03/03/2007
An Italian union on Friday urged women to boycott Dolce & Gabbana products on International Women's Day next week in protest against an ad showing a man pinning a woman down by her wrists.
Earlier, human rights watchdog Amnesty International in Italy said the fashion house risked "excusing violence against women".
The textile workers' division of Italy's largest trade union, CGIL, said that unless the ad was withdrawn, women should take action on March 8, International Women's Day.
"It is shameful that Dolce & Gabbana peddles a message of violence and abuse against women," it said on its Web site www.filtea.cgil.it. "This picture must go and the designers must apologise to all women. If not, women should declare a strike on March 8 against buying Dolce & Gabbana clothes," it added.
The advertisement shows a bare-chested man holding down a woman by her wrists while three men look casually on. Amnesty International called for the advertisements to be withdrawn "as soon as possible".
"The right of women to live free from the threat of violence needs anything but images like the Dolce & Gabbana ones," it said on its Italian Web site www.amnesty.it.
Dolce & Gabbana declined to comment.
Spanish and Britain criticism
The Spanish government last month branded the campaign illegal and humiliating to women and called for it to be withdrawn.
The designers, whose latest women's wear collection featured riding crops and silver eye-masks, called Spain "old-fashioned", Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia newspaper said last month.
The latest fracas followed criticism by Britain's advertising watchdog in January about another Dolce & Gabbana campaign showing models brandishing knives.
The British Advertising Standards Authority upheld more than 150 complaints from people concerned that those pictures glorified and condoned violent crime. The company said the adverts mimicked early 19th-century art.
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