What options would an Italian woman have today if she were madly in love with a man she couldn't marry because, for one reason or another, he does not want to divorce his wife?

She could hope that he would leave his wife anyway and come live with her. No khalwat (close proximity) laws in Italy. To further consolidate their relationship, she could bear his child. If he recognises the bambino, he would be bound by law to provide for it.

If he does not recognise his "natural child", what a child born out of wedlock is wont to be called in Italy where all children are considered legitimate, the state would be obliged to provide for both mother and child (the cad of a father would probably have been thrown out of the house by then). As a last resort she could always hope to fall in love again, perhaps this time with a single man.

Italy takes the rights of its individual citizens and their equality before the law very seriously. This explains the public uproar over Berlusconi's trying to modify the judiciary system by suspending judges if there is a "legitimate suspicion" that they are biased. Who decides who is biased, and how do you decide?

Same rights

In Italy, an unmarried mother has the same rights as a married mother insofar as her capacity as mother, and a child born to unmarried parents has the same rights as a child born to man and wife.

Institutionalised polygyny as it is practised in Malaysia would be by and large scorned by both men and women in Italy not so much on religious grounds but more because the woman in such a system is not allowed to marry more than one man at the same time, and therefore has a position unequal to that of the man's. Considered equally preposterous by Italians would be the unequal distribution of inheritance among male and female children.

Implicit is the idea that women too may want to be, and may have the ability to be, polygamous.

A moment comes when a man is struck by the fact that many of the women he has affairs with are also somebody's wives, and that it is therefore not materially possible for all the husbands in Italy to stray from marital fidelity while none of the wives do so.

All this does mean that male chauvinism and double standards do not exist in Italian society, and that religious codes have lost their influence under secular laws in a nation where religion and state are separate.

Law and tradition

Abortion and divorce, two taboos for the Catholic Church, were legalised in Italy in the 1970s when the Christian Democrats were in power, after a long series of historical referendums.

Today the percentage of abortions has actually declined. What then is the dialectic between cultural and religious identity and laws? Do laws function to preserve traditions or change them?

Perhaps the Italian answer to that would be that culture is what survives when everything else has been lost. And that knowing you can do something, but you don't do it anyway, is a form of freedom and autonomy.

Former Star reporter MASTURAH ALATAS has been living in Italy for the past 10 years. She is the founder-director of a small cultural association called Patrimoni Misti (the Heritage Mix).