The FdI proposal helps women only if they are disfigured

ROMA — Protected, but only if scarred. There are six legislative proposals in Montecitorio which aim to guarantee women victims of violence the right to employment through quotas reserved for “protected” categories, because the answer to oppression comes above all through economic independence. After a long series of hearings, the examination of the six texts is scheduled for this week, and the proposing deputies therefore expected to begin work on an effective and shared synthesis.

But at the end of last week, when preparing the work programme, the rapporteur Marta Schifone (FdI) he “pointed out the opportunity to uncouple” one of the proposals, the one signed by his party colleague Maddalena Morgante. Which, like the others, provides for the job placement and retention of jobs for victims of violence, but only if they are “victims of violence with permanent facial deformation or disfigurement”. The reference is to those who suffer acid attacks. Women, but also men. «It means that Morgante and the other exponents of Fratelli d’Italia have no intention of confronting other political forces and therefore our proposals will end up on a dead end, because we don’t have the numbers to carry them forward», he insists Valentina Barzottigroup leader of M5S in the Labor Committee of the Chamber. Alarm also on the part Pdthat has presented two bills, one signed by Ubaldo Pagano, and the other by Chiara Gribaudo. «The proposal of Fratelli d’Italia plays a whole different game, – Pagano contests – it is a downward agreement that tends to enter into an intimate and painful fact of a woman, distinguishing between those who have suffered physical damage and those who perhaps have not he has physical damage but has significant psychological damage. A distinction that also hurts logic.”

The deputies of Fratelli d’Italia object that the “uncoupling” proposal does not imply a stop to the opposition’s proposals (among other things there is also one Forza Italia which goes in the same direction as those of the Pd, M5S and that of the former minister of equal opportunities Mara Carfagna), which will be able to proceed on a parallel track. While the first one signed by Morgante, having a wider audience, given that it also includes men, it is right that it goes on its own.

A choice which, however, could also constitute a way out to avoid having to deal with the need to allocate significant economic resources, given that some of the proposals filed do not provide for the inclusion of women victims of violence as the only form of protection among the protected categories, but also include tax relief, professional insertion paths, additional resources for the Fund for victims of violence. «Considering the high rate of feminicides in our country, and the condition of women in the labor market – Barzotti points out – it is wrong to put women and men on the same level. Treating different situations with identical tools is discriminatory, a devastating political act towards women.”