parliamentary elections free and fair. Civilian authorities generally maintained effective control of the security forces.

The government generally respected the human rights of its citizens, although there were problems with lengthy pretrial detention; excessively long court proceedings; violence against women; trafficking in persons; and abuse of homosexuals, Roma, and other minorities.

RESPECT FOR HUMAN RIGHTS

Section 1 Respect for the Integrity of the Person, Including Freedom From:

a. Arbitrary or Unlawful Deprivation of Life

The government or its agents did not commit any politically motivated killings during the year. Although security forces were involved in several controversial killings, there was no apparent systematic pattern of abuse by authorities.

On January 30, a police inspector was involved in the fatal shooting of his neighbor, Diouf Ckeikh, a Senegalese immigrant. The incident, which took place in Civitavecchia, was the result of a minor dispute.

On March 20, an Algerian detained in a center for identification and expulsion in Rome died. Red Cross physicians stated a heart attack caused his death, while other detainees claimed that police officers had beaten him. The Ministry of Interior ordered an internal investigation.

On April 7, authorities charged two police officers in Milan with the murder of Giuseppe Turrisi, a man who was living in a homeless shelter. According to prosecutors, blows from the two officers resulted in the man's death.

On July 14, a judge sentenced a police officer to six years' imprisonment in the widely reported case of Gabriele Sandri. The court found the officer guilty of manslaughter for using excessive force in his attempt to break up a fight involving rival soccer fans in Arezzo in 2007.

On July 6, a judge sentenced four police officers to three years and six months in prison for the 2005 involuntary manslaughter of Federico Aldrovandi in Ferrara. In this case, police responded to a report of a person under the influence. The suspect later died from injuries he sustained while he was being taken into custody.

b. Disappearance

There were no reports of politically motivated disappearances.

c. Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment

The law prohibits such practices; however, there were reports that police occasionally used excessive force against persons, particularly Roma and immigrants detained in connection with common criminal offenses or in the course of identity checks.

On May 15, Parma prosecutors indicted local police officers for assaulting Emmanuel Bonsu Foster, a young Ghanaian whom police identified as a drug dealer.

On October 7, the court of Genoa acquitted Gianni De Gennaro, who was head of the National Police during protest demonstrations at the 2001 G-8 summit. Authorities had charged him with inducing police officers to give false testimony regarding police behavior toward the protesters.

In July 2008 a court sentenced 15 police officers to prison terms of five months to five years for the "inhuman or degrading treatment," including assault, of some detained protesters. In November 2008 a Genoa court sentenced to two- to four-year prison terms 13 police officers convicted of perjury, conspiracy, or assault stemming from their raid on a building used by the protesters.

In 2008 the European Court on Human Rights (ECHR) issued judgments that found that the country had twice violated the prohibition against inhuman or degrading treatment in the European Convention on Human Rights.

On March 24, the ECHR, citing the need to prevent violation of their rights in their home countries, blocked the deportation of eight individuals whom authorities considered terrorists.

On August 3, the Interior Ministry deported a Tunisian man, Toumi Ali Ben Sassi, despite a May 18 request by the ECHR not to execute the expulsion on the grounds that he risked torture and mistreatment in his home country.

On February 24, the ECHR ruled that the June 2008 expulsion of Ben Khemais violated the European Convention on Human Rights.

Prison and Detention Center Conditions

Prison and detention center conditions generally met international standards, although some prisons remained overcrowded and antiquated. The government permitted visits by independent human rights observers. On July 26, the ECHR determined that there had been a violation of Article 3 (prohibition of inhuman or degrading treatment) of the European Convention on Human Rights regarding treatment of Bosnian inmate Izet Sulejmanovic in Rebibbia Prison from November 2002 to April 2003. The same court determined there had been no violation of the Convention for the period of detention from April to October 2003. Sulejmanovic filed suit based on the conditions of his detention, in particular, prison overcrowding and insufficient daily exercise outside of his cell. The court ordered the government to pay Sulejmanovic 1,000 euros ($1,430) in compensation.

On October 16, authorities arrested Stefano Cucchi for drug possession. While in custody, police transferred him to Rebibbia prison and then to a hospital, where he died on October 22. The circumstances of his death were not clear. The Prosecutor's Office in Rome opened a manslaughter investigation. The prisoners' rights group Antigone claimed that authorities held Cucchi in an overcrowded prison, resulting in failure to provide him the care due a prisoner arrested while under the influence of drugs.

According to the Ministry of Justice, at year's end, an estimated 66,500 inmates were in a prison system designed to hold 44,066; however, the uneven distribution of prisoners left a few institutions particularly overcrowded. Older facilities lacked outdoor or exercise space, and some prisons lacked adequate medical care. In September approximately 52 percent of inmates were serving sentences; the other 47 percent were mainly detainees awaiting trial.

According to an independent research center, during the year 175 prisoners died in custody, 72 of them by suicide. There were allegations that a small number of these deaths were the result of abuse or negligence on the part of prison officials.

Temporary detention centers for immigrants were less overcrowded than in the past due to a decrease in the number of persons reaching the country illegally from North Africa. The law does not require pretrial detainees to be held separately from convicted prisoners; they were held together in smaller prisons.

The government permitted visits to detention facilities by independent human rights organizations, parliamentarians, and the media.

In November 2008 the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention visited some facilities in Milan, Rome, Naples, and Sicily and expressed concerns about detention conditions of prisoners condemned for Mafia-related crimes. Several municipalities had permanent independent ombudsmen to promote the rights of detainees and facilitate access to health care and other services. The government provided access to detention centers for representatives of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), and these visits were in accordance with the UNHCR's standard modalities.

d. Arbitrary Arrest or Detention

The constitution prohibits arbitrary arrest and detention, and the government generally observed these prohibitions.

