ROME Women have a central role in Italian society, but according to Reuters they are increasingly fed up with how few of them are being heard in politics.

As the May 13 general election approaches and polls show the gap narrowing between the center left and center right, women's groups around Italy are using their voting clout to force their demands up the agenda and to make the parties listen.

Safer streets, tougher action against sexual violence, and training in technology all figure highly.

But the major push is on root-and-branch reform, including positive action to give more women jobs in party ranks.

"All the men will listen to us with smiles on their faces, they might even try to understand. But only women truly have our interests at heart and will fight for them instinctively," said Giovanna Nesi, a housewife who lives in Rome.

Italy has one of the most male-dominated parliaments in Europe with women accounting for around 11 percent of Lower House deputies and eight percent of senators.

A comparison with Italy's EU partners is stark. Sweden comes top with women in 42 percent of seats in its Lower House. Germany has nearly 31 percent. Even in Spain, once a fellow bastion of male supremacy, women occupy 28 percent of Lower House seats.

In a list of women in national parliaments on the Inter-Parliamentary Union Website, Italy comes 56th, equal with Cape Verde and Saint Lucia.

"It's pitiful!" said Valeria Ajovalasit, president of the women's action group Arcidonna. "Italy comes last in Europe. The presence of women in the Italian Parliament is insignificant."

But for all the noise the groups have made over the years, electoral lists show they have a long way to go.

In Sicily, where Arcidonna is based, Ajovalasit said the center-left coalition had put forward four female candidates and the center-right alliance just one.

"We are so far off the 50 percent which would give women equality in the Italian Parliament. It just shows we are going to have to keep fighting," she said, praising France's new law insisting on 50-50 parity between the sexes on electoral lists.

Ajovalasit said Arcidonna, which has links throughout Italy, was naturally left-leaning and hoped the center-left coalition's preelection pledges would include a commitment to work for equal representation.

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Alessandra Mussolini, granddaughter of Italy's wartime dictator Benito mussolini, called the disparity "a tragic massacre of women" and said women from all parties had been cheated by men's false promises.

"But it's not worth crying over spilt milk. We just have to roll up our sleeves and fight to keep the few positions we have, encouraging people to vote for women," said Mussolini, who is a deputy of the right-wing National Alliance Party.

Italian women won the right to vote in 1946 but the first female minister did not cross the cabinet threshold for another 20 years.

The cause has been helped in part by a couple of women who have held high-profile portfolios in the governing center-left cabinet including Social Affairs Minister Livia Turco who helped push through family- and female-friendly policies.

But time-honored cross-party spats have unraveled some of that, say young voters looking for role models.

But the female voice is not one political leaders can shrug off that easily. Interior Ministry figures show almost 52 percent of potential voters in the general election are women.

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Gasparrini said she was satisfied with the steps the center left had taken for women in the last five years and her group have plumped for the alliance again.

With better pension and maternity payments under their belts, women of the housewives' group are upping the stakes. They have signed a preelection pact with the center-left "Olive Tree" coalition asking for better food controls, housing assistance for young couples and safety on the streets.

A question remains as to whether those feelings will be transferred to the ballot paper.

A survey in February for the *********** Corriere della Sera ********** newspaper showed that 47 percent of women working at home had not made up their minds how to vote or had no intention of doing so.

Yet progress, however slim, has come a long way since the days when Mussolini was about to seize power as Italian dictator.

He said in 1921: "I will not give women the vote... A woman should obey".