European women forced to do men's jobs, Gaddafi says

By Deepa Babington

ROME (Reuters) - European women are being forced to work like men, travel alone and sleep in hotels out of necessity rather than choice, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi lamented to an incredulous crowd of 1,000 Italian women on Friday.

In a rambling speech that alternately drew boos and applause from the smartly-dressed women, Gaddafi said European women had been pushed into the workplace after wars in the last century because their men had been killed off.

"After the World War that killed many men, European women were forced to leave their homes to support their children," said Gaddafi, known for his all-female bodyguard corps.

"So women were forced to do the work of men ... And as long as women are forced to do the work of men, it means we have assaulted their nature."

A much better system was to allow women to freely choose whether they wanted to do a man's job like drive a train, said Gaddafi, who has ruffled feathers on other occasions in his first state visit to Italy.

"We should not treat roses like barley," Gaddafi said.

"I once visited an underground explosives factory in Eastern Europe where women were covered from head to toe and had dusty hair. Is this the freedom we want? Why force women to work in an explosives factory?"