Role of the Police and Security Apparatus

Civilian authorities maintained effective control over the Carabinieri, the national police, the financial police, and municipal police forces. The government has effective mechanisms to investigate and punish abuse and corruption. There were no reports of impunity involving the security forces during the year; however, long delays by prosecutors and authorities in completing investigations of some cases of alleged abuse undercut the effectiveness of mechanisms to investigate and punish police abuses.

On July 14, a court sentenced two of eight Carabinieri arrested in Milan in 2006 for graft and evidence tampering to 30 to 66 months' imprisonment; it acquitted one of them. The eight reportedly used false evidence to extort money from a number of previous offenders.

During the year Romani NGOs complained that many Roma lived in constant fear of systematic and invasive searches of their living areas, accompanied by threats of deportation.

In 2008 the ECHR issued judgments that found two violations by the country of the right to liberty and security as provided by the European Convention on Human Rights.

Arrest Procedures and Treatment While in Detention

To detain an individual, police require a warrant issued by a public prosecutor unless a criminal act is in progress or there is a specific and immediate danger to which they must respond. When authorities detain a person without a warrant, an examining magistrate must decide within 24 hours of the detention whether there is enough evidence to proceed with an arrest. The investigating judge then has 48 hours to confirm the arrest and recommend whether to prosecute. In terrorism cases authorities may hold suspects 48 hours before bringing the case before a magistrate.

Authorities generally respected the right to a prompt judicial determination. The law entitles detainees to prompt and regular access to lawyers of their choosing and to family members. The state provides a lawyer to indigent persons. In exceptional circumstances, usually in cases of organized crime figures, in which there is danger that attorneys may attempt to tamper with evidence, the investigating judge may take up to five days to interrogate the accused before access to an attorney is permitted. Some human rights organizations asserted that the terrorism law is deficient in due process and in some cases resulted in the deportation or return of alien suspects to countries where they had reason to fear persecution. The law allows for increased surveillance and enhanced police powers to gather evidence in terrorism cases, for example, DNA for purposes of identification (see section 2.d.).

Lengthy pretrial detention was a serious problem. During the first half of the year, 47 percent of all prisoners were either in pretrial detention or awaiting a final sentence. The maximum term of pretrial detention is from two to six years depending on the severity of the crime.

There is no provision for bail; however, judges may grant provisional liberty to suspects awaiting trial. As a safeguard against unjustified detention, detainees may request that a panel of judges (liberty tribunal) review their cases on a regular basis and determine whether continued detention is warranted.

Authorities may impose preventive detention as a last resort if there is evidence of a serious felony or if the crime is associated with the Mafia or terrorism. Except in the most extraordinary situations, preventive detention is prohibited for pregnant women, single parents of children under age three, persons over age 70, and those who are seriously ill.

e. Denial of Fair Public Trial

The constitution provides for an independent judiciary, and the government generally respected judicial independence in practice; however, most court cases involved long trial delays.

There were some reports of judicial corruption.

Pressure on the judicial system, primarily in the form of intimidation of judges by organized crime groups, further complicated the judicial process. On July 4, authorities arrested six members of a criminal association in Trapani and charged them with attempted murder of a judge who had received letters containing bullets as well as explicit threats.

There are three levels of courts. Civil and criminal trial courts use a single judge, a panel of judges, or a jury. There is a criminal and a civil appellate court with juries. Both sides may appeal decisions of the court of appeals to the highest court, the Court of Cassation in Rome. Prosecutors may in some instances challenge acquittals by appealing directly to the Court of Cassation, bypassing the intermediary appellate level. Such appeals may be based on the court's application of the law or, in some cases, on the evidence. A separate Constitutional Court hears cases involving conflicts between laws and the constitution or over the duties or powers of different units of government.

Nine military tribunals and nine prosecutor's offices are in charge of military crimes committed by members of the armed forces, such as treason, unauthorized release of state secrets, and espionage. An appeals court reviews challenges brought by defendants or prosecutors.

In 2008 the ECHR found six violations by the country of the right to a fair trial as provided by the European Convention on Human Rights.

Trial Procedures

The constitution provides for the right to a fair trial, and an independent judiciary generally enforced this right. Trials are public. Defendants have access to an attorney in a timely manner. Defendants may confront and question witnesses against them and may present witnesses and evidence on their own behalf. Prosecutors must make evidence available to defendants and their attorneys upon request. Defendants have a presumption of innocence and the right to appeal verdicts.

In December 2008 a Milan court acquitted and released Melchiorre Contena, who was arrested in 1977 and found guilty of kidnapping and homicide in 1979. He had spent more than 30 years in prison but was released due to inconsistencies in the testimony of the three other kidnappers involved.

Domestic and European institutions continued to criticize the slow pace of justice and cited 51 especially egregious cases in 2008. At the end of 2008, 4,200 petitions seeking compensation from the government for excessively long proceedings were pending in the ECHR. In addition, according to the Court of Cassation, about 30,000 new cases were initiated at the national level in 2008. Also in 2008, the Court of Cassation rendered 3,612 judgments against the government for excessively protracted proceedings. The president of the Court of Cassation indicated some reasons for delays, including the excessive number of trials, the lack of nonjudicial remedies, and insufficient and inadequate distribution of offices and resources, including an insufficient number of judges.

In 2008 the ECHR found 51 violations by the country of the European Convention on Human Rights with respect to length of proceedings.

Courts could determine when the statute of limitations should apply, and defendants often took advantage of the slow pace of justice to delay trials through extensive pleas and appeals.

Political Prisoners and Detainees

There were no reports of political prisoners or detainees.

Civil Judicial Procedures and Remedies

The constitution provides for an independent and impartial judiciary in civil matters. Civil remedies are determined by law, and arbitration is allowed and regulated by contracts. Often citizens and companies turned to arbitration because of trial delays.

