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Europe | Italy | Scandal

Italy’s highest court overturns decision that woman was too ‘masculine’ to be raped

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Italy’s highest court has overturned a decision that a woman was too “masculine” to be raped, in a turn of events that activists hope will bring about a change in attitudes toward sexual violence and its victims in Italy. Last month, protesters took to the streets outside the appeals court in Ancona, a city on Italy’s Adriatic Coast, after it was revealed why a panel of three female judges had acquitted two men accused of rape in 2017. The protesters took issue with the jurists’ reasoning, disclosed last month through the Italian Supreme Court’s retrial order: The judges reach
Europe | Italy | Activism

Italian far-right makes sexist International Women’s Day flyer

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Representatives of the far-right League in southern Italy have provoked fury after producing an explicitly sexist leaflet to mark International Women’s Day. It was intended to be a dedication to women, but the pamphlet instead takes aim at those who “offend women’s dignity” by impeding their “natural role” of “supporting life and the family”. It contains a list of six ways in which it says what it calls the natural role of women is harmed, including by “those who claim self-determination that arouses rancorous attitudes towards men” or who support laws that would al
Europe | Italy | Politics

Women take charge as populist surge sweeps Italy

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Virginia Raggi was elected Sunday as Rome's first female mayor in a triumph for the populist Five Star Movement (M5S) that represents a stinging setback for Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi. Raggi swept into City Hall with two thirds of the votes cast in a run-off contest with Roberto Giachetti of Renzi's centre-left Democratic Party (PD). The anti-establishment M5S also claimed control of the northern city of Turin, where another woman, Chiara Appendino, 31, ousted the sitting PD mayor with the help of backing from the far-right Northern League.
Europe | Italy | Law

Female Italian judges outnumber male counterparts for first time

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It has only been five decades since women were first allowed to become judges inItaly but in what is being hailed as a small revolution, female judges now outnumber their male counterparts. According to a report released this week by the top prosecutor in Italy’s supreme court, women now comprise 50.7% of all active judges in the country. The annual report noted that the genders had already been close to parity, but that 2015 marked the first time women were dominant. Jurists need to pass a rigorous exam to become judges in Italy, one that was only extended to women from 1965. That yea
Europe | Italy | Innovation

Italian student invents marble stone fabric

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Alice Zantedeschi, a 26 year-old student from Verona, invented a new fabric by mixing an marble stone with synthetic or organic materials commonly used in the textile industry. Verona, renowned for being home of Romeo and Juliet, is also famous for its wine and marble quarries. The local stone has a peculiar pale pink color, as opposed to the more famous white Carrara marble. Grinding the stone to dust and adding it to polyurethane or wool gives the fabric a natural pink color, otherwise achievable using dyes. The technique seems to work best with synthetic materials used in sportswear.
Europe | Italy | Crimes

Woman wakes from coma to deny she jumped from cruise ship; attempted murder investigation opened

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An attempted murder investigation has been launched in northern Italy after a woman thought to have tried to commit suicide by jumping off a cruise ship awoke from a long coma and said she had not tried to kill herself. The 53-year-old woman, who works at a bank in the northern Italian city of Turin, told police she had argued with her partner in their cabin on the Costa cruise ship docked in the Norwegian port of Flam shortly before falling off the boat on July 19, the Turin daily La Stampa reported. She told the paper she could not remember how she managed to fall 115 feet from her bal
Europe | Italy | Culture

Chiara Vigo: The last woman who makes sea silk

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Silk is usually made from the cocoons spun by silkworms - but there is another, much rarer, cloth known as sea silk or byssus, which comes from a clam. Chiara Vigo is thought to be the only person left who can harvest it, spin it and make it shine like gold. Villagers stare as I knock on the door of Chiara Vigo's studio, otherwise known as the Museum of Byssus, on the Sardinian island of Sant'Antioco. One sign on the door says: "Haste doesn't live here." Another adds: "In this room nothing is for sale." Vigo is sitting in a far corner of the room surrounded by yarns and canvasses, holding
Europe | Italy | Religion

Pope Francis canonizes two Palestinian nuns

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Pope Francis named two Palestinian women as saints on Sunday, in a ceremony in Saint Peter's Square just days after the Vatican formalized its de facto recognition of the State of Palestine. The canonization of Sister Marie-Alphonsine Danil Ghattas, founder of the Sisters of the Most Holy Rosary of Jerusalem, and Maryam Baouardy, who founded a Carmelite convent in Bethlehem, was not directly connected with the Vatican's Wednesday announcement of a new accord with the State of Palestine. But the ceremony, attended by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and a delegation of senior clergy in
Europe | Italy | Culture

Pope Demands Equal Pay for Women But Still Doesn’t Intend to Hire Any

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Pope Francis defended pay equality today, calling it “pure scandal” to pay women less than men. But when will the pontiff make women equal in the Church? During his regular Wednesday blessing, Pope Francis called it “pure scandal” to pay women less than men for equal jobs, though he gave no indication that he would be testing that theory any time soon at the Vatican. “Why is it expected that women must earn less than men?” he said. “No! They have the same rights. The disparity is a pure scandal.” The popular pontiff has not always had an easy time when it comes to wome
Europe | Italy | Arts

How Peggy Guggenheim Became The Queen of Modern Art

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The Peggy Guggenheim Collection sits on the banks of the Grand Canal in Venice, a somewhat unassuming one-story, white-walled palace that is filled with one of the most visited collections of modern and contemporary art in the world. Millions of art lovers have pilgrimaged to its shore to see the Pollocks and Kandinskys, the Calders, de Koonings, and Dalís, the Duchamps and Ernsts that line its walls. It is not only one of the premier collections of modern art in the world, featuring over 300 works by over 100 of the most influential artists of the 20th-century, but it also has played a
Europe | Italy | Religion

Is a ‘springtime’ of leadership blooming for women in the Vatican?

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With more opportunities opening for women to take leadership roles in Vatican councils and congregations, women are filling the ranks of the Roman Curia on a historically unprecedented level. “I think we are at a point of seeing (a different model)…a springtime for new forms of leadership…in the Church,” Cardinal Peter Turkson said April 14. Cardinal Turkson, President of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, was speaking to participants of an April 14 conference held at Rome's Pontifical University of St. Thomas Aquinas. Pope Francis has continued the work of his pred

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