(Cross-posted in the kids forum)

So I am the proponent of moving there, but my wife has one arguement that gives me pause:

It is said that sexism can be pretty significant in italy, from the substantial (opporutunities, jobs, etc) to the ... daily PITA type (what about these rumors of being pinched, ogled, etc, on public trans?)...

We have a baby girl... can you folks enlighten us? What are your experiences/thoughts?

I figure this is the perfect forum for this (mangled) question.

Hey, I never got pinched. I think pinching is a thing of the past from what I remember reading here. If you do a search on this site you will find threads containing answers to the questions posed. There is a thread on staring with hundreds of posts. Also, check out some of the threads on jobs. Plenty of young women move to Italy and stay so it seems that for some there are ways to overcome your wife's concerns.

I'm closing the duplicate thread so that all answers to this question will end up in this one.

I think Italy is quite a sexist society but not in an obvious bottom-pinching, everyday kind of way - more in a systemic way. So your baby girl probably will not experience sexism until she is, for example, a 30 something woman going to a job interview and being asked about her reproductive plans.

(and it is true that Italian men do wolf whistle, make yucky sexual comments at foreign women - however, this is hardly a reason not to move to Italy if you really want to - you develop a thick skin pretty fast if you are foreign looking here)

I don't think the young Italian guys I know are particularly sexist - actually in some ways they are less sexist that a lot of the guys I knew in the US/Australia. However, here in Italy old men (and old men almost exclusively) hold ALL the power. This is a problem for young men who are denied access to power but especially for young women who will never get that kind of power.

I also see quite a lot of sexism at work - on a long term systemic level - which is due to the old men having all the power. You see a lot fewer female CEOs or top managers here than in the US. It's not like there are tons of successful female managers in the US but at least there are some! Here you just don't see that (or at least I haven't) except at family run firms.

But I really don't think that sexism is a reason not to move to Italy. There are other problems which would make me pause before sexism (lack of jobs and opportunities for young people being no. 1 on my list!)

2 other things - how long do you plan to stay in Italy? If it's just a few years then why worry about potential problems 30 years down the track for your daughter?

Also - moving to a foreign country is a really big deal. You will both go through tremendous culture shock. If your wife isn't 100% on board it does not bode well for success in making the adjustment.

I highly doubt any oglers, whistlers or commenters are any different from the garden variety construction teams we have rebuilding New York City, because they're quite vocal around here!

Cobalt - I lived in NYC before I moved to Rome and, well, it's just different. In NY it was pretty much limited to construction workers and the occasional perve. Here, I get stared at every day simply because I'm a tall, blonde foreign woman. In NY, you could be blue and 7 feet tall and no one would stare at you. Here, if you do not look "Italian" you get stared at and you get comments.

The good news is that the only person in my household who has ever had his bottom pinched by an Italian male is my boyfriend.

I don't disagree with the comments, but a while back I read that Italian women were the most liberated in Europe. What do you think?

quote:

Originally posted by jhelm:
I don't disagree with the comments, but a while back I read that Italian women were the most liberated in Europe. What do you think?

"liberated" - in what way? From what?

oh come on Ramona you know what that means!

quote:

Originally posted by Annika:
oh come on Ramona you know what that means!

Actually no - liberated can mean either:

a) sexually liberated
b) liberated from housework/childcare etc. and the constraints of sexism

I was just wondering what jhelm meant because he didn't specify.

Frank - what city/town do you plan on living in?

I live in Perugia and rarely experience whistling, ogling, or anything. The guys here are shy and, well... kind of normal. At least with me. Once in a while I get a 'ciao bella' but that's like once a month. maybe.

But when I'm in Florence or Rome, the "hassle" factor hits a definite high...

I've said it before and I'll say it again, I've never, ever been as much as catcalled here. No butt pinches, no 'hey baby's. Absolutely nothing. But I'm also not one of those flirty women who invites that kind of thing.

That said, I don't believe at all that Italian women are the most liberated (in any sense) in Europe. There is still very much a role for women in this society and this is in many ways the 'land that feminism forgot.' Every time someone asks me if my husband 'helps' (they use the verb 'aiutare') me in the house or says 'Che bravo!' when they see him doing housework, they don't understand why I freak out. Michelle

quote:

Originally posted by mschoen:
But I'm also not one of those flirty women who invites that kind of thing.

Neither am I but I still get hassled. And judging by your blog photo you're way better looking than me and blonde to boot. I'm guessing that men in Milan are either less gross or possibly more used to foreign women...?

It would drive me nuts too if someone commented on my boyfriend "helping" me with housework. Luckily no one has so far but this may be something to the do with the fact that he is also a foreigner and therefore is just expected to be a bit "weird".