In 2008 the ECHR found eight violations by the country of the right to protection of property under the European Convention on Human Rights.

f. Arbitrary Interference with Privacy, Family, Home, or Correspondence

The law prohibits such actions, and the government generally respected these prohibitions in practice. Searches and electronic monitoring were generally permissible with judicial warrants and in carefully defined circumstances. The Court of Cassation's lead prosecutor may authorize wiretaps of terrorism suspects at the request of the prime minister.

The media published leaked transcripts of both legal and illegal government wiretaps during the year, including on Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

On June 19, the national authority for the protection of privacy blocked the publication of photos featuring the prime minister and guests in his private residence.

The law allows magistrates to destroy illegal wiretaps discovered by police.

In 2008 the ECHR found 13 violations by the country of the right to respect for private and family life as provided by the European Convention on Human Rights.

Section 2 Respect for Civil Liberties, Including:

a. Freedom of Speech and Press

The constitution provides for the freedoms of speech and of the press, and the government generally respected these rights in practice. An independent press, an effective judiciary, and a functioning democratic political system combined to ensure freedom of speech and the press.

On July 17, the ECHR determined that the country had violated freedom of expression in a case in which a journalist had been convicted for defamation of a local politician. In 2008 the ECHR found that the country had violated freedom of expression as provided by the European Convention on Human Rights. In 2002 the appeals court of Palermo sentenced Claudio Riolo, who had censured the conduct of the president of the province of Palermo in an article published by a local newspaper and reprinted by a national daily.

The independent media were active and expressed a wide variety of views. However, disputes over partisanship continued to prompt frequent political debate. The two main opposition parties and NGOs contended that media ownership was concentrated in too few hands. Prime Minister Berlusconi's family holding company, Fininvest, held a controlling share in the country's largest private television company, Mediaset; its largest magazine publisher, Mondadori; and its largest advertising company, Publitalia. His brother owned one of the country's nationwide dailies, Il Giornale.

The NGO Reporters without Borders and the journalists' union criticized several judicial actions against journalists and highlighted the threats and intimidation against journalists coming from criminal organizations in the south.

In September 2008 police searched the home of three journalists from the magazine L'Espresso, which had published articles on ties between criminal organizations and politicians involved with trash collection in Naples. They allegedly published information about the case leaked from the prosecutor's office.

During the year the National Federation of the Italian Press condemned what it described as excessive restrictions on freedom of expression. In May Freedom House's Freedom of the Press report showed a decline in the country's ranking from "free" to "partly free." In addition to the L'Espresso case, the National Federation of the Italian Press (NFIP) criticized RAI television, which was under the control of a parliamentary committee. RAI executives delayed transmission of a news analysis program, which was often critical of the Berlusconi government, in favor of broadcasting a special program highlighting the government's efforts to provide housing for those displaced by the L'Aquila earthquake in April.

During the year public officials continued to bring cases against journalists under the country's libel laws. On August 28, Prime Minister Berlusconi filed a libel suit against the daily La Repubblica for the publication of a list of leading questions over a period of months. Some of the provocative questions played off personal issues that became public as Berlusconi's wife asked for a divorce.

On September 2, Prime Minister Berlusconi sued the daily L'Unita for libel for printing two unfavorable articles on his private life in July and August. Berlusconi sought three million euros ($4.3 million) in damages.

In November 2008 a judge found journalist Marco Travaglio guilty of libel against former minister Cesare Previti for an article published by L'Espresso in 2002 suggesting he and his political party, Forza Italia, had direct links with the Mafia.

In the view of most observers the risk of such suits did not affect adversely the willingness of the press to report on politically sensitive subjects.

Internet Freedom

There were no government restrictions on access to the Internet or reports that the government monitored e-mail or Internet chat rooms. Individuals and groups could engage in the peaceful expression of views via the Internet, including by e-mail.

A special unit of the police monitored Web sites for crimes involving child pornography online. The government could request other governments to block foreign-based Internet sites if they contravened national laws. As an antiterrorism measure, authorities required that Internet cafe operators obtain licenses. According to Eurostat, in 2008, 47 percent of citizens had access to the Internet at home.

In October a Facebook "community" inciting violence against Prime Minister Berlusconi emerged. The judiciary sought to define a balanced approach to dealing with such overt threats.

Academic Freedom and Cultural Events

There were no government restrictions on academic freedom or cultural events.

b. Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and Association

The constitution provides for freedom of assembly and association, and the government generally respected these rights in practice.

c. Freedom of Religion

The constitution provides for freedom of religion, and the government generally respected this right in practice.

There is no state religion; however, the concordat between the Roman Catholic Church and the government gives the Catholic Church certain privileges. For example, it may select Catholic religion teachers, whose earnings the government paid. In accordance with the law, the government had understandings with organizations representing non-Catholic religions pursuant to accords that allow the government to support them (including financially), including the Confederation of Methodist and Waldensian Churches, Adventists, Assembly of God, Jews, Baptists, and Lutherans. At year's end, the current government had not yet reviewed and submitted to the parliament for ratification other accords negotiated by the previous government with the Buddhist Union, Jehovah's Witnesses, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Apostolic Church, the Orthodox Church of the Constantinople Patriarchate, and the Hindu community.

Muslims in some locations continued to encounter difficulties in getting permission to construct mosques and other community buildings. In December 2008 the Islamic Center of Milan received approval for a plan to enlarge its mosque after seeking permission for several years. Although local officials usually cited other grounds for refusing building permits, some Muslims asserted that hostility toward their religion underlay the difficulties. The efforts of Northern League members of parliament to seek legislation to restrict building additional mosques furthered a hostile attitude toward Muslims.

There were occasional reports that government officials or the public objected to women wearing garments that completely covered the face and body. In August a northern town banned "burkinis" from its public pool. The mayor claimed the full-body swimsuit could disturb small children. He added that such swimwear could be a potential violation of pool hygiene rules.

The presence of Catholic symbols, such as crucifixes, in courtrooms, schools, and other public buildings continued to be a source of criticism and lawsuits. In February the Ministry of Education suspended a teacher for a month because he removed the crucifix from his classroom in Perugia.

On November 3, the ECHR determined that the display of crucifixes in schools in the country violated the separation of church and state. The ruling was nonbinding and was met with wide disapproval in the country. An appeal was pending at year's end.

Societal Abuses and Discrimination

Denial of the Holocaust is a crime punishable by up to four years in prison. There were no reports of any prosecutions under this law during the year. The country's approximately 30,000 Jews maintained synagogues in 21 cities. No violent anti-Semitic attacks were reported during the year, but societal prejudices persisted, manifested largely by anti-Semitic graffiti in a number of cities. Small extremist fringe groups were responsible for anti-Semitic acts.

On January 23, 22 shops owned by Jews were the target of vandalistic attacks in Rome by the fascist group Militia, which left a banner urging a boycott of Jewish shops.

The government condemned the anti-Semitic vandalism. Prime Minister Berlusconi, foreign minister Franco Frattini, and other politicians across the political spectrum expressed solidarity with the victims and their intent to fight prejudice and violence at the national and international levels. There were no reported arrests in connection with the attacks by year's end. Addressing the presidents of major American Jewish associations, Berlusconi confirmed "the commitment of Italy to ... fight all forms of anti-Semitism."

The government continued to host an annual meeting to increase educational awareness of the Holocaust and to combat anti-Semitism.

There were also instances of discrimination and violence against Muslims. In June 2008 two homemade bombs thrown at the Milan Islamic Center damaged the main gate.

For a more detailed discussion, see the 2009 Report on International Religious Freedom at www.state.gov/g/drl/irf/rpt.

d. Freedom of Movement, Internally Displaced Persons, Protection of Refugees, and Stateless Persons

The constitution provides for freedom of movement within the country, foreign travel, emigration, and repatriation, and the government generally respected these rights in practice.

The government cooperated with the UNHCR and other humanitarian organizations to protect and assist refugees, asylum seekers, stateless persons, and other persons of concern.

The law prohibits forced exile, and the government did not employ it.

Protection of Refugees

The country is a party to the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 protocol. The law provides for the granting of asylum or refugee status, and the government has established a system for providing protection to refugees. The country is a party to the EU's Dublin II Instruction, whose partners generally transfer asylum applications to the first member country in which the applicant arrived. In practice the government provided protection against the expulsion or return of refugees to countries where their lives or freedom would be threatened.

The government also provided temporary protection to individuals who may not qualify as refugees under the 1951 convention and the 1967 protocol. In 2008, 4,431 persons received such protection. Between January and August, 1,246 immigrants were granted asylum status, and 1,387 obtained humanitarian protection. According to the UNHCR, the top three countries of origin of persons granted temporary protection were Eritrea, Nigeria, and Somalia.

The government provided temporary protection to refugees fleeing hostilities or natural disasters. The government granted such refugees temporary residence permits which had to be renewed periodically and did not ensure future permanent residence.

Between May 1 and September 22, the Ministry of the Interior identified 1,800 individuals who came ashore illegally from North Africa, compared to 18,800 in the same period of 2008. Those who were apprehended were sent to temporary detention centers for processing, and a magistrate determined whether they would be deported (if their identity could be ascertained), issued an order to depart (if their identity could not be ascertained), or accepted for asylum processing.

According to Save the Children, between May 2008 and February 2009, 1,994 unaccompanied minors and 300 accompanied underage migrants came ashore in Lampedusa; 1,680 were hosted in protected communities but 1,119 of them fled. The Interior Ministry equipped special sections of identification centers to host minors.

On July 2, the parliament approved a law that criminalizes illegal immigration. It is punishable by a fine and an immediate order to leave the country. The law also permits the creation of unarmed citizen patrol groups to help police keep order.

In August 2008 the government signed an agreement with Libya that includes provisions for patrolling the Libyan coast by Italian and Libyan officers using Italian boats. The controversial agreement allows all immigrants departing from the Libyan coast, not only Libyan nationals, to be turned back before they reach the country's soil. On May 7, under the new agreement, the Italian coast guard escorted to Libya 227 immigrants whom it stopped in the Strait of Sicily. Similar operations continued over the summer and produced a dramatic decrease in the number of immigrants who reached the country's shores.

On September 23, the minister of the interior stated that in the first four months of cooperation with Libya, the country's authorities stopped four boats and sent back 834 persons attempting to reach the country. He claimed that the new measures prevented over 17,000 migrants from departing Libya in their attempt to reach the country. There were claims from some of the persons transferred to vessels for return to Libya that the country's officials used force in the process.

The Council of Europe's commissioner for human rights and the UNHCR criticized the country's new policy of repatriation of immigrants to Libya. There were concerns that authorities returned immigrants who may have been eligible for asylum in Europe to a country that has not signed international conventions on protection of refugees. In addition, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International criticized the government for its failure to screen foreigners and to identify refugees, unaccompanied minors, and victims of trafficking.

In July the Council of Europe's Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CPT) visited the country to examine the government's new policy of intercepting migrants approaching by sea from the south and returning them to Libya. By year's end, the CPT had not published its report.

Section 3 Respect for Political Rights: The Right of Citizens to Change Their Government

The constitution provides citizens with the right to change their government peacefully, and citizens exercised this right in practice through periodic, free, and fair elections held on the basis of universal suffrage.

Elections and Political Participation

National and international experts, including the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, considered the April 2008 parliamentary elections free and fair.

On June 6 and 7, the country held elections to the European Parliament that were considered free and fair.

Numerous political parties functioned without government restrictions or outside interference.

There were 58 women in the 322-seat Senate and 134 women in the 630-seat Chamber of Deputies. Women held five of 23 positions in the Council of Ministers.

The only legally defined minorities were linguistic: the French-speaking Valdostani and the German-speaking Altoatesini/Suedtiroler. There were four members of these groups in the Senate and three in the Chamber of Deputies. In a largely monolithic society, immigrants represented approximately 5 percent of the population, and fewer than half of these qualified as ethnic/racial minorities. Two members of immigrant groups (of Moroccan and Congolese origin) were elected to the Chamber of Deputies.

In 2008 the ECHR found that the country had violated the right to free elections as provided by the European Convention on Human Rights.

Section 4 Official Corruption and Government Transparency

The law provides criminal penalties for official corruption, and the government generally implemented these laws effectively.

The anticorruption and transparency office in the Ministry of Public Administration acts as the government watchdog on corruption.

According to the national audit court (corte dei conti), courts in 2008 convicted 68 persons on corruption charges and recovered 117 million euros ($167 million). In 2008 financial and carabinieri police found sufficient cause to refer to prosecutors 5,361 cases of public officials suspected of such crimes as corruption, graft, abuse of power, and embezzlement, while 68 public employees were convicted of corruption.

There continued to be isolated reports of government corruption during the year. According to the ministries of interior and justice, in 2006 prosecutors charged 925 individuals with corruption; courts convicted 130 persons of corruption. Prosecutors charged 2,725 persons with abuse of authority; courts convicted 45 persons of abuse of authority. Prosecutors charged 2,725 with embezzlement.

On October 9, the Constitutional Court ruled that the July 2008 legislation granting immunity from prosecution to the four highest government officials was unconstitutional.

On June 11, Palermo prosecutors began investigating two politicians believed to have helped a Mafia-owned company secure natural gas distribution concessions from the regional government of Sicily. Majority party senator Carlo Vizzini and European parliamentarian Salvatore Cintola of one opposition party allegedly collaborated with at least two other politicians.

In July 2008 authorities arrested Abruzzo governor Ottaviano Del Turco and a number of other local officials and charged them with corruption, embezzlement, fraud, and abuse of power in a case allegedly involving 12.8 million euros ($18.3 million) in the health care sector. Prosecutors have requested the indictment of Del Turco, and the decision of preliminary investigation judges was expected in spring 2010.

The law gives citizens the right to access government documents and to be informed of administrative processes. With some security-related exceptions, the government and local authorities respected this right in practice for citizens, noncitizens, and the foreign press.

Section 5 Governmental Attitude Regarding International and Nongovernmental Investigation of Alleged Violations of Human Rights

A variety of domestic and international human rights groups generally operated without government restriction, investigating and publishing their findings on human rights cases. Government officials were cooperative and responsive to their views.

Section 6 Discrimination, Societal Abuse, and Trafficking in Persons

The law prohibits discrimination based on race, gender, ethnic background, and political opinion. It provides some protection against discrimination based on disability, language, or social status. The government generally enforced these prohibitions; however, some societal discrimination continued against women, persons with disabilities, immigrants, and Roma.

Women

Rape, including spousal rape, is illegal, and the government enforced the law effectively. In 2008, according to the Ministry of Interior, 4,637 cases of rape were reported, and police identified 8,845 assailants.

Violence against women, including spousal abuse, remained a problem. In 2007 the Italian National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT) reported that 6.7 million women aged 16 to 70, or 32 percent of all women, had been victims of violence at least once in their lives. Five million women were victims of sexual violence, one million of them of rape or attempted rape. ISTAT estimated that in 2006 there were 74,000 cases of rape or attempted rape, of which 4,500 were reported to the police. Partners reportedly committed approximately 23 percent of sexual abuses. According to the Ministry of Interior, from June 2008 through July 2009, 5,556 cases of sexual abuses were reported to police.

The law criminalizes the physical abuse of women, including by family members; allows for the prosecution of perpetrators of violence against women; and helps abused women avoid publicity. ISTAT reported 113 killings of women by their current or ex-partners in 2008. Law enforcement and judicial authorities prosecuted perpetrators of violence against women, but victims frequently declined to press charges due to fear, shame, or ignorance of the law.

On July 17, the Ministry of Equal Opportunity established a hotline for victims of stalking, in addition to the hotline for victims of violence seeking immediate assistance and temporary shelter. From February 23 through October, 3,247 cases of stalking were reported to the Ministry of Equal Opportunity hotline. Police received 4,124 stalking complaints and made 723 arrests. From March 2006 through 2007, 16,700 women reported episodes of violence to this hotline, and half of them requested assistance. The NGO Telefono Rosa assisted 1,744 victims of violence, 287 of whom were foreigners. The NGO ACMID-Donna established a toll-free number for abused Muslim women and received 5,500 calls from November 2008 through August 2009. Approximately 82 percent of those cases involved violence or other mistreatment by husbands or relatives, including unwillingly being in a polygamous marriage, a situation affecting an estimated 14,000 women.

There were occasional reports of "honor crimes" and forced marriage. In June 2008 a 16-year-old Moroccan girl living in Piacenza simulated her own kidnapping to avoid a forced marriage arranged by her family. The intended groom was a Moroccan man over 60 years old and living in France.

In September police in Pordenone took a 45-year-old Moroccan man into custody on suspicion of murdering his daughter, Saana Dafani. The father was upset over his 18-year-old daughter's relationship with a 31-year-old Italian man.

Female genital mutilation is a crime punishable by up to 10 years' imprisonment. The government estimated that 35,000 women were victims of genital mutilation, 1,100 of whom were age 17 and younger. An interagency committee of the Department of Equal Opportunity in charge of combating female genital mutilation implemented a prevention program that included an awareness campaign for immigrants, an analysis of risks, and training of cultural mediators. On November 9, the Ministry of Equal Opportunity inaugurated a hotline dedicated to victims of such mutilation.

On June 11, the NGO Arci launched a campaign against genital mutilation in collaboration with migrant women's associations in Rome, Florence, and Turin.

