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Title:

BUNGA-BUNGA NATION. By: Nadeau, Barbie, Newsweek, 00289604, 11/22/2010, Vol.

156, Issue 21

Database: Film & Television Literature Index

AS A MEDIA MAGNATE AND PRIME MINISTER, SILVIO BERLUSCONI HAS

SPENT DECADES RESHAPING THE COUNTRY IN HIS HOW IMAGE. THE

RESULT IS NOT A PRETTY SIGHT

It's 8:30 p.m., and all eyes turn to Italy's most popular satirical news program, Striscia

la Notizia (Strip the News). Two middle-aged men stand under a strobe light, one of

them holding a belt from which dangles a vaguely phallic string of garlic. A woman slides

across the floor on her stomach, wearing a sequined costume with a thong bottom and

a deep-V neckline that ends below her navel. As she stands up, one of the men dangles

the garlic in front of her open mouth. She takes it in her hands and rubs it on the side of

her face. "Go, turn around, let's give you a little look," the other man says, and touches

the model's derrire. "Thank you, doll."That's how prime time is in Italy. The parade of skin and jiggle is inescapable, an

expression of the rot at the top of the Italian government and a reflection of the

society's deeper problem with the evolving role of women. While headlines tell endlessly

lurid tales of teenage models, paid escorts, and underage Moroccan belly dancers

playing "bunga-bunga" with 74-year-old Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, the media's

constant message is that men are men, and women are window dressing. Boycotts,

protests, and even complaints are rare, and few listen. So while Berlusconi may be

acting like a dirty old man these days, it has to be said that a goodly number of Italian

women have been willing to play his demeaning games for a long time.

It's as if he planned it this way. Long before Berlusconi won his first stint as primeminister in the 1990s, the scandal-ridden media mogul owned 45 percent of Italy's

television market. He gained control of state television--another 50 percent of the

market--as head of government. With 95 percent of the TV market now under

Berlusconi's umbrella, his cumulative influence on the way Italian women are seen and

see themselves is hard to overstate. So are the negative results for Italy: while other

European lands actively promote gender equality as a builder of national prosperity,

Berlusconi has led the charge in the opposite direction, effectively stifling women by

creating a world in which they are seen first and foremost as sex objects instead of

professional equals.

An appalling portrait of Berlusconi's Italy emerges from the World Economic Forum'sOctober 2010 Global Gender Gap rankings. The report argues that closing the gender

gap Europe-wide could boost the euro zone's GDP as much as 13 percent. But as things

stand now, Italy would be left leering on the sidelines. In every category but education,

Italy lags badly: in labor participation, it's 87th worldwide; wage parity, 121st;

opportunity for women to take leadership positions, 97th. In the report's overall ranking,

Italy now places 74th in the world for its treatment of women--behind Colombia, Peru,

and Vietnam, and seven places lower than it did when Berlusconi took office in 2008.

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"Italy continues to be one of the lowest-ranking countries in the EU and deteriorate[d]

further over the last year," the report says.

An entire generation has grown up in a society where soft-core porn is a regular feature

of the nightly news. It's been 23 years since Berlusconi's Canale 5 introduced Striscia la

Notizia, with its voluptuous women known as veline--literally "scraps of paper"--parading

through the segments. Today, showgirls not only appear on every channel, some areeven in government, thanks to Berlusconi. Polls show that more young Italian women

want to be well-paid TV veline than doctors, lawyers, or business owners.

Others just lose hope. "Our only form of protest is changing the channel," says Concetta

di Somma, a 30-year-old aerobics instructor. "But when even the weather girl is showing

her cleavage, if you protest with the clicker, you miss the news." Underrepresented in

government and corporate life, women have little hope of changing the system from

within. "It's a male-dominated society from the church on down," says Marina, a 57-

year-old jewelry-store owner who asked not to use her last name for fear of hurting her

business. "Women look like whores in advertising and on TV because that's what men

want to see. Men make the advertising, make more money, and thus drive how theproducts are displayed."

Documentary filmmaker Lorella Zanardo recalls meeting with a top bank manager in

Milan recently. On his desk in clear view was a calendar with each month represented by

a bikini-clad babe. A magazine with a seminude woman sprawled on the cover was

displayed on his coffee table. "This is a man who has to decide how many women will

be in decision-making positions in his company," she says. "How does he separate these

subliminal messages from reality when he makes these decisions?"

Measures to stop discrimination, especially against women of reproductive age, are

largely ignored; there's no one to enforce them. Berlusconi "has weakened institutions

aimed at addressing women's issues by narrowing mandates and decreasing budgets,and also by appointing women who are often inexperienced and have few ties to

existing women's-rights organizations," says Celeste Montoya, an associate professor of

women and gender studies at the University of Colorado who has written extensively

about Italy.

The cumulative impact of all this is all too evident in the workplace. Only 45 percent of

all Italian women work outside the home, the lowest rate in the European Union. By

comparison, 80 percent of Norwegian women and 72 percent of British women work

outside the home. When Italian women do have jobs, they earn on average 20 percent

less than men, and they hold only 7 percent of Italy's corporate management positions.

Italian women with jobs outside the home still spend more time on housework (21 hoursa week) than any of their European counterparts except the Poles and Slovenes.

(American women spend just four hours a week on housework.) And Italian men aren't

much help. A recent report by the Italian Association of Househusbands (a rather small

group) found that 70 percent of Italian men have never used a stove, and 95 percent

have never run a washing machine.

But for Berlusconi the idea of an educated, female workforce seems to be more of a

joke than the key to economic progress. He appointed an ex-showgirl, Mara Carfagna,

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to be Italy's minister of equal opportunity. Her topless-photo calendars still hang in the

back halls of the Italian Parliament. Although she makes speeches promoting "equal

rights and equal dignity" for women, Berlusconi himself is unapologetic on the topic. At

a recent rally he said there was one sure way for women to ensure their future

happiness and financial security: "Look for a wealthy boyfriend," he told a shocked

crowd. "This suggestion is not unrealistic."A year ago, more than 100,000 women signed a petition titled "Berlusconi Offends Us."

He just laughed it off, asking, "How can anyone say I don't love women?" While some in

the Catholic press have at last condemned Berlusconi's escapades, calling him "ill," such

criticism is not tolerated in the vast swaths of media interests that Berlusconi controls.

When the soon-to-be ex--Mrs. Berlusconi, Veronica Lario, publicly protested her

husband's behavior, the response was swift. Several right-wing newspaper headlines

called her an "ungrateful showgirl," and splashed topless pictures of her from her former

career on their front pages. (Yes, the nation's first lady was also a topless actress.)It's clear that Berlusconi's ouster--were it to happen--would weaken the toxic link

between politics, the media, and gender discrimination. "His departure would send arelevant message," says University of Turin economist Daniela Del Boca. But it will takeItalians of both genders to reprogram their way of thinking if any real progress is goingto be made. Just changing the channel won't be enough.