Our other Italian partners Associazione 21 luglio (Rome, Italy)  organised a meeting with their local Roma Women.

The group focused its attention not on Roma in general, but on Roma that live in housing emergency in the city of Rome (in settlements or occupations). These Roma are poor and segregated and they come mainly from Rumania and Former Jugoslavia.

Issues emerged from the focus group:

1. Lack of investment on girls’ education from the side of parents (girls are involved in houseworks, they participate less than their brothers into cultural, recreational and educational activities organized by associations especially if there are no other girls involved in those activities)
2. As a consequence lack of work competences and opportunities to acces the job market (drift towards crime or illegal activities such begging as only income source)
3. Women designated to domestic activities – if men do housework they are laughed at by the community
4. Women as bearers of the family honour – especially measured through virginity preservation – value that limits the full freedom of movement, the access to education and to the job market (virginity is a fundamental value for Rumanian girls, less important for the Bosniac that are freer)
5. Persistence of practices concerning virginity control that girls consider humiliating (stained sheet, examination the day before the marriage conducted by other women or by gynecologists)
6. Reproductive health: lacking access to health services, in some cases because girls feel ashamed of having need of a support that comes from outside the family. From the other side of the coin, there is an insufficient attention of services witnessed by a progressive closure of health centers for foreign people (extra EU or comunitarian). Moreover the family counseling centers are not prepared to welcome different approach to matherhood such Roma women’s one (see complementary feeding, etc.) As a consequence, Roma girls continue to ignore important aspects of early childhood development. The situation is woersened by a general indifference toward these issues from the side of male partners/fathers.
7. Use of contraceptives: Rumanian husbands do not usually want to use condoms (“condoms are for prostitutes not for wives”); in some cases women use coils, but their husbands do not know it; the pill is a monthly expense and before using it women are required to do exams, so the cost represents a deterrent. In addition, even among the most emancipated Roma women it is widespread the belief that the pill causes malformations to children.
8. Frequent abortions, used as contraceptive (some women had more than 20 abortions)
9. Alleged tendency to illegal abortions provocked by medicines;
10. Early marriages;
11. As a consequence of economic dependence: domestic violence tied to subordination, influenced by poverty. Women tend to accept violence.

Women who were present at this meeting plan to attend the Congress in March 2018.