Italy’s male lawmakers, who occupy more than five out of six seats in Parliament, will face demands from their female colleagues for a change in the law that would have far-reaching effects on the family.
Women MPs have tabled 13 Bills to try to change the law on surnames, which even Italy’s conservative judiciary has criticised for being outdated. Nine of the proposed laws have the backing of legislators of the left and right.
Currently an Italian child must take the family name of his or her father, unless the identity of the father is unknown. In February the Constitutional Court said the law did not allow it to overturn a decision by Milan city council to refuse to allow a couple to give their daughter her mother’s surname.
Italians cannot create double-barrelled surnames to keep alive a maternal family name, nor can single Italian mothers give their last names to their children. The Constitutional Court said the situation was a ”remnant of a patriarchal conception of the family inconsistent with equality of the sexes”. Italy’s highest appeals tribunal, the court of cassation, reached a similar conclusion in May.
But while there is a broad consensus that the system is wrong, reformers have yet to agree on how to change it. Some favour the British way, in which the surname can be that of the father, the mother or both.
Others want Italy to adopt the Spanish tradition of giving a child two surnames — one from each side of the family. Sponsors of the Bills acknowledged the disagreement, but Daniela Santanché, of the hard-right National Alliance, said she was not discouraged.
”Women,” she said, ”always find a way to agree.” – Guardian Unlimited Â