Ramona: the staring may just not have much relation to sexism or sexual harassment of any sort. With which I do not mean to say that it may never be sexual. Simply, staring over here is not a no-no. Een in big cities like Milano and Rome people stare at each other fullstop. I look at you because I think you are an intersting person, because I am on the subway, forgot my book and I am bored, so I need to look at something or someone to distract myself, or just because I am lost in thought and I am actually staring in the open, void space that is just occasionally filled with your person. Sure, some may also look at you because they find you atractive (maybe because you are tall and blonde, but then I am medium height with hair that vary from brown with graying patches and dyed red and still get some second glances). Staring, even in a sexual way, is not considered offensive as long as it is limited to just that. "Guardare e non toccare" (to look but not touch) is the rule. A simple stare is not offensive, it is even flattering. A stare accompanied by anything that is not a courteous "buonasera" (or similar nice, not binding openers) is still flattering. Anything that goes beyond this point is a five-fingered red mark on his cheek (or in my case a glass jar filled with half a kilo of tuna plus oil on his teeth... but the uy went MUCH beyond the coutreous and straight into the penal.)

Jhelm: Itlay has one of the lowest rates of female employment: how can Italian women possibily be that liberated if we have such a hard time earning out income?

Actually after I wrote it I realized that saying that I was not flirty could perhaps be taken to mean that any woman who gets catcalled is 'asking for it.' Obviously I didn't mean that. But I really have no patience with pervs and can typically dispose of them quickly. Now that I think about it, just the other day I went to meet an American tourist friend on the steps of the Duomo and some man was bothering her (He was saying 'Is your hotel near here?' or something along those lines), and apparently she had been trying to get rid of him for five minutes while waiting for me. I had that little cockroach scurrying away back toward his hole in about two seconds flat. Michelle

AliceTwain - I'm slowly getting used to the staring (from both men and women) and am trying not to take it the wrong way. I find the best thing to do is just to stare back. But I'm talking more about the gross comments, people following me etc. This seems to happen an awful lot here. I've had groups of men in cars follow me down the street shouting at me, 2 guys in the supermarket following me around and telling me what they wanted me to do with the zucchini I was buying etc. Of course this happens in any city, but for whatever reason, at least for me seems to be worse (for me) here.

Ramona, I really feel for you because I don't like being stared at and I hate being the center of attention (I could never do one of those reality shows...). It's bad enough that every time I sit down at a dinner table here, I have to be the odd person out (I'm vegan), skip a bunch of courses (or worse, have the host make six different courses especially for me - that really embarrasses me) and explain again and again why I am the way I am. If I had people staring at me daily like an animal in the zoo, it would really get to me.
Michelle

Ramona: remeber the tuna. Right on their teeth.

I searched for the reference I made but could not find it. So you just have to trust my memory, I don't know by what standards they judged liberation. I think Italy's very low (lowest in Europe)birthrate may be part of it. Maybe it's women putting off marriage to pursue careers.

I think it's a mixed bag, here some of the women I know have husbands that are gone all the time and they are home ironing their shorts in the evening after working all day and taking care of the kids as well. But then a couple of them also seem to be having affairs, with men they meet in places like cooking or tai ci classes.

I think the low birthrate has much, much more to do with women being forced to live at home (and perhaps put off marriage) because they can't break into the work world. I highly doubt the low birthrate has much to do with choice. Many women are forced to put off having children because they can't afford it or are in precarious work situations. I run my own business from home so if I were to get pregnant tomorrow, I'd have 0 days of maternity leave, no special 'breastfeeding' working hours, etc. Michelle

P.S. On the front page of the newspaper today there was a new statistic saying that your average 'precarious' worker in Italy is 41. If at 41 you don't have stable work, you may never have children at that point.

quote:

Originally posted by jhelm:
But then a couple of them also seem to be having affairs, with men they meet in places like cooking or tai ci classes.

Because nothing says "women's liberation" like having an affair with someone you met in a Tai Chi class!

In a truly liberated society, women are able to have children and still be "liberated". My boyfriend's native Holland seems to be pretty good in this regard (not perfect but good).

quote:

Originally posted by jhelm:
Maybe it's women putting off marriage to pursue careers.

Why a woman is supposed to ahve to chose between career and children? Why aren't men.
In a liberated society there would be men and women that chose not to have children in order to pursue whatever they want to, or just because they don't feel like having children, men and women who chose to stop working in order to stay with their children, men and women that work and have children sharing equally the burden.
We are several steps behind, since our society stull has trouble recognizzing the right to work to women, to the point that many just refuse to deal with the concept of a married mother also having a job, preferably satisfying. As a woman and a feminist, I still have to say to my peers that if they want a role the MUST have a job.

I agree, sharing equally the burden and pleasure of raising a family, making a home and a life with or without children should be the ultimate goal. Perhaps each side of the sexual divide giving greater consideration to the other rather than thinking they have ultimate rights is the answer.