Prostitution is legal in private residences; the law prohibits pimping, brothels, and similar commercial enterprises. The trafficking of women for sexual exploitation remained a problem. In 2008, according to the Ministry of Interior, 4,350 persons were charged with trafficking in persons and pandering.
The law permits domestic courts to try citizens and permanent residents who engage in sex tourism outside of the country, even if the offense is not a crime in the country in which it occurred. According to the domestic branch of End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography, and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes (ECPAT Italy), in recent years sex tourists from the country made Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Czech Republic, Northern Russia, and Brazil preferred destinations.

The country has a code of conduct for tourist agencies to help combat sex tourism.

Sexual harassment is illegal, and the government effectively enforced the law. By government decree emotional abuse based on gender discrimination is a crime.

Couples and individuals had the right to decide the number, spacing, and timing of children, and had the information and means to do so free from discrimination. Access to information on contraception, and skilled attendance at delivery and in postpartum care were widely available. Women and men were given equal access to diagnostic services and treatment for sexually transmitted infections.

The law gives women the same rights as men, including rights under family law, property law, and in the judicial system.

According to an independent research center, the overall gap between salaries for men and women was 16 percent, although a study released in July estimated the gap between men and women with the same jobs and qualifications was 2 percent. Women were underrepresented in many fields, including management, entrepreneurial business, and other professions. Although 36 percent of lawyers were women, no women were members of the prestigious National Council of Lawyers. Although 60 percent of doctors were women, only 14 percent of the heads of local health authorities were women.

The parliament ratified a new law ending discrimination in the retirement age between men and women. Previously, women could retire at 60, five years earlier than men. The European Commission found the rule illegal in 2008, and the country enacted the new law to be in compliance.

A number of government offices worked to ensure women's rights, including the Ministry for Equal Opportunity and the Equal Opportunity Commission in the Prime Minister's Office. The Ministry of Labor and Welfare has a similar commission that focuses on women's rights and discrimination in the workplace. Many NGOs, most of them affiliated with labor unions or political parties, actively and effectively promoted women's rights.

Children

Citizenship is derived from one's parents (jus sanguinis). Citizenship is not derived by birth within the country's territory. Local authorities registered all births immediately.

In 2008 Telefono Azzurro, an NGO that advocates for children's rights, received 304,774 calls and 3,230 requests for assistance. Of these, an estimated 6 percent involved sexual abuse, and 18 percent physical violence. In 56 percent of the cases, the victims were female; 44 percent of the victims were younger than 10. In 2006 authorities registered approximately 170 reports of sexual intercourse with minors, 290 reports of production of child pornography, and 180 reports of possession of child pornography.

NGOs estimated that 10 percent of persons engaged in prostitution were minors. An independent research center estimated that approximately 30,000 minors entered the country illegally in 2008, of whom about 8,000 were sheltered in protected communities. Of those, 80 percent left the communities without authorization.

On February 25, Carabinieri officers arrested 11 Bulgarian Roma accused of trafficking minors from Bulgaria to Western European countries. Victims were forced to marry other Roma and to commit crimes such as shoplifting, pickpocketing, and burglary.

On May 24, the minister of interior announced the establishment of a new hotline run by Telefono Azzuro, dedicated to helping find minors who disappeared and assisting those who ran away. In 2008 there were 1,330 runaways, of whom 998 were not citizens of the country.

On January 21, authorities arrested an Italian in Thailand for the third time of having had sex with minors. On May 19, authorities arrested a 60-year-old Italian in Thailand and accused him on the same grounds.

Illegal immigrant child laborers from North Africa, West Africa, the Philippines, and China continued to enter the country. The flow of children from Albania dropped dramatically, possibly due to improved economic conditions for Albania and increased law enforcement cooperation between the country and Albania.

Few of the country's children engaged in prostitution for survival. However, independent research center Parsec has reported that thousands of minors from Eastern Europe engaged in prostitution for survival. Prostitution under the age of 18 is against the law, but no penalty is specified.

The country, which has a statutory rape law, is not a destination for sex tourism. The minimum age for consensual sex varies from 13 to 16 years old based on the relationship between partners. The penalty for child pornography ranges from six to 12 years in prison, and the penalty for violation of the law regarding the minimum age for consensual sex ranges from two to 10 years in prison.

A special unit of the police monitored 26,600 Web sites during the year; the unit investigated 1,155 persons for crimes involving child pornography online and arrested 51. According to the NGO Telefono Arcobaleno, 6.5 percent of those accessing pornographic materials involving minors worldwide were from the country.

Trafficking in Persons

The law prohibits all forms of trafficking in persons; however, trafficking in persons was a problem. Persons were trafficked to, from, through and within the country. According to NGO sources, the number of new victims trafficked in 2008 was an estimated 2,800.

The country was a destination and transit country for women, children, and men trafficked internationally for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation and forced labor. Women and children were trafficked for forced prostitution mainly from Nigeria, Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova, Albania, Ukraine, Russia, South America, North and East Africa, the Middle East, China, and Uzbekistan. Chinese men and women were trafficked to the country for the purpose of forced labor. Romani children continued to be trafficked for the purposes of sexual exploitation and forced begging. Men were trafficked for the purpose of forced labor, mostly in the agricultural sector in southern Italy but also in sweatshops around the country. According to one NGO, 90 percent of foreign seasonal workers were unregistered, and two-thirds were in the country illegally, rendering them vulnerable to trafficking. The top five source countries for agricultural workers, from where forced labor victims were likely found, were Poland, Romania, Pakistan, Albania, and Cote d'Ivoire.

Between one-quarter and one-third of women trafficked for prostitution came from Romania, according to the Ministry for Equal Opportunity. Parsec estimated that the large majority of persons engaged in prostitution were immigrants primarily from Romania, Nigeria, Bulgaria, Ukraine, China, Moldova, and Russia. A large number of women entered the country voluntarily and were subsequently obliged to engage in prostitution to repay smugglers. The average age of victims declined, and an increasing number of victims were trafficked for labor outside the sex industry, particularly in the agriculture and service sectors. Immigrants, mostly from Nigeria, North Africa, China, and Eastern Europe, played a major role in trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation, both as traffickers and as victims, although citizens were also involved.

On February 11, police arrested and accused three Romanians and an Italian of trafficking, raping and abusing a Romanian girl. They enticed the girl from her home village with the bogus offer of a caretaker's job in Sicily. The Romanians stole her passport, isolated her, and repeatedly raped her over a 20-day period. Then, the Italian physically abused her as part of his successful attempt to force her into prostitution.

NGOs and independent experts reported that traffickers became more sophisticated in lowering the profile of their illicit activities. Due to increased enforcement efforts, traffickers moved their victims away from street prostitution and towards conducting their activities in hotels, clubs, discos, and other less visible venues. This shift made it more difficult for authorities to identify trafficking victims.

The law provides prison sentences of eight to 20 years for trafficking or enslavement. If the victims are minors, sentences increase by one-third to one-half. The law mandates special prison conditions for traffickers that limit their ability to continue their operations while incarcerated.

According to the Ministry of Justice, authorities investigated 2,738 persons for trafficking in 2008 and arrested 365; trial courts convicted 138 persons, and appeal courts convicted 148.

The government cooperated with foreign governments, including those of Romania, Nigeria, Ukraine, Bulgaria, and Moldova, to investigate and prosecute trafficking cases. Because police had difficulty in meeting the law's evidentiary standards in some trafficking cases, authorities relied on enforcement of immigration law to stop trafficking.

There were no reports during the year that government officials participated in, facilitated, or condoned trafficking.

The law provides temporary residence or work permits to trafficked persons seeking to escape their exploiters. Authorities and NGOs encouraged trafficking victims to file complaints, and there were no legal impediments to their doing so. Unlike most other illegal immigrants, who face deportation if apprehended, persons who qualify as trafficking victims under the law receive benefits, including legal residence, whether or not they file a complaint. However, the UNHCR and NGOs criticized the government for not always allowing enough time between apprehension and deportation of illegal immigrants to screen them as possible trafficking victims.

The government provided legal and medical assistance, access to shelters, and job training to persons identified by authorities as victims of trafficking. In 2006 the government assisted 7,300 women. There were also assistance and incentive programs for those willing to return to their native countries; in 2006, 62 victims who chose to return to their home countries were repatriated.

The law empowers magistrates to seize convicted traffickers' assets to finance legal assistance, vocational training, and other social integration assistance for trafficking victims.

The government worked with foreign governments and NGOs to organize trafficking awareness campaigns. The law directs the Foreign Ministry, working with the Ministry of Equal Opportunity, to conclude antitrafficking agreements with trafficking source countries.

The Department of State's annual Trafficking in Persons Report can be found at www.state.gov/g/tip.

Persons with Disabilities

The law prohibits discrimination against persons with disabilities in employment, education, access to health care, and the provision of other state services. The government effectively enforced these provisions, but there was some societal discrimination.

Although the law mandates access to government buildings for persons with disabilities, mechanical barriers, particularly in public transport, left such persons at a disadvantage. The Ministry of Labor and Welfare was responsible for protecting the rights of persons with disabilities. Many cities lacked infrastructure (such as elevators at subway and funicular stations and ramps on sidewalks) for persons with limited mobility and those in wheelchairs.

Independent research centers estimated there were approximately 2.8 million persons with disabilities.

National/Racial/Ethnic Minorities

There continued to be reports that authorities mistreated Roma. The NGOs International and National Union of Roma and Sinti in Italy (UNIRSI) and Opera Nomadi reported cases of discrimination, particularly in housing and evictions, deportations, and government efforts to remove Romani children from their parents for their protection. Government officials at the national and local levels, including those from the Interior Ministry and the Ministry of Equal Opportunity, met periodically with Roma and their representatives.

During the year the Interior Ministry continued a campaign to crack down on illegal immigration based on a May 2008 emergency decree on security and immigration. Authorities arrested or expelled several hundred foreigners and took the names of others who lived in encampments near major cities.

On August 5, the Supreme Administrative Court ruled that local authorities were permitted to collect personal data on Roma who live in authorized camps.

A census of Roma in authorized camps registered 7,200 inhabitants. Authorities closed a few unauthorized encampments and sheltered hundreds of Roma in temporary facilities.

There were no accurate statistics on the number of Roma in the country. NGOs estimated that 140,000, including 75,000 citizens, were concentrated on the fringes of urban areas in the central and southern parts of the country. Romani camps were characterized by poor housing, unhygienic sanitary conditions, limited employment prospects, inadequate educational facilities, and inconsistent police presence.

According to the European Fundamental Rights Agency, the majority of North African immigrants living in the country believed that they were discriminated against and mistreated by police because of their ethnicity.

On January 25, authorities arrested and charged three persons for the October 2008 "hate crime" killing of Mohamed Chamrani, a Moroccan who had been beaten and thrown into Lake Garda.

On June 25, near Milan, five members of a family, including a 70-year-old woman, assaulted and injured in a dispute over a parking spot a 64-year-old citizen of the country who had emigrated from Egypt. Before beating him, the man's attackers shouted that he should return to where he came from. His injuries, including broken ribs, required hospitalization.

The government's Office to Combat Racial and Ethnic Discrimination in the Ministry of Equal Opportunity assisted victims of discrimination. In 2007 the office received about 8,000 calls on its national hotline. The majority of complaints related to labor conditions, wages, and discrimination in the provision of public services. The office provided legal assistance and helped mediate disputes.

Societal Abuses, Discrimination, and Acts of Violence Based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity

There were no laws criminalizing homosexuality. An official from the NGO Arcigay reported police maintained order at several gay pride events, including a march through Rome. Arcigay reported the group was granted permits for the events. The Rome police department has created a special unit to investigate reports of crimes based on sexual orientation.

There were reports of societal discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Arcigay reported eight killings and 52 nonlethal attacks on lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT) persons between January and September, compared to nine killings and 45 other attacks in 2008. Several of the crimes were described as domestic disputes. Between May and September, several acts of vandalism were committed against bars and discos catering mainly to LGBT clientele.

Other Societal Violence or Discrimination

There were no reports of violence or discrimination against persons with HIV/AIDs.

Section 7 Worker Rights

a. The Right of Association

The law provides for the right to establish, join, and carry out union activities in the workplace without previous authorization or excessive requirements, and workers exercised these rights in practice. The law prohibits union organization in the armed forces. Unions claimed to represent between 35 and 40 percent of the workforce.

The law provides for the right to strike, and workers exercised this right by conducting legal strikes. The law restricts strikes affecting essential public services (such as transport, sanitation, and health) by requiring longer advance notification and precluding multiple strikes within days of each other.

In February the government approved a bill to restrict transport strikes. Only those unions representing at least half the workforce can call transport strikes.

b. The Right to Organize and Bargain Collectively

The law allows unions to conduct their activities without interference, and the government protected this right in practice. The law provides for the right of workers to organize and bargain collectively, and workers exercised this right. Approximately 35 percent of the workforce worked under collective bargaining agreements.

Antiunion discrimination is illegal, and the government effectively enforced labor laws. Employees fired for union activity have the right to request their reinstatement. There were no reported cases of discrimination.

There are no export processing zones.

The free-trade-zone law allows a company of any nationality to employ workers of the same nationality under that country's labor laws and social security systems.

c. Prohibition of Forced or Compulsory Labor

The law prohibits forced or compulsory labor, including by children, and the government enforced such laws; however, there were reports such practices occurred. Women were trafficked for sexual exploitation, Romani children for sexual exploitation and begging, and workers for agricultural labor or to work in sweatshops manufacturing counterfeit products.

Parsec estimated that approximately 500 victims of labor trafficking worked outside the sex industry, mainly in domestic, agricultural, or service labor. Forced labor occurred primarily in the agricultural sector and mostly in the south where, according to the NGO Doctors without Borders, a large majority of the foreign seasonal workers were unregistered and did not hold residence permits.

On March 12, Carabinieri police announced the arrest of nine Egyptians and one Moroccan accused of trafficking in persons for labor exploitation. Traffickers smuggled hundreds of North Africans from Libya, facilitated their escape from temporary centers, provided fake documents, and forced them to work illegally in a cleaning company near Milan.

"Operation Viola," coordinated by the national anti-Mafia prosecutor, continued during the year. On April 20, police arrested 49 persons from a criminal association based mainly in Campania for trafficking drugs and children. The minors, all from Nigeria, were threatened and forced into prostitution in various regions of Colombia, Turkey, Bulgaria, and the Netherlands.

Chinese men and women were trafficked to the country for forced labor. At the end of the year, the trial was still pending of a Chinese entrepreneur charged in March 2008 with abetting illegal immigration and exploiting 47 Chinese victims including six minors and two pregnant women working and living in a sweatshop near Reggio Emilia.

d. Prohibition of Child Labor and Minimum Age for Employment

The government sought to enforce laws and policies designed to protect children from exploitation in the workplace; however, there were a number of reports of child labor.

The law prohibits employment of children under age 15 with some limited exceptions, and there are specific restrictions on employment in hazardous or unhealthy occupations for boys under the age of 18 and girls under the age of 21. Enforcement was generally effective in the formal economy; however, it was difficult in the extensive informal economy.

Illegal immigrant child laborers, mostly from 15 to 18 years of age, continued to enter the country from North Africa, the Philippines, and China. They worked primarily in the manufacturing and services industries. Most arrived with their parents; however, according to the NGO Terre des Homes there were about 24,000 unaccompanied minors.

Children were trafficked for sexual exploitation and begging. The minister of interior estimated that minors represented 20 percent of the total victims of trafficking and smuggling from Romania; of those, three out of four were engaged in prostitution. In 2007 about 300 minors were trafficking victims, according to the Ministry for Equal Opportunity. National and local authorities provide minor victims automatic residency permits (valid until age 18) and access to education and other assistance programs. On September 30, according to the Ministry of Welfare, 6,587 unaccompanied minors were registered, 74 percent of whom were hosted in protected communities.

The government, employers' associations, and unions continued their tripartite cooperation to combat child labor. The Ministry of Labor and Welfare, working with police and Carabinieri, is responsible for enforcement of child labor laws, but their efforts were often ineffective.

e. Acceptable Conditions of Work

The law does not specify a minimum wage; it provides for it to be set through collective bargaining agreements on a sector-by-sector basis. The minimum wage in most industries provided a decent standard of living for a worker and family. Courts effectively enforced the wages set through collective bargaining agreements, but workers in the informal sector often worked for less than the analogous minimum wage in the formal sector.

The legal workweek is 40 hours. Overtime work may not exceed two hours per day or an average of 12 hours per week. Unless limited by a collective bargaining agreement, the law sets maximum overtime hours in industrial sector firms at no more than 80 per quarter and 250 annually. The law requires rest periods of one day per week and 11 hours per day. Premium pay is required for overtime. These standards were effectively enforced.

The law sets basic health and safety standards and guidelines for compensation for on-the-job injuries. There were labor inspectors in both the public health service and the Ministry of Labor and Welfare, but their numbers were insufficient to ensure adequate enforcement of health and safety standards. The standards were not enforced in the informal economy. According to the Workmen's Compensation Institute, in 2008 there were 1,120 work-related deaths. Workers have the right to remove themselves from dangerous work situations without jeopardizing their continued employment, and the government effectively enforced